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The most popular blog posts about networking & internet on Hacker News. 3,019 posts.
eBPF Summit Day 1 Recap
Day 1 of the eBPF Summit delivered insightful talks on how eBPF is reshaping Linux networking, observability, and security — with ove...
Using Freenet
I've been following the Freenet project for many years, occasionally firing it up and seeing if I can do anything useful with it. I've been using it regularly over the last month and it has come a long way since I first tried it. It's much faster than what it was in the past. This post describes a bit of...
Armada: Encrypted, Open-Source, Discord Alternative (Built on Nostr)
A free, open source, end-to-end encrypted Discord alternative: servers, channels, voice, and moderation, with no company in the middle. Now in open beta.
OpenBGPD – Adding Diversity to the Route Server Landscape
Thanks to the RIPE NCC Community Project Fund we were able to revive the OpenBGPD daemon and bring more diversity to the Route Server landscape.
Why Isn’t Telegram End-to-End Encrypted by Default (2017)
I've been getting this question more often this year. It's based on the wrong assumption that some other popular messaging apps such as WhatsApp are "end-to-end encrypted by default", while Telegram is not. This post is intended to disprove this myth that has been so carefully crafted by Facebook/WhatsApp marketing…
The bandwidth of a Boeing 747 and its impact on web browsing
Suppose you needed to transfer 1TB of data (perhaps your home movie collection) from San Francisco to London. What would be the fastest route? Put the disk on British Airways flight 286 at SFO, or transfer it across the Internet using a 100 Mbps connection?
International domain names: where does https://meßagefactory.ca lead you?
Originally, the domain part of a web address was all ASCII (so no accents, no emojis, no Chinese characters). This was extended a long time ago thanks to something called internationalized domain name (IDN). Today, in theory, you can use any Unicode character you like as part of a domain name, including emojis…
Was the NE2000 really that bad?
Over the last few months I have been on and off digging into the history of early PC networking products, especially Ethernet-based ones. In that context, it is impossible to miss the classic NE2000 adapter with all its offshoots and clones. Especially in the Linux community, the NE2000 seems to have had rather bad…
VPN services blocked in Sri Lanka as information controls tighten
Internet providers in Sri Lanka are in the vanguard of blocking access to digital security tools that allow users to work around censorship, according to new NetBlocks network measurement data. ...
Network Latencies and Speed of Light
In this short post I’m going to attempt to convince you that current network (Internet) latencies are here to stay, because they are already within a fairly small factor of what is possible u…
Setting up a Raspberry Pi with 2 Network Interfaces as a simple router
I needed a very basic 'Internet sharing' router setup with one of my Raspberry Pis, and I thought I'd document the setup process here in case I need to do it again. I should note that for more complex use cases, or where you really need to worry about security and performance, you should use something like OpenWRT…
How CDNs Generate Certificates
Say Hi to Thomas. Thomas's first weeks at Fly have been hectic, but he's been taking notes, copious notes that can teach you all about the wild world of certificate infrastructure. Read on to discover more...
About adding a static route to my DOCSIS modem
You may think this is an easy task but let’s find out. One would expect such functionality in a web interface …
The utilization of 44/8: the reason I mapped IPv4 and IPv6
In the early days, when the Internet was just beginning, back in 1981, radio amateurs were allocated, by what is now known as IANA , an IPv4 block for usage and experimentation by all members of this hobby, internationally. This block was 44.0.0.0/8, which is a huge amount of address space by today’s standards, but…
Nebula is not the fastest mesh VPN, but neither are the others
(But neither are any of the others)
Sinkholed: A DNS Horror Story (2019)
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…
AWS Lambda now supports IPv6 endpoints for inbound connections
Discover more about what's new at AWS with AWS Lambda now supports Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) endpoints for inbound connections
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How does a TCP Reset Attack work?
A TCP reset attack is executed using a single packet of data, no more than a few bytes in size. A spoofed TCP segment, crafted and sent by an attacker, tricks two victims into abandoning a TCP connection, interrupting possibly vital communications between them.
How secure is HTTPS today? How often is it attacked? (2011)
This is part 1 of a series on the security of HTTPS and TLS/SSL HTTPS is a lot more secure than HTTP! If a site uses accounts, or publishes material that people might prefer to read in private, the site should be protected with HTTPS. Unfortunately, is still feasible for some attackers to break...
Sovereign Keys, EFF's proposal to replace the certificate authority model
This is part 2 of a series on the security of HTTPS and TLS/SSL. [Part 1] In a previous post, we discussed some structural insecurities in HTTPS and TLS/SSL, and how those are beginning to pose serious problems for the security of the Web. In this post I will introduce a new proposal called "...