feat(sirius-press): a WordPress where the account is a key, not a mailbox
WordPress makes two assumptions this project cannot accept: that identity
comes from an email address, and that a site lives at one server. Both are
things somebody else can take away — a mailbox is rented from a provider who
can close it or be compelled to open it, and a server is one seizure from
being gone.
Sirius Press replaces the first and hedges the second.
Signing in means signing a challenge with the key that controls a CashAddress.
The address is recovered from the signature, so nothing is typed but the
signature itself, and the result is an ordinary WordPress session cookie —
roles, capabilities, nonces and the REST API never learn the login was
different. Three ways to produce one: a wallet the browser already exposes, a
phrase used once in the page and wiped, or a signature pasted in from any
BIP-137 wallet, which needs no JavaScript and lets the key stay on a machine
that never touches the web.
There is no password reset, and the recovery page says so plainly rather than
offering a form that cannot work. A reset mechanism is by construction a way
to take an account from its owner, and it is always easier to attack than the
cryptography it bypasses.
Publishing a post also exports it as static HTML to the name's storage on Sia,
signed by the key that owns the name, so the site keeps answering when the
server does not.
Email as a feature is untouched. wp_mail() still works, SMTP still sends, and
contact forms still deliver to addresses real people typed. Only mail to the
site's own unroutable placeholder addresses is diverted to an in-app inbox.
The objection was to email as identity, not to email.
Core is pinned and patched rather than vendored. WordPress 7.1.1 is 149 MB and
5,008 files; the fork's entire core diff is 75 lines in wp-admin/install.php.
Carrying the former to express the latter would bury the patch where nobody
reviews it and make every clone of the monorepo pay for it. Upstream releases
still merge through tools/update-wordpress.sh, which reapplies the series and
says exactly which hunk needs a human.
The cryptography is implemented twice — PHP on the server, JavaScript in the
page — because the server must verify and the browser must sign. Both are
pinned against libauth, the library the Sirius portal wallet and the BNS
gateway already use, so a disagreement of one byte fails the test suite rather
than presenting as a rejected login at three in the morning.
132 checks, no framework, about a second.
2026-09-21 01:39:38 +02:00
< ? php
/**
* Attaching a wallet to an account that does not have one .
*
* Two kinds of account arrive without an address : the one the installer made
* before anybody had signed anything , and any account created by a plugin
* that called `wp_insert_user()` directly . Both can sign in with a password —
* and then have no way to sign in once passwords are turned off . This screen
* is the bridge .
*
* It demands a signature rather than accepting a typed address . Typing an
* address proves nothing : a typo , or a copy - paste of an address belonging to
* somebody else , would attach an account to a key its owner cannot use , and
* the failure would only show up later at a login screen with no way back .
* Signing proves the key exists and is held , right now , by the person at the
* keyboard .
*
* Administrators can still set an address directly from the user editor ,
* because account recovery has to be possible for someone . That path is in
* SP_Identity and is deliberately capability - gated .
*
* @ package SiriusPress
*/
defined ( 'ABSPATH' ) || exit ;
final class SPA_Profile {
public static function hooks () {
add_action ( 'show_user_profile' , array ( __CLASS__ , 'render' ), 5 );
add_action ( 'admin_enqueue_scripts' , array ( __CLASS__ , 'enqueue' ) );
add_action ( 'personal_options_update' , array ( __CLASS__ , 'save' ), 5 );
add_action ( 'admin_notices' , array ( __CLASS__ , 'nag' ) );
}
public static function enqueue ( $hook ) {
if ( 'profile.php' !== $hook ) {
return ;
}
SPA_Login :: enqueue_wallet ();
wp_enqueue_style (
'sirius-press-login' ,
SIRIUS_PRESS_AUTH_URL . 'assets/login.css' ,
array (),
SIRIUS_PRESS_AUTH_VERSION
);
add_action ( 'admin_footer' , array ( 'SPA_Login' , 'print_config' ) );
}
/**
* Warn an administrator who cannot yet sign in the way this site works .
*
* Shown before they turn passwords off , not after — after is too late .
