Max here, author of FOKS. I find it interesting how much glue is required to perform basic cryptographic operations, even in 2025. Imagine a very simple idea like encrypting a secret with a YubiKey. If it's an important secret, that you really don't want to lose, then now you need a second YubiKey as a backup, in case the primary is lost or breaks. But now how do you encrypt and how do you rotate the primary out if needed? To the best of my understanding, there aren't great solutions short of a system like FOKS. If not FOKS, I really believe a system like it ought to exist, and it ought to be entirely open, so that arbitrary applications can be built on top of it without paying rent.
Max! I'm so happy that you're doing this! I was a huge fan of Keybase, and have spent the last few years praying (and sometimes brainstorming funding) a decentralized, open source version of it. Looking forward to digging into the details of FOKS, but just wanted to say thank you and the Keybase team for all you've done -- including keeping Keybase going after the Zoom purchase.
If you haven't seen KERI they're worth a read, I found out about them at an Internet Identity Workshop. It has all those quality of life features for public keys - revocation, rotation, recovery. "Key Event Receipt Infrastructure". Relies on "witnesses" which I don't know if I love it but their presentation impressed me.
For all of GnuPG's faults, the usage you've described is exactly why I still use it. I have my master PGP key copied to several offline Yubikeys (one of which is stored offsite), and two day-to-day Yubikeys (one of which is always with me on my physical keychain) containing my current signing and encryption subkeys. The signing subkey is also used for SSH authentication. The second slot on the day-to-day Yubikeys is used for WebAuthn/Passkeys. The master key is brought out of storage only if I need to rotate or revoke a day-to-day subkey, or attest someone else's key for web-of-trust purposes.
I sign all of my Git commits, as well as Debian packages. I occasionally sign and encrypt email. My most important encryption use case is file backups, which are encrypted to my public key and copied offsite.
I'm excited about FOKS if it can serve as a modern alternative to the above, with fewer footguns that GnuPG.
Good to know someone's thinking of decentralizing the whole thing :) Always been wondering where to lay these keys out, if people want to start recovering their data / keys. Something like this + IPFS would be radical, and allow folks to encrypt and circulate easily. Thank you for building this. So ... I wonder how you got here after building Keybase, what's the motivation this time, how do you envision this gets hosted?
FOKS is a cool project; what kind of projects do you foresee getting spun off from this?
I'm actually working on a crytpography based project inspired by Keybase's use of Merkle Trees and identity proofing but with an added dash of privacy through pseudonyms and chain hashing. Thanks for putting time into this.
This is actually so needed. I've heard the phrase "minting your own tokens?!" used as an argument for (N)oAuth. The current state of affairs is honestly just sad.
I used to use Keybase Git repos for file-based secrets management for my toy DevOps project. Either FOKS Git repos or native support in SOPS would be pretty damn cool!
To better wrap my head around how FOKS facilitates team collaboration, I'd like to see two comparisons:
1) compare to a team-shared Linux machine with SSH daemon. Each team member has a user account, and they can manage their SSH authorized keys, including keys stored on Yubikey. The team can share files and git repositories on the Linux machine's own storage. Some differences I see with this approach are the federated aspect and "append-only data structures that allow clients to catch dishonest server behavior".
2) compare to Radicle, a decentralized git service. Identities are keypairs.
With FOKS, how coupled is storage of git and secrets to the FOKS server?
I'm not familiar with Radicle, but I'll check it out. For (1), consider the case of that server being hosted on AWS. Even though only members are authorized to SSH into it, the plaintext is still known to the cloud hardware, and can be exfiltrated that way. In FOKS, the server sees encrypted data only, so that attack is greatly mitigated. I would say that if the SSH server was hosted on one of the workstations of one of the team members, then the security advantages of FOKS would be much less.
The KV-Store and Git server are implemented as "applications" on top of the FOKS infrastructure, so they aren't coupled. They see a sequence of Per-Team-Keys (PTKs); they use the older ones for decryption and the newest for encryption. I'd really love to see all sorts of other applications built on top of FOKS but we might need to do some work as to nailing the right plugin architecture.
