New

The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 4,335 posts.

Security & Privacy
Any year
3183

The 3DS Cryptosystem

I think one of the biggest challenge for system engineers is designing security. Recently, at the 32c3 conference, plutoo, derrek, and smea presented a series of hacks that completely defeated the security of the 3DS. As a result, people have implemented boot-time unsigned code execution (called “arm9loaderhax” in the…

3184

I would like Debian to stop shipping XScreenSaver

If any of you reading this have decision-making ability along those lines, I would appreciate your assistance in making this happen. If you're wondering why: they are still shipping a version of my software that I released in 2014. Since that's roughly a decade in software years, it recently began popping up a single…

3187

How Safe Browsing Works in Firefox

Firefox has had support for Google's Safe Browsing since 2005 when it started as a stand-alone Firefox extension . At first it was only available in the USA, but it was opened up to the rest of the world in 2006 and moved to the Google Toolbar . It then got integrated directly into Firefox 2.0 before the public launch…

3202

Data is a Toxic Asset

Thefts of personal information aren’t unusual. Every week, thieves break into networks and steal data about people, often tens of millions at a time. Most of the time it’s information that’s needed to commit fraud, as happened in 2015 to Experian and the IRS. Sometimes it’s stolen for purposes of embarrassment or…

3206

Trackers

A couple of weeks ago I went to the local shopping centre looking for a thermometer. After entering one store upon leaving without buying anything a tracker was assigned to me. I didn’t think much of it at first, but he followed me dutifully around the shopping centre, took careful note of how I walked. Whenever I…