*/
public static function nag () {
if ( ! is_user_logged_in () || '' !== sirius_press_address () ) {
return ;
}
$screen = function_exists ( 'get_current_screen' ) ? get_current_screen () : null ;
if ( $screen && 'profile' === $screen -> id ) {
return ;
}
printf (
'<div class="notice notice-warning"><p>%s <a href="%s">%s</a></p></div>' ,
esc_html__ ( 'This account has no wallet attached, so it can only sign in with a password. If passwords are turned off, it will be locked out.' , 'sirius-press' ),
esc_url ( admin_url ( 'profile.php#sirius-wallet-link' ) ),
esc_html__ ( 'Attach a wallet' , 'sirius-press' )
);
}
public static function render ( $user ) {
$current = SP_Identity :: address_of ( $user -> ID );
$nonce = SPA_Challenge :: issue ();
$message = SPA_Challenge :: message ( $nonce , SPA_Challenge :: PURPOSE_LINK );
?>
< h2 id = " sirius-wallet-link " >< ? php esc_html_e ( 'Wallet sign-in' , 'sirius-press' ); ?> </h2>
< table class = " form-table " role = " presentation " >
< tr >
< th >< ? php esc_html_e ( 'Current wallet' , 'sirius-press' ); ?> </th>
< td >
< ? php if ( '' !== $current ) : ?>
< code >< ? php echo esc_html ( $current ); ?> </code>
< p class = " description " >< ? php esc_html_e ( 'Signing with the key for this address signs you in.' , 'sirius-press' ); ?> </p>
< ? php else : ?>
< p >< strong >< ? php esc_html_e ( 'None yet.' , 'sirius-press' ); ?> </strong>
< ? php esc_html_e ( 'This account can only sign in with a password until a wallet is attached.' , 'sirius-press' ); ?> </p>
< ? php endif ; ?>
</ td >
</ tr >
< tr >
< th >< ? php echo '' !== $current ? esc_html__ ( 'Change wallet' , 'sirius-press' ) : esc_html__ ( 'Attach a wallet' , 'sirius-press' ); ?> </th>
< td >
< ? php if ( '' !== $current ) : ?>
< p class = " description " style = " margin-bottom:10px " >
< ? php esc_html_e ( 'Signing with a different key moves this account to that key. The old one stops working immediately.' , 'sirius-press' ); ?>
</ p >
< ? php endif ; ?>
< ? php
SPA_Login :: render_signing_block (
$nonce ,
$message ,
SPA_Challenge :: PURPOSE_LINK ,
'' !== $current ? __ ( 'Sign with the new wallet' , 'sirius-press' ) : __ ( 'Sign to attach' , 'sirius-press' )
);
?>
< p class = " description " >
< ? php esc_html_e ( 'Signing fills the box above; saving this page applies it.' , 'sirius-press' ); ?>
</ p >
</ td >
</ tr >
</ table >
< ? php
}
public static function save ( $user_id ) {
// WordPress has already run check_admin_referer( 'update-user_' . $id )
// before this action fires.
// phpcs:disable WordPress.Security.NonceVerification.Missing
if ( empty ( $_POST [ 'sirius_signature' ] ) || empty ( $_POST [ 'sirius_nonce' ] ) ) {
return ;
}
$signature = sanitize_text_field ( wp_unslash ( $_POST [ 'sirius_signature' ] ) );
$nonce = sanitize_text_field ( wp_unslash ( $_POST [ 'sirius_nonce' ] ) );
fix(sirius-press): recovering a key is not the same as verifying a signature
Running the fork against a live WordPress found a real hole in registration,
and it is the kind that only shows up when you actually try it.
ECDSA public-key recovery always succeeds. Given any well-formed signature
and any digest it returns a key — just not the signer's, unless the digest is
the one that was signed. The auth flow leaned on that as if a wrong message
would fail. It does not; it quietly yields a stranger's address.
At sign-in this was harmless, because the wrong address matches no account
and the attempt fails. Registration and wallet-linking were another matter:
both took the recovered address and bound it to an account, so a signature
over slightly different text — a challenge copied without its blank line, a
wallet that rewrote the text, a login signature replayed at the registration
form — created an account keyed to an address nobody could sign for. The
person would see "success" and discover the truth the next time they tried to
get in. Wallet-linking was worse still: it would move an existing account onto
a dead address and lock its owner out of their own site.
Both paths now require the address the signer claims and compare it to the
recovered one, which is what verification actually means. Sign-in accepts the
claim when the page sends it and uses it to turn "no account uses that wallet"
into the more useful "that signature is not over the text we asked for".
Also from running it:
URL rewriting mangled every link on a site whose URL carries a port. The
protocol-relative pass matched inside absolute URLs and gave each one a second
scheme, and matching the host without its port left the port stranded as
`//host:8760:8760/`. Local and staging installs would have exported a site of
broken links.
Plain permalinks silently collapse an entire site onto one exported file,
because every post's URL is `/?p=N` and its path is `/`. The queue looks
healthy the whole time. The Publishing screen now says so.
Translations loaded on `plugins_loaded`, which WordPress 6.7 warns about on
every request — the kind of noise that trains people to stop reading logs.
