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New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 233 posts.
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ImperialViolet
When a browser connects to an HTTPS site it receives signed certificates which allow it to verify that it's really connecting to the domain that it should be connecting to. In those certificates are pointers to services, run by the Certificate Authorities (CAs) that issued the certificate, that allow the browser to…
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The Most Incompetent TSA Story Yet?
The storyline: TSA screener finds two pipes in passenger’s bags. Screener determines that they’re not a threat. Screener confiscates them anyway, because of their “material and appearance.” Because they’re not actually a threat, screener leaves them at the checkpoint. Everyone forgets about them. Six hours later, the…
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Format string vulnerability found in 'sudo'
A flaw exists in the debugging code in sudo versions 1.8.0 through 1.8.3p1 that can be used to crash sudo or potentially allow an unauthorized user to elevate privileges. Sudo versions affected: 1.8.0 through 1.8.3p1 inclusive. Older versions of sudo are not affected. CVE ID: This vulnerability has been assigned…
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Why does that QR Code go to justinsomnia.org?
Back in 2007 I stumbled upon something called a QR Code . It was a neat two-dimensional barcode that encodes textual information visually—with URLs being a promising application for the emerging smartphone market (thanks to the release of the iPhone that year). So I did what any self-respecting personal blogger would…
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Linux Local Privilege Escalation via SUID /proc/pid/mem Write
Introducing Mempodipper , an exploit for CVE-2012-0056. /proc/ pid /mem is an interface for reading and writing, directly, process memory by seeking around with the same addresses as the process's virtual memory space. In 2.6.39, the protections against unauthorized access to /proc/ pid /mem were deemed sufficient…
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Playing chicken with cat.jpg
I was reminded of this by 37signals' response on Monday to last week's cat.jpg privacy failure . To be clear, I have a lot of sympathy for 37signals: Once someone looked in their logs and saw "cat.jpg" as the name of the one hundred millionth file they had stored, I'm sure the resulting fit of laughter significantly…
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Abolish the Department of Homeland Security
I have a love/hate relationship with the Cato Institute. Most of their analysis I strongly disagree with, but some of it I equally strongly agree with. Last September 11—the tenth anniversary of 9/11—Cato’s David Rittgers published “Abolish the Department of Homeland Security“: DHS has too many subdivisions in too…
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Microsoft confirms UEFI fears, locks down ARM devices
The Software Freedom Law Center provides legal representation and other law related services to protect and advance Free and Open Source Software.
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The Strange Case of John Dillinger and the Fraudulent Apple ID
Programming Zen is a blog about programming and emerging technologies, authored by Antonio Cangiano, a Software Development Manager and AI Evangelist at IBM.
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U.S. Government Threatens Free Speech With Calls for Twitter Censorship
“[T]he ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas....That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution.” — Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, dissent in Abrams v. United States, 1919EFF has witnessed a growing number of calls in recent weeks for Twitter to ban certain...
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Google Chrome HTTPS Address Bar Spoofing
The Fixed Bounty Bug Revealed Last month Google awarded our security analyst Luka Treiber a Chromium Security Reward for a high-severity ...
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New Year's Resolution: Full Disk Encryption on Every Computer You Own
The New Year is upon us, and you might be partaking in the tradition of making a resolution for the coming year. This year, why not make a resolution to protect your data privacy with one of the most powerful tools available? Commit to full disk encryption on each of your computers. Many of us now...