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New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 431 posts.
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We scanned the Internet for port 22
Yesterday (Sept. 12) we scanned the entire Internet for port 22 -- the port reserved for "SSH", the protocol used by sysadmins to remotely l...
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New NSA Leak Shows MITM Attacks Against Major Internet Services
The Brazilian television show “Fantastico” exposed an NSA training presentation that discusses how the agency runs man-in-the-middle attacks on the Internet. The point of the story was that the NSA engages in economic espionage against Petrobras, the Brazilian giant oil company, but I’m more interested in the tactical…
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Why you should not trust emails sent from Google
As you might know, Google is running a vulnerability reward program , where they award researchers monetary awards or a place in their Hall of Fame when they responsibly disclose vulnerabilities. With this in mind, I was scooping around on several Google services, including Google Scholar. As I recently started a PhD…
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Documents Shed Light on Border Laptop Searches
The case of David Miranda got a lot of attention around the world after UK authorities were accused of abusing an anti-terrorism law to evade the normal constitutional restrains on police power and question someone because of their political associations. Well, a very similar abuse of power appears to have happened…
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Don't trust me: I might be a spook
But the latest revelations scare me. It's one thing to find and exploit vulnerabilities in software; there's a lot of software out there which was written by developers with very little understanding of cryptography or software security, and it shows. If you care about security, we reasoned, stick to software written…
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Dropbox disables ASLR on Windows
Dropbox has become a daily part of my life. I rely on it to synchronise data between my growing set of devices. But how much of an impact does it have on the security of my system? I decided to fin…
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Building a PGP web of trust that people will actually use
Back in the early 1990s, PGP introduced the concept of web of trust (WoT)- a means by which users of personal encryption can know whether or...
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Excess Automobile Deaths as a Result of 9/11
People commented about a point I made in a recent essay: In the months after 9/11, so many people chose to drive instead of fly that the resulting deaths dwarfed the deaths from the terrorist attack itself, because cars are much more dangerous than airplanes. Yes, that’s wrong. Where I said “months,” I should have…
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You are committing a crime right now (2012)
Are you reading this blog? If so, you are committing a crime under 18 USC 1030(a) (better known as the “ Computer Fraud & Abus...
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Most TOR servers are vulnerable (NSA crackable)
After more revelations, and expert analysis, we still aren't precisely sure what crypto the NSA can break. But everyone seems to agree that...
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1Password and the Crypto Wars
A series of debates, civil disobedience, and cryptographic developments have come to be known as “The Crypto Wars”. Learn how 1Password can help you protect your data.
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The NSA Is Breaking Most Encryption on the Internet
The new Snowden revelations are explosive. Basically, the NSA is able to decrypt most of the Internet. They’re doing it primarily by cheating, not by mathematics. It’s joint reporting between the Guardian, the New York Times, and ProPublica. I have been working with Glenn Greenwald on the Snowden documents, and I have…
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How Advanced Is the NSA's Cryptanalysis, and Can We Resist It?
The latest Snowden document is the US intelligence ‘black budget.’ There’s a lot of information in the few pages the Washington Post decided to publish, including an introduction by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. In it, he drops a tantalizing hint: ‘Also, we are investing in groundbreaking…
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PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds
[ Update: PayPal have unfrozen the account, for now at least. Thank you for your support!]
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NSA Spying Documents to be Released As Result of EFF Lawsuit
In a major victory in one of EFF's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits, the Justice Department conceded yesterday that it will release hundreds of pages of documents, including FISA court opinions, related to the government’s secret interpretation of Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the law...
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A Really Good Article on How Easy it Is to Crack Passwords
Ars Technica gave three experts a 16,000-entry encrypted password file, and asked them to break them. The winner got 90% of them, the loser 62%—in a few hours. The list of “plains,” as many crackers refer to deciphered hashes, contains the usual list of commonly used passcodes that are found in virtually every breach…
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Our Newfound Fear of Risk
We’re afraid of risk. It’s a normal part of life, but we’re increasingly unwilling to accept it at any level. So we turn to technology to protect us. The problem is that technological security measures aren’t free. They cost money, of course, but they cost other things as well. They often don’t provide the security…
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More on the NSA Commandeering the Internet
If there’s any confirmation that the U.S. government has commandeered the Internet for worldwide surveillance, it is what happened with Lavabit earlier this month. Lavabit is—well, was—an e-mail service that offered more privacy than the typical large-Internet-corporation services that most of us use. It was a small…
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Google CEO Eric Schmidt Dismisses the Importance of Privacy
Yesterday, the web was buzzing with commentary about Google CEO Eric Schmidt's dangerous, dismissive response to concerns about search engine users' privacy. When asked during an interview for CNBC's recent "Inside the Mind of Google" special about whether users should be sharing information with...
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The First Few Milliseconds of an HTTPS Connection (2009)
Convinced from spending hours reading rave reviews, Bob eagerly clicked “Proceed to Checkout” for his gallon of Tuscan Whole Milk and…
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Details Behind Today's Internet Hacks
At 1:19pm, a researcher noticed that the New York Times' website wasn't loading. We know the New York Times tech team, so we emailed to check in. Minutes later, the CTO of the NYT called us back.