And one deletion: an `is_email()` filter written on the assumption that
WordPress rejects `.invalid` addresses. It does not — `is_email()` validates
syntax, not whether a domain could exist — so the filter never fired. A filter
that appears to relax a rule but does not is worse than no filter, because
someone later reasons from it. The documentation made the same claim and has
been corrected.
Verification added rather than asserted: tests/live.mjs drives a real instance
over HTTP (40 checks), and tests/mock-gateway.mjs answers uploads with the
signature check transcribed from the gateway's own source, so the publishing
path can be exercised without a registered name.
2026-09-21 02:35:32 +02:00
$claimed = isset ( $_POST [ 'sirius_address' ] ) ? sanitize_text_field ( wp_unslash ( $_POST [ 'sirius_address' ] ) ) : '' ;
feat(sirius-press): a WordPress where the account is a key, not a mailbox
WordPress makes two assumptions this project cannot accept: that identity
comes from an email address, and that a site lives at one server. Both are
things somebody else can take away — a mailbox is rented from a provider who
can close it or be compelled to open it, and a server is one seizure from
being gone.
Sirius Press replaces the first and hedges the second.
Signing in means signing a challenge with the key that controls a CashAddress.
The address is recovered from the signature, so nothing is typed but the
signature itself, and the result is an ordinary WordPress session cookie —
roles, capabilities, nonces and the REST API never learn the login was
different. Three ways to produce one: a wallet the browser already exposes, a
phrase used once in the page and wiped, or a signature pasted in from any
BIP-137 wallet, which needs no JavaScript and lets the key stay on a machine
that never touches the web.
There is no password reset, and the recovery page says so plainly rather than
offering a form that cannot work. A reset mechanism is by construction a way
to take an account from its owner, and it is always easier to attack than the
cryptography it bypasses.
Publishing a post also exports it as static HTML to the name's storage on Sia,
signed by the key that owns the name, so the site keeps answering when the
server does not.
Email as a feature is untouched. wp_mail() still works, SMTP still sends, and
contact forms still deliver to addresses real people typed. Only mail to the
site's own unroutable placeholder addresses is diverted to an in-app inbox.
The objection was to email as identity, not to email.
Core is pinned and patched rather than vendored. WordPress 7.1.1 is 149 MB and
5,008 files; the fork's entire core diff is 75 lines in wp-admin/install.php.
Carrying the former to express the latter would bury the patch where nobody
reviews it and make every clone of the monorepo pay for it. Upstream releases
still merge through tools/update-wordpress.sh, which reapplies the series and
says exactly which hunk needs a human.
The cryptography is implemented twice — PHP on the server, JavaScript in the
page — because the server must verify and the browser must sign. Both are
pinned against libauth, the library the Sirius portal wallet and the BNS
gateway already use, so a disagreement of one byte fails the test suite rather
than presenting as a rejected login at three in the morning.
132 checks, no framework, about a second.
2026-09-21 01:39:38 +02:00
// phpcs:enable WordPress.Security.NonceVerification.Missing
if ( get_current_user_id () !== ( int ) $user_id ) {
return ; // Only the account holder attaches their own key here.
}
fix(sirius-press): recovering a key is not the same as verifying a signature
Running the fork against a live WordPress found a real hole in registration,
and it is the kind that only shows up when you actually try it.
ECDSA public-key recovery always succeeds. Given any well-formed signature
and any digest it returns a key — just not the signer's, unless the digest is
the one that was signed. The auth flow leaned on that as if a wrong message
would fail. It does not; it quietly yields a stranger's address.
At sign-in this was harmless, because the wrong address matches no account
and the attempt fails. Registration and wallet-linking were another matter:
both took the recovered address and bound it to an account, so a signature
over slightly different text — a challenge copied without its blank line, a
wallet that rewrote the text, a login signature replayed at the registration
form — created an account keyed to an address nobody could sign for. The
person would see "success" and discover the truth the next time they tried to
get in. Wallet-linking was worse still: it would move an existing account onto
a dead address and lock its owner out of their own site.
Both paths now require the address the signer claims and compare it to the
recovered one, which is what verification actually means. Sign-in accepts the
claim when the page sends it and uses it to turn "no account uses that wallet"
into the more useful "that signature is not over the text we asked for".
Also from running it:
URL rewriting mangled every link on a site whose URL carries a port. The
protocol-relative pass matched inside absolute URLs and gave each one a second
scheme, and matching the host without its port left the port stranded as
`//host:8760:8760/`. Local and staging installs would have exported a site of
broken links.
Plain permalinks silently collapse an entire site onto one exported file,
because every post's URL is `/?p=N` and its path is `/`. The queue looks
healthy the whole time. The Publishing screen now says so.
