We've cautioned several times about the importance of safely handling user identification information. The intention to handle that data safely is one thing, but it is important to follow through and actually do so. While we're using a few good practices so far, as it stands, the Notes application would not withstand any kind of security audit for the following reasons:
- User passwords are kept in clear text in the database.
- The authentication tokens for Twitter et al. are in clear text.
- The authentication service API key is not a cryptographically secure anything; it's just a clear text universally unique identifier (UUID).
If you don't recognize the phrase clear text, it simply means unencrypted. Anyone could read the text of user passwords or the authentication tokens. It's best to keep both encrypted to avoid information leakage.
Keep this issue in the back of your mind because we'll revisit these—and other...