How does the "federation" work? I assume the actual team data is stored on a single foks server, the one the term is on, so I guess from there you basically have some lightweight SSO for team members using their server?
Correct! Remote members of the team get access to shared team keys, and the team's data, even though they don't have accounts on that server. Knowledge of the team key suffices to allow a remote user to authenticate and transfer (encrypted) data to and from the server.
There is very little server-to-server communication, which simplifies the design and software upgrades.
It looks cool, and I agree with the creators that something like this ought to exist and optimally free from monetization incentives.
From a user standpoint it does seem like quite the undertaking to introduce it though. Most of the needs I'm looking for from such a system are currently already filled quite well by SOPS[0], where I would say I get 80% of the features (I care about) for 10% of the complexity.
Max, the first thing I thought of for use cases here is a better backend for pass[0]. Being able to manage people, families (aka teams), and getting the ability to more easily manage my yubikeys are all wins.
This looks interesting, but I'm having a lot of trouble understanding the section "A Simple Key Hierarchy".
> Everything starts with base-level keys, like user device keys, backup keys, or YubiKeys. Device keys are generated on user devices and never leave the machine they are generated on.
These base-level keys are private keys, no? The previous paragraph introduces symmetric keys, and doesn't discuss private/public keypairs.
> Every user of the system has a sequence of per-user-keys (PUKs) at the next level up the hierarchy. The secrets seeds for these keys are encrypted for all available base-level keys.
Is the idea that, if user Joe is a member of group Sales (I know, I know, how boring this example is), and Sales is a member of group Employees, if Joe wants to write something that all Employees can read, he first decrypts a symmetric key for Sales using one of his personal base-level private keys, uses that to decrypt a symmetric key for Employees, and then stores his data encrypted data with that Employees symmetric key?
> In FOKS, there are two types of parties: users and teams. In both cases, there is a rotating list of constituents (be they devices or team members), and as these constituents change, so to does the corresponding active PUK or PTK.
Does "rotating" here mean simply "potentially changing [over time]"?
Also, do I understand correctly that "rotate keys" means "choose a new key, decrypt everything that was encrypted with the original key, and then reencrypt it all with the new key"? If so, then since servers do not have access to keys (needed for decryption), I think this means that, whenever someone leaves a group or a device is lost, some client must download all data available to that group, decrypt, reencrypt and reupload it -- is that right? This suggests it would be expensive to have frequently-changing groups with access to a lot of data. (I'm certainly not suggesting I know a better way -- just checking my understanding.)
I am working on an open source project where users provide signatures of their projects artifacts (this is oversimplified for the sake of the discussion).
Started using Minisign as the signature scheme. But we're struggling to find a clean solution for users keys renewal, revocation and updated public key distribution. I thought foks might help for that but the examples don't seem to confirm this. Basically the question I need to answer is :how can users trusting an existing signing key also trust the new key replacing it? I hoped we might outsource this to foks, but I think I misunderstood foks in the first place.
This would be a great application for us! We are not exactly there yet, for reasons of privacy. Right now, there is no way for alice@host to allow unauthenticated users to view her profile. But we can definitely allow this on a host-by-host basis. With this small change, I think your application fits very naturally.
I wonder, what sort of interface is right for you? A library to compile against or a CLI app to shell out to? If a library, which languages?
Easy multi-accounting is something that I hope we already have (`foks key switch` is pretty smooth). It's a feature I use a lot (I have a personal account on @foks.app and our company account is on @ne43.foks.cloud).
This is a great point and I thought a lot about this. This is the sort of thing that can be changed later if it's really a good idea, but I got to thinking that having non-local admins would mean more server-to-server communication and more server-to-server trust, and I was trying to avoid that.
Imagine alice@foo is an admin of bluejays@bar. One thing alice@foo will need to do is to make signed changes to bluejays@bar, when adding or removing members, let's say. Right now, the server at bar will check the validity of these signatures, that they were made with the alice@foo's latest key. So in other words, there would have to be some way for bar to authenticate to foo to allow bar to read alice's sigchain and to determine her latest key.
