Most cited

Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 1,584 posts.

Security & Privacy
Any year
272

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…

282

Comcast caught hijacking web traffic

On November 20th, 2012 Comcast hijacked my HTTP traffic and re-routed it through their own servers, injecting a “notice” on the page before completing the request. What this means is instead of my web request being routed to the website I wanted to visit, Comcast took it upon themselves to hijack my web…

287

Intel's Management Engine

Recent CPUs from Intel requires a binary called the “Management Engine” (Intel ME, or ME for short). This binary is one of three parts required if a business elects to use Intel’s Active Management Technology (AMT), which Purism avoids. Purism laptops can function with a neutralized and disabled ME, as we have tested…

293

ImperialViolet

Thomas Ptacek laid out a number of arguments against DNSSEC recently (and in a follow up ). We don't fully agree on everything, but it did prompt me to write why, even if you assume DNSSEC, DANE (the standard for speaking about the intersection of TLS and DNSSEC) is not a foregone conclusion in web browsers.

295

Ethereum is a Dark Forest

It’s no secret that the Ethereum blockchain is a highly adversarial environment. If a smart contract can be exploited for profit, it eventually will be. But this unforgiving environment pales in comparison to the mempool. If the chain itself is a battleground, the mempool is something worse: a dark forest.