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Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 39 posts.
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Blockchain and Trust
In his 2008 white paper that first proposed bitcoin, the anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto concluded with: “We have proposed a system for electronic transactions without relying on trust.” He was referring to blockchain, the system behind bitcoin cryptocurrency. The circumvention of trust is a great promise, but it’s just…
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On Covering Webcams
The problem isn’t your camera, it’s malware. Don’t install any software from unknown or sketchy sources, keep your OS up to date, and you should be fine. And if you do have malware on your Mac, the webcam is likely the least of your problems.
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I tried creating a web browser, and Google blocked me
After 4 months of waiting, that is the response I got from Widevine, Google’s DRM for web browsers, regarding a license agreement. For the last 2 years I’ve been working on a web browser that now cannot be completed because Google, the creators of the open source browser Chrome, won’t allow DRM in an open source…
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NSA's Backdoor Key from Lotus Notes (2002)
Before the US crypto export regulations were finally disolved the export version of Lotus Notes used to include a key escrow / backdoor feature called differential cryptography. The idea was that they got permission to export 64 bit crypto if 24 of those bits were encrypted for the NSA's public key. The NSA would then…
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Remote code execution vulnerability in apt/apt-get
tl;dr I found a vulnerability in apt that allows a network man-in-the-middle (or a malicious package mirror) to execute arbitrary code as root on a machine i...
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Modern C++ Won't Save Us
I’m a frequent critic of memory unsafe languages, principally C and C++, and how they induce an exceptional number of security vulnerabilities. My conclusion, based on reviewing evidence from numerous large software projects using C and C++, is that we need to be migrating our industry to memory safe by default…
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Endlessh: An SSH Tarpit
This article was discussed on Hacker News ( later ), on reddit ( also ), featured in BSD Now 294 . Also check out this Endlessh analysis .
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A better zip bomb
This article shows how to construct a non-recursive zip bomb that achieves a high compression ratio by overlapping files inside the zip container. "Non-recursive" means that it does not rely on a decompressor's recursively unpacking zip files nested within zip files: it expands fully after a single round of…
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Extended Validation Certificates Are Really Dead
Almost one year ago now, I declared extended validation certificates dead [https://www.troyhunt.com/extended-validation-certificates-are-dead/]. The entity name had just been removed from Safari on iOS, it was about to be removed from Safari on Mojave and there were indications that Chrome would remove it
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Facebook Stored Hundreds of Millions of User Passwords in Plain Text for Years
Hundreds of millions of Facebook users had their account passwords stored in plain text and searchable by thousands of Facebook employees — in some cases going back to 2012, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. Facebook says an ongoing investigation has so far found no indication that employees have abused access to this data.
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Project Svalbard: The Future of Have I Been Pwned
Back in 2013, I was beginning to get the sense that data breaches were becoming a big thing. The prevalence of them seemed to be really ramping up as was the impact they were having on those of us that found ourselves in them, myself included. Increasingly, I was writing
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ProtonMail Voluntarily Offers Assistance for Real-Time Surveillance?
Proton Mail disputed some of the content of the post originally published at this location. We will continue the discussion directly with Proton Mail, in particular at a meeting in …
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Modchips of the State
Collection of my projects and hacks.
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Pair Locking Your iPhone
Learn how to pair lock your iPhone to break law enforcement forensics tools and protect your data.
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Google Chrome Keystone is modifying /var symlink on non SIP Macs causing k-panic
Reports that some AVID Users Macs would no longer boot. It now may be that a Google Chrome Keystone update modifies /var on NON SIP Protected Macs.
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The 773M Record “Collection #1” Data Breach
Many people will land on this page after learning that their email address has appeared in a data breach I've called "Collection #1". Most of them won't have a tech background or be familiar with the concept of credential stuffing so I'm going to write this post
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Why Telegram is insecure (2015)
Telegram, the encrypted messaging app loved by terrorists, has been in the news lately. Terrorists have long used existing commercial and…
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FBI agent accidentally reveals own 8chan posts
Updated August 4, 2019: Added link to “A.C.L.U. Says F.B.I. Funded ‘Army’ To Terrorize Young War Dissidents” The unsealing of an application for a search warrant by the federal governme…
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I can see your local web servers
How many web servers are running on your machine right now? Do all of those development web servers have a secure login, and restrictive CORS permissions? You don’t know? Allow me to check for you:
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I was seven words away from being spear-phished
Three weeks ago I received a very flattering email from the University of Cambridge, asking me to judge the Adam Smith Prize for Economics:
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How does Apple privately find offline devices?
At Monday’s WWDC conference, Apple announced a cool new feature called “Find My”. Unlike Apple’s “Find my iPhone”, which uses cellular communication and the lost…
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Modern Alternatives to PGP
Did your last Yubikey just break? Perhaps you forgot an offline backup password. Maybe you’re just tired of living like a spy and never using smartphones. Whatever it is, you’re here, and you’re finally ready to give up on PGP. That’s great! We’re here to help! No one was sending you encrypted emails anyway, so that’s…
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Sinkholed
On 26 Nov 2019 at 14:55 UTC, I logged into my server that hosts my website to perform a simple maintenance activity. Merely three minutes later, at 14:58 UTC, the domain name susam.in used to host this website was transferred to another registrant without any authorisation by me or without any notification sent to me…