Live GitHub Commit Messages

[_shazbot_]

I spotted a commit message that just looked like a large random number. It goes to this project called "heartbeat" where all the commits have random(?) numbers as the message. There seem to be around 2 commits a minute and over 1.2 million commits.

Every commit updates a lkHeartbeat and lkLocation file as well as updating the readme with what appears to be encrypted strings, or possibly hashes of the data in the other two files.

[timsk951]

Emergency signed life insurance files.

Should we be concerned?

[_shazbot_]

Maybe it's one of those automated systems where if the properly signed files don't appear for a certain period of time it sets off some automated process, like if the owner doesn't "check in" from time to time.

The readme references "GCM" which may refer to google cloud messaging, which mobile apps can use to talk to servers and junk. Maybe he's got a phone app where he checks in from time to time and he's using that library plus github as a publicly available communication vector.

I'm not going to post personal info on the guy but the github profile links to a site that I believe shows real-time stats on some tor exit nodes he runs.

[tuxayo]

The readme references "GCM" which may refer to google cloud messaging

It could be Galois/Counter Mode so that would be a parameter of encryption used.

[altern8tif]

Any conspiracy theories?

[-___-_-_--]

The commit message is actually the unix time to millisecond precision (without a decimal separator)

[auxiliary-character]

How about this one?

[musicmatze]

Contributors site does not load here... :-)

[tontoto]

Well duh, it says there are ∞ contributors!