I was thinking that keeping foo and bar separated was a good idea both in terms of privilege separation and keeping the network simpler (which would in turn be good for uptime and would simplify software upgrades).
I will not be entering the workplace and suggesting that we use a product whose name is very easily mistaken for "the F word". It is an immediate non-starter.
(I'm sure it's a great project, and you probably meant for people to pronounce the name as "folks" rather than... y'know, the other way. I'm telling you this in a spirit of kindness so your project can be more successful and see increased adoption)
Max, can users be limited to delete/push/force push certain branches? Is a server repo incremental backup-friendly? Is is as efficient in storage space and data transfer as regular git? Can we incrementally sync dbs like Sqlite?
Seems this is the best E2EE storage. No choosing creator's cloud vs finicky self hosting, nor worry about flaky sync solutions for my password manager, note app, photo storage etc. A 2$ vps would be overkill.
- limiting users to delete/push/force; this is possible but I don't see how to cryptographically guarantee it. The server can't really help since it doesn't know what's a pack, index data block or ref. The clients can enforce this policy, but then it would be possible to make an evil client that skirts the policy. How much protection do you think you need?
- the server repo right now is implemented 100% as a postgresql DB, so yes, I think that means it's incremental backup-friendly? [1]
- e2ee git has trouble being as efficient as regular git since the server can't tell you which blocks it has; however, there are pretty good optimizations made using indices and packfiles, the white paper has more details, and I hope to write a blog on it soon.
- I'm not sure about the sqlite question. Is there a good way to backup sqlite incrementally over standard git? If not, then maybe the KV-store is better fit for this application.
I agree that git over E2EE is the best storage, even for things like PDFs and photos. Yeah, FOKS should be hostable with a very thin VPS. The storage needs will scale (n log n) as the number of users due to the Merkle Tree, but for small n, this is likely fine!
can you replace systems like infisical with something like foks ? where are the similarities/differences ? would it make sense to use foks for a secrets store in kubernetes for example ?
And in reality, someone making a personal project used a tool at their disposal to add pretty pictures to their website, said website not being a part of the project in any way.
If they vibe coded the app, sure, be skeptical. But there's no indication they did, just that they wanted images for their website, and they're a software engineer and not a graphics designer.
I put about as much weight in the origin of those graphics as which website editor they use. If they were advertising themselves as a web designer, sure, maybe that's relevant. That's not what they're doing here though.
I think this complaint is likely against HN guidelines against these kinds of complaints about the site layout or how the page is designed. Will be flagging this complaint every time in the future because I consider it against guidelines.
That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without consideration, per Hitchens’s Razor. I don’t think research exists about a relation between AI generated images and quality of the project using them, so your complaint seems like motivated reasoning because you believe that generated images are a sign of poor quality or judgement in an area that would reflect on other aspects of the project. The fact that our perceptions are colored in this way is not accurate, and is gamed by marketers. Criticism of the promotional aspects of a project like this which isn’t commercial or customer facing is not very convincing on your part and deserves being called out.
maxtaco|7 months ago
dannyobrien|7 months ago
jazzyjackson|7 months ago
https://keri.one/
dpifke|7 months ago
I sign all of my Git commits, as well as Debian packages. I occasionally sign and encrypt email. My most important encryption use case is file backups, which are encrypted to my public key and copied offsite.
I'm excited about FOKS if it can serve as a modern alternative to the above, with fewer footguns that GnuPG.
vkaku|7 months ago
P.S. I built this for Group Encryption a few years ago, to help circulate key hives offline https://github.com/guilt/groupenc
pmw|7 months ago
oooyay|7 months ago
I'm actually working on a crytpography based project inspired by Keybase's use of Merkle Trees and identity proofing but with an added dash of privacy through pseudonyms and chain hashing. Thanks for putting time into this.
eterps|7 months ago
What features from a user perspective does it currently have in common with Keybase?
