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The HTTP crash course nobody asked for
HTTP does a pretty good job staying out of everyone’s way. If you’re reading this article, there’s a solid chance it was delivered to you over HTTP. Even if you’re reading this from an RSS reader o...
Topics /
Networking & Internet
The most popular blog posts about networking & internet on Hacker News. 3,019 posts.
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Hacking millions of modems and investigating who hacked my modem
Two years ago, something very strange happened to me while working from my home network. I was exploiting a blind XXE vulnerability that required an external HTTP server to smuggle out files, so I spun up an AWS box and ran a simple Python webserver to receive the traffic from the vulnerable server.
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Mobile carriers can get your GPS location
In iOS 26.3, Apple introduced a new privacy feature which limits “precise location” data made available to cellular networks via cell towers. The feature is only available to devices with Apple’s in-house modem introduced in 2025. The announcement1 says https://support.apple.com/en-us/126101 ↩
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Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner
A real-world production migration from DigitalOcean to Hetzner dedicated, handling 248 GB of MySQL data across 30 databases, 34 Nginx sites, GitLab EE, Neo4j, and live mobile app traffic — with zero downtime.
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HTTP headers for the responsible developer
Guide to using HTTP headers for a better web. Learn about HTTPS, HSTS, CSP, Cacheable, immutable resources, serving WebP images, Feature-Policy and more.
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Launching RDAP; sunsetting WHOIS
The Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP) is the successor to WHOIS, which is being sunsetted on 28 January 2025.
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It's always TCP_NODELAY
The first thing I check when debugging latency issues in distributed systems is whether TCP_NODELAY is enabled. And it’s not just me. Every distributed system builder I know has lost hours to latency issues quickly fixed by enabling this simple socket option, suggesting that the default behavior is wrong, and perhaps…
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The New York Times Is Now Available as a Tor Onion Service
Updated: March 4, 2025
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Web Push for Web Apps on iOS and iPadOS
With iOS and iPadOS 16.4 beta 1 comes support for Web Push for Home Screen web apps, Badging API, Manifest ID, and more.
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Verizon and a BGP Optimizer Knocked Large Parts of the Internet Offline
Today at 10:30UTC, the Internet had a small heart attack. A small company in Northern Pennsylvania became a preferred path of many Internet routes through Verizon (AS701), a major Internet transit provider.
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DNS Performance compared: CloudFlare 1.1.1.1 x Google 8.8.8.8 x Quad9 x OpenDNS
A couple of months ago I did a performance comparison between some of the top free DNS Resolvers available. It was just after Quad9 had…
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De-AMP: Cutting out Google and enhancing privacy
Brave is rolling out a new feature called De-AMP, which allows Brave users to bypass Google-hosted AMP pages, and instead visit the content's publisher directly.
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What does it mean to listen on a port?
This story explores some concepts in computer networking, inspired by Michael Nielsen’s idea of discovery fiction . Code samples can also be found in this repo . Excerpts use openbsd-flavoured netcat on Debian Linux; behviour and IPv6 support may vary by version.
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Where does my computer get the time from?
This week I was in Rotterdam for a RIPE meeting . On Friday morning I gave a lightning talk called where does my computer get the time from? The RIPE meeting website has a copy of my slides and a video of the talk; this is a blogified low-res version of the slides with a rough and inexact transcript.
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Wikipedia blocked in Turkey
The Turkey Blocks monitoring network has verified restrictions affecting the Wikipedia online encyclopaedia in Turkey. A block affecting all language editions of the website detected at 8:00AM local time Saturday 29 April. ...
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Calling All Hackers: Help Us Build an Open Wireless Router
EFF is releasing an experimental hacker alpha release of wireless router software specifically designed to support secure, shareable Open Wireless networks. We will be officially launching the Open Wireless Router today at the HOPE X (Hackers on Planet Earth) conference in New York City, aiming to...
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Zoom to bring end-to-end encryption to all users, including non-paying
Learn more about how to use each Zoom product to connect with coworkers, customers, businesses, and more with insights and best practices.
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DNS traffic can leak outside the VPN tunnel on Android
We were recently made aware of multiple potential DNS leaks on Android. They stem from bugs in Android itself, and only affect certain apps.
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The Cuban CDN
On a recent trip to Cuba I brought with me a smartphone and hoped to get Internet access either via WiFi or 3G. I managed that (at a price) but also saw for myself how Cubans get access to an alternate Internet delivered by sneakernet.
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CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to
We've all experienced frustration with the internet going down. Now imagine how frustrated you'd be if you found out that your ISP intentionally blocked your internet access for the purpose of advertising their software; and better yet, your ISP claimed that state legislators required them to do it!...
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The DDoS that almost broke the Internet
The New York Times this morning published a story about the Spamhaus DDoS attack and how CloudFlare helped mitigate it and keep the site online. The Times calls the attack the largest known DDoS attack ever on the Internet.
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Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp
You and your good buddy, Steve Steveington, are in training for an arduous charity walk. You signed up together on the spur of the moment and pledged to hold each other accountable whilst you got in shape for the big day. However, you have developed reason to suspect that Steve Steveington is losing his commitment to…
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Total Nightmare: USB-C and Thunderbolt 3
Did you buy the new MacBook or MacBook Pro? Maybe the Google Pixel? You're about to enter a world of confusion thanks to those new "USB-C" ports. See, that simple-looking port hides a world of complexity, and the (thankful) backward-compatibility uses different kinds of cables for different tasks. Shoppers have to be…
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Leaving Google Fi
I’m sharing the story of a bad situation I had ordering a new phone through Google Fi. It turned into a two month long ordeal where the service got worse and worse. At every turn the Google Fi team was presented with a chance to make things better and every time they blew it. I’m sharing this because I hope a long…
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