Translations loaded on `plugins_loaded`, which WordPress 6.7 warns about on
every request — the kind of noise that trains people to stop reading logs.
And one deletion: an `is_email()` filter written on the assumption that
WordPress rejects `.invalid` addresses. It does not — `is_email()` validates
syntax, not whether a domain could exist — so the filter never fired. A filter
that appears to relax a rule but does not is worse than no filter, because
someone later reasons from it. The documentation made the same claim and has
been corrected.
Verification added rather than asserted: tests/live.mjs drives a real instance
over HTTP (40 checks), and tests/mock-gateway.mjs answers uploads with the
signature check transcribed from the gateway's own source, so the publishing
path can be exercised without a registered name.
2026-09-21 02:35:32 +02:00
/*
* This is the most damaging place to get it wrong . Recovery always
* yields some address , so a signature over slightly different text
* would move the account to an address nobody holds — locking the
* person out of their own site at the next sign - in . Require the claim
* and compare .
*/
if ( '' === $claimed ) {
SP_Inbox :: add (
$user_id ,
__ ( 'Wallet not attached' , 'sirius-press' ),
esc_html__ ( 'The address you signed with was not sent, so the signature could not be checked against it. Nothing was changed.' , 'sirius-press' ),
'auth'
);
return ;
}
$address = SPA_Challenge :: verify ( $nonce , $signature , SPA_Challenge :: PURPOSE_LINK , $claimed );
feat(sirius-press): a WordPress where the account is a key, not a mailbox
WordPress makes two assumptions this project cannot accept: that identity
comes from an email address, and that a site lives at one server. Both are
things somebody else can take away — a mailbox is rented from a provider who
can close it or be compelled to open it, and a server is one seizure from
being gone.
Sirius Press replaces the first and hedges the second.
Signing in means signing a challenge with the key that controls a CashAddress.
The address is recovered from the signature, so nothing is typed but the
signature itself, and the result is an ordinary WordPress session cookie —
roles, capabilities, nonces and the REST API never learn the login was
different. Three ways to produce one: a wallet the browser already exposes, a
phrase used once in the page and wiped, or a signature pasted in from any
BIP-137 wallet, which needs no JavaScript and lets the key stay on a machine
that never touches the web.
There is no password reset, and the recovery page says so plainly rather than
offering a form that cannot work. A reset mechanism is by construction a way
to take an account from its owner, and it is always easier to attack than the
cryptography it bypasses.
Publishing a post also exports it as static HTML to the name's storage on Sia,
signed by the key that owns the name, so the site keeps answering when the
server does not.
Email as a feature is untouched. wp_mail() still works, SMTP still sends, and
contact forms still deliver to addresses real people typed. Only mail to the
site's own unroutable placeholder addresses is diverted to an in-app inbox.
The objection was to email as identity, not to email.
Core is pinned and patched rather than vendored. WordPress 7.1.1 is 149 MB and
5,008 files; the fork's entire core diff is 75 lines in wp-admin/install.php.
Carrying the former to express the latter would bury the patch where nobody
reviews it and make every clone of the monorepo pay for it. Upstream releases
still merge through tools/update-wordpress.sh, which reapplies the series and
says exactly which hunk needs a human.
The cryptography is implemented twice — PHP on the server, JavaScript in the
page — because the server must verify and the browser must sign. Both are
pinned against libauth, the library the Sirius portal wallet and the BNS
gateway already use, so a disagreement of one byte fails the test suite rather
than presenting as a rejected login at three in the morning.
132 checks, no framework, about a second.
2026-09-21 01:39:38 +02:00
if ( is_wp_error ( $address ) ) {
SP_Inbox :: add ( $user_id , __ ( 'Wallet not attached' , 'sirius-press' ), $address -> get_error_message (), 'auth' );
return ;
}
$previous = SP_Identity :: address_of ( $user_id );
$result = SP_Identity :: set_address ( $user_id , $address );
if ( is_wp_error ( $result ) ) {
SP_Inbox :: add ( $user_id , __ ( 'Wallet not attached' , 'sirius-press' ), $result -> get_error_message (), 'auth' );
return ;
}
SP_Inbox :: add (
$user_id ,
__ ( 'Wallet attached' , 'sirius-press' ),
sprintf (
/* translators: 1: new address, 2: previous address or a note that there was none. */
esc_html__ ( 'This account now signs in with %1$s. Previously: %2$s.' , 'sirius-press' ),
'<code>' . esc_html ( $address ) . '</code>' ,
'' !== $previous ? '<code>' . esc_html ( $previous ) . '</code>' : esc_html__ ( 'no wallet' , 'sirius-press' )
),
'auth'
);
}
}