F.e. I remember Keybase mostly for secure messaging using public identities (HN, Reddit etc.), and sharing data/files.
unknown|7 months ago
[deleted]
xtajv|7 months ago
unknown|7 months ago
[deleted]
WhatIsDukkha|7 months ago
https://blog.foks.pub/posts/introducing/
marcopolo|7 months ago
pzduniak|7 months ago
pmw|7 months ago
1) compare to a team-shared Linux machine with SSH daemon. Each team member has a user account, and they can manage their SSH authorized keys, including keys stored on Yubikey. The team can share files and git repositories on the Linux machine's own storage. Some differences I see with this approach are the federated aspect and "append-only data structures that allow clients to catch dishonest server behavior".
2) compare to Radicle, a decentralized git service. Identities are keypairs.
With FOKS, how coupled is storage of git and secrets to the FOKS server?
maxtaco|7 months ago
The KV-Store and Git server are implemented as "applications" on top of the FOKS infrastructure, so they aren't coupled. They see a sequence of Per-Team-Keys (PTKs); they use the older ones for decryption and the newest for encryption. I'd really love to see all sorts of other applications built on top of FOKS but we might need to do some work as to nailing the right plugin architecture.
singpolyma3|7 months ago
maxtaco|7 months ago
There is very little server-to-server communication, which simplifies the design and software upgrades.
hobofan|7 months ago
From a user standpoint it does seem like quite the undertaking to introduce it though. Most of the needs I'm looking for from such a system are currently already filled quite well by SOPS[0], where I would say I get 80% of the features (I care about) for 10% of the complexity.
[0]: https://getsops.io
fooqux|7 months ago
0: https://www.passwordstore.org/
akoboldfrying|7 months ago
> Everything starts with base-level keys, like user device keys, backup keys, or YubiKeys. Device keys are generated on user devices and never leave the machine they are generated on.
These base-level keys are private keys, no? The previous paragraph introduces symmetric keys, and doesn't discuss private/public keypairs.
> Every user of the system has a sequence of per-user-keys (PUKs) at the next level up the hierarchy. The secrets seeds for these keys are encrypted for all available base-level keys.
Is the idea that, if user Joe is a member of group Sales (I know, I know, how boring this example is), and Sales is a member of group Employees, if Joe wants to write something that all Employees can read, he first decrypts a symmetric key for Sales using one of his personal base-level private keys, uses that to decrypt a symmetric key for Employees, and then stores his data encrypted data with that Employees symmetric key?
> In FOKS, there are two types of parties: users and teams. In both cases, there is a rotating list of constituents (be they devices or team members), and as these constituents change, so to does the corresponding active PUK or PTK.
Does "rotating" here mean simply "potentially changing [over time]"?
Also, do I understand correctly that "rotate keys" means "choose a new key, decrypt everything that was encrypted with the original key, and then reencrypt it all with the new key"? If so, then since servers do not have access to keys (needed for decryption), I think this means that, whenever someone leaves a group or a device is lost, some client must download all data available to that group, decrypt, reencrypt and reupload it -- is that right? This suggests it would be expensive to have frequently-changing groups with access to a lot of data. (I'm certainly not suggesting I know a better way -- just checking my understanding.)
raphinou|7 months ago
Started using Minisign as the signature scheme. But we're struggling to find a clean solution for users keys renewal, revocation and updated public key distribution. I thought foks might help for that but the examples don't seem to confirm this. Basically the question I need to answer is :how can users trusting an existing signing key also trust the new key replacing it? I hoped we might outsource this to foks, but I think I misunderstood foks in the first place.
maxtaco|7 months ago
I wonder, what sort of interface is right for you? A library to compile against or a CLI app to shell out to? If a library, which languages?
akafazov|7 months ago
iovoid|7 months ago
> all the admins and owners — those who have the ability to change the team — must be on the same home server
Maybe with easy multi-accounting it could be made less annoying, but this seems like a big limitation for a federated system.
maxtaco|7 months ago
This is a great point and I thought a lot about this. This is the sort of thing that can be changed later if it's really a good idea, but I got to thinking that having non-local admins would mean more server-to-server communication and more server-to-server trust, and I was trying to avoid that.
