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Cover image for I've made a react component that hides sensitive information in your app.

I've made a react component that hides sensitive information in your app.

ItayLisaey on April 24, 2022

Did you ever want to showcase a site you have worked on or a new feature you just published in a production system but were unable to do so because...
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eecolor profile image
EECOLOR

Hello,

Am I correct in thinking that simply adding the following CSS would have the exact same effect?

*[data-safe] {
    filter: blur(.3rem) !important;
}
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If that is the case I think it would be better to not use an external library with its associated security and maintenance cost.

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itaylisaey profile image
ItayLisaey

You are definitely correct.
I actually said exactly that on some of the posts I wrote.
The reason I made it into a library is for my personal comfort and it fits my use cases.

You are more than welcome to use any of the code in library without using it through npm.

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alxizr profile image
alxizr

Super cool, very useful and unbelievably easy 👌 😀 👍

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letsbsocial1 profile image
Maria Campbell

And this sensitive info actually does not appear in the HTML? Where does it end up?

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itaylisaey profile image
ItayLisaey

The sensitive information is still available in the DOM.

As I've mentioned before the library's serves only to hide the sensitive information visibly, for presentation purposes.

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letsbsocial1 profile image
Maria Campbell

Understood. So then basically not helpful regarding sensitive info as I thought. Just wanted confirmation. Thanks!

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christiankozalla profile image
Christian Kozalla

Is this similar to using feature flags?

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_genjudev profile image
Larson • Edited

No. Feature flags are normally used to ignore specific parts of your code in the deployment so they wont get shipped.

SafeView "hides" existing components.

SafeView is a component that allows you to hide sensitive information in your app visually, for presentation purposes, and more.

visually

they still exist when you look in your developer tools.

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itaylisaey profile image
ItayLisaey

Thanks Lars, SafeView purpose is not to secure your sensitive information.

You can look at it more like a showcase/presentaion helper.

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puritanic profile image
Darkø Tasevski

Feature flags are normally used to ignore specific parts of your code in the deployment so they wont get shipped.

You sure about that @larsonnn ?

From my experience so far, the code behind the feature flags is shipped, but is not available to the user in the production. Talking from the the frontend perspective though, not sure if in native development we can remove code behind the disabled feature flags in compile step.

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christiankozalla profile image
Christian Kozalla

We're using feature flags like in a simple if else statement. So the code is shipped and we can switch the flag on and off at runtime.

I'm sure a compile step could remove the code behind the flag, but then you couldn't toggle the flags at runtime

Thanks for sharing your experience :)

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aminmansuri profile image
hidden_dude

Hmm then it's not really secure or "safe".
It's just activating and deactivating.

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robbiegm profile image
RobbieGM

What did you think the point of it was?

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aminmansuri profile image
hidden_dude

I don't know.. but "safe" doesn't seem like the right word to use here.

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christiankozalla profile image
Christian Kozalla

When I read the title of the post, "sensitive information" makes me think of API secrets..

If I want to hide something visually, I can provide a global CSS ID for the same purpose myself...

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grantdotdev profile image
Grant Riordan

My thought exactly , I'd rather have a component which perhaps encrypts the data or redacts it on toggle or component render.

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aminmansuri profile image
hidden_dude

yeah.. i was thinking something similar.

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itaylisaey profile image
ItayLisaey

Sorry about that, didn't mean to mislead anyone.
I think I clearly state in the library that it is only for visual purposes it is NOT secure in anyway by design.

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aminmansuri profile image
hidden_dude

Of course not. I just suggest you change the name to "activate" or "hide" rather than "safe". Because "safe" gives the impression of being a security feature.

But good work and kudos for your efforts.

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_genjudev profile image
Larson

It's simple, that's the best of it.

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liorvainer profile image
LiorVainer

Used in a personal project of mine and helped me very much with presentation of the project

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thejavascripter profile image
SauhardoSengupta

Amazing, this will be really usefull

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Nitzan Hen

Cool idea! Seems simple to use and useful. Bookmarked for a time of need 📌

 
itaylisaey profile image
ItayLisaey

thanks! looks great.
mind you the key combination and different filters are already available and can be customized using the component (more on that in the library readme).

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enigmage profile image
Ali Zaidi

Wow this is pretty cool !! Will try using it in my projects

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shalevb108 profile image
shalevb108

Very useful and convenient to work just a pleasure!

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liadaltiff profile image
Liad Altif

been here since day one 🥳

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grantdotdev profile image
Grant Riordan

As other have said the functionality would be better to redact / encrypt the sensitive data.

Other suggestion could be to rename the component as then it could be used across React and React Native. (react native already has a SafeView component.

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itaylisaey profile image
ItayLisaey

Interesting, didn't knew about that..
I think you can import the component by a different name.

import SafeView as MyComponent from "safeview"

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grantdotdev profile image
Grant Riordan

Apologies ReactNative is called SafeAreaView but point still stands

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itaylisaey profile image
ItayLisaey

You're definitely right about that one,
but from my experience the stage/dev isn't always accessible to people outside the dev/product team

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ItayLisaey

How do you suppose to implement that? What will the hook provide?

I thought about that earlier but eventually decided to go with the attribute approach because it looks cleaner.

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Stephanie Handsteiner

It's not a good idea to obfuscate sensitive information with CSS, aside from the obvious point that the data is still there and one only has to deactivate CSS in order to deactivate the blur filter, this kind of blur is not actually safe to hide information, just look at the preview image in your article's header.

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ItayLisaey

Your'e right about that one, the library isn't focused around security at all.

The idea is to enable a quick safe preview for customers/client at a presention or a meeting without revealing sensitive information.

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Abraham

Lol...I opened the article cause I wanted to know the new tech that helps me hide sensitive data with client side javascript. 😏