New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 4,335 posts.
Privacy analysis of Tiktok’s app and website
I did a detailed privacy check of the app TikTok and its corresponding website. Multiple law infringements, trust, transparency and data protection breaches were found.I provide all technical an
Bootstrapping Understanding: An Introduction to Reverse Engineering
Reverse engineering an unfamiliar data file could be described as the bootstrapping of understanding. In many ways the process resembles the scientific method, only applied to human-made, abstract objects instead of the natural world. You begin by gathering data, and then you use that information to put forth one or…
Mitigating a DDoS on Mastodon
<p>TLDR:</p> <!-- raw HTML omitted --> <p>This will mainly be a story into how I experienced and reacted to my first real-time attack. As you may or may not ...
Unsolicited messages on Keybase
What is Keybase? Keybase ( keybase.io ) is a platform designed to help users send and receive encrypted communications as well as secu...
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.
Apple Explains Mysterious iPhone 11 Location Requests
KrebsOnSecurity ran a story this week that puzzled over Apple ‘s response to inquiries about a potential privacy leak in its new iPhone 11 line, in which the devices appear to intermittently seek the user’s location even when all applications and system services are individually set never to request this data. Today…
Software Security Is a Programming Languages Issue (2018)
Software security must be addressed by all programmers, not just security experts. So we teach it in CS 330, a programming (languages) class.
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…
Mozilla and Opera remove Avast extensions from their add-on stores
The Avast extensions which were spying on their users are no longer available from Mozilla and Opera add-on stores. Google still has to take action.
The iPhone 11 Pro’s Location Data Puzzler
One of the more curious behaviors of Apple’s new iPhone 11 Pro is that it intermittently seeks the user’s location information even when all applications and system services on the phone are individually set to never request this data. Apple says this is by design, but that response seems at odds with the company’s…
How Facebook Avoids Ad Blockers
How Facebook hides the word 'Sponsored' from ad blockers using per-character spans and DOM obfuscation, pulled apart piece by piece.
Is true hacking dead? What we lost
Realtime rendering and videogame programming mostly, but I love computer science and visuals in all their forms. This is a notepad of my ideas.
PIA VPN to be acquired by malware company founded by former Israeli spy
arccompute.com/blog The following article contains quotes and links meant to inform VPN consumers concerning the ownership, affiliations, and past business practices of Kape Technologies (formerly known as Crossrider) in light of their acquisition of Private Internet Access VPN. I'd like to start by giving credit…
The Information Apocalypse (2018)
My friend Aviv was recently the subject of a popular Buzzfeed article about the possibility of an impending “information apocalypse”. tl;dr: Aviv extrapolates from the fake news crisis that started in 2016 to a world in which anyone can create AI-assisted misinformation campaigns indistinguishable from reality to the…
An Overview of Cryptography
Free, evolving crypto tutorial since 1999!
It's Way Too Easy to Get a .gov Domain Name
Many readers probably believe they can trust links and emails coming from U.S. federal government domain names, or else assume there are at least more stringent verification requirements involved in obtaining a .gov domain versus a commercial one ending in .com or .org. But a recent experience suggests this trust may…
Hidden Cam Above Bluetooth Pump Skimmer
Tiny hidden spy cameras are a common sight at ATMs that have been tampered with by crooks who specialize in retrofitting the machines with card skimmers. But until this past week I’d never heard of hidden cameras being used at gas pumps in tandem with Bluetooth-based card skimming devices.
Infectious Executable Stacks
In software development there are many concepts that at first glance seem useful and sound, but, after considering the consequences of their implementation and use, are actually horrifying. Examples include thread cancellation , variable length arrays , and memory aliasing . GCC’s closure extension to C is another…
I got my money back from a scammer by contacting his mom on Facebook (2016)
Personal Blog of Christian Haschek
Sendy Is Insecure: How Not to Implement ReCAPTCHA
Sendy's reCAPTCHA implementation doesn't do anything.
Ransomware, Data Breaches at Hospitals Tied to Uptick in Fatal Heart Attacks
Hospitals that have been hit by a data breach or ransomware attack can expect to see an increase in the death rate among heart patients in the following months or years because of cybersecurity remediation efforts, a new study posits. Health industry experts say the findings should prompt a larger review of how…
Bypassing GitHub's OAuth Flow with a Head Request
For the past few years, security research has been something I’ve done in my spare time. I know there are people that make a living off of bug bounty programs, but I’ve personally just spent a few hours here and there whenever I feel like it.
DNS Wars
NANOG is now quite an institution in the Internet, particularly in the North American Internet community. It was an offshoot of the Regional Techs meetings, which were part of the NSFNET framework of the late 80s and early 90s. NANOG has thrived since then and is certainly one of the major network operational forums…
Stuxnet was embarrassing, not amazing (2011)
As the New York Times posts yet another breathless story about Stuxnet, I’m surprised that no one has pointed out its obvious deficiencies. Everyone seems to be hyperventilating about its pur…