Imagine alice@foo is an admin of bluejays@bar. One thing alice@foo will need to do is to make signed changes to bluejays@bar, when adding or removing members, let's say. Right now, the server at bar will check the validity of these signatures, that they were made with the alice@foo's latest key. So in other words, there would have to be some way for bar to authenticate to foo to allow bar to read alice's sigchain and to determine her latest key.
I was thinking that keeping foo and bar separated was a good idea both in terms of privilege separation and keeping the network simpler (which would in turn be good for uptime and would simplify software upgrades).
xtajv|7 months ago
You cannot call it that.
I will not be entering the workplace and suggesting that we use a product whose name is very easily mistaken for "the F word". It is an immediate non-starter.
(I'm sure it's a great project, and you probably meant for people to pronounce the name as "folks" rather than... y'know, the other way. I'm telling you this in a spirit of kindness so your project can be more successful and see increased adoption)
horsawlarway|7 months ago
Firefox did just fine with that name. I don't really think it's a huge problem.
richrichardsson|7 months ago
edit: actually, I'm not sure if "fok" is used, but "fokken" is and it's fairly obvious what it means.
password4321|7 months ago
disintegrator|7 months ago
aitchnyu|7 months ago
Seems this is the best E2EE storage. No choosing creator's cloud vs finicky self hosting, nor worry about flaky sync solutions for my password manager, note app, photo storage etc. A 2$ vps would be overkill.
maxtaco|7 months ago
- limiting users to delete/push/force; this is possible but I don't see how to cryptographically guarantee it. The server can't really help since it doesn't know what's a pack, index data block or ref. The clients can enforce this policy, but then it would be possible to make an evil client that skirts the policy. How much protection do you think you need?
- the server repo right now is implemented 100% as a postgresql DB, so yes, I think that means it's incremental backup-friendly? [1]
- e2ee git has trouble being as efficient as regular git since the server can't tell you which blocks it has; however, there are pretty good optimizations made using indices and packfiles, the white paper has more details, and I hope to write a blog on it soon.
- I'm not sure about the sqlite question. Is there a good way to backup sqlite incrementally over standard git? If not, then maybe the KV-store is better fit for this application.
I agree that git over E2EE is the best storage, even for things like PDFs and photos. Yeah, FOKS should be hostable with a very thin VPS. The storage needs will scale (n log n) as the number of users due to the Merkle Tree, but for small n, this is likely fine!
[1] https://www.postgresql.org/docs/17/continuous-archiving.html...
ymolists|7 months ago
unknown|7 months ago
[deleted]
soundofvictory|7 months ago
Of course there is terrible AI-generated slop stock images on the homepage.
unknown|7 months ago
[deleted]
bobvylan|7 months ago
[deleted]
lordfnord|7 months ago
[deleted]
hofrogs|7 months ago
[deleted]
kstrauser|7 months ago
If they vibe coded the app, sure, be skeptical. But there's no indication they did, just that they wanted images for their website, and they're a software engineer and not a graphics designer.
I put about as much weight in the origin of those graphics as which website editor they use. If they were advertising themselves as a web designer, sure, maybe that's relevant. That's not what they're doing here though.
evolve2k|7 months ago
You 100% didn’t vibe code this, but the AI images give that sort of impression.
tln|7 months ago
I'm excited to try this out personally! Thanks for building this maxtaco
aspenmayer|7 months ago
That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without consideration, per Hitchens’s Razor. I don’t think research exists about a relation between AI generated images and quality of the project using them, so your complaint seems like motivated reasoning because you believe that generated images are a sign of poor quality or judgement in an area that would reflect on other aspects of the project. The fact that our perceptions are colored in this way is not accurate, and is gamed by marketers. Criticism of the promotional aspects of a project like this which isn’t commercial or customer facing is not very convincing on your part and deserves being called out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens%27s_razor
Datagenerator|7 months ago
[deleted]
UltraSane|7 months ago
ethan_smith|7 months ago
[deleted]
minitech|7 months ago