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Security & Privacy

The most popular blog posts about security & privacy on Hacker News. 4,337 posts.

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4203

The Asian domain-name extortion scam

We are a leading internet solutions organization in Asia, and we have something urgent to confirm with you. Yesterday we received a formal application from a company called ” Varmer Investment Co., Ltd “. They were trying to apply for ” instapaper ” as Brand Name and following Domain Names through our organization:

4209

The New Normal: 200-400 Gbps DDoS Attacks

Over the past four years, KrebsOnSecurity has been targeted by countless denial-of-service attacks intended to knock it offline. Earlier this week, KrebsOnSecurity was hit by easily the most massive and intense such attack yet — a nearly 200 Gbps assault leveraging a simple attack method that industry experts say is…

4211

Changing Passwords

How often should you change your password? I get asked that question a lot, usually by people annoyed at their employer’s or bank’s password expiration policy: people who finally memorized their current password and are realizing they’ll have to write down their new password. How could that possibly be more secure…

4213

Deceiving Users with the Facebook Like Button

Facebook just launched a super-easy widget called "The Facebook Like Button". Website owners can add a simple iframe snippet to their html, enabling a nice "Like" button with a count of other people's "Likes" and a list of faces of people if any of them are your friends. The advantage of this new tool is that you…

4219

Intercepting Predator Video

Sometimes mediocre encryption is better than strong encryption, and sometimes no encryption is better still. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Iraqi, and possibly also Afghan, militants are using commercial software to eavesdrop on U.S. Predators, other unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, and even piloted…

4220

A Tour Of A “Pay to Download Firefox” Site

At Mozilla , we regularly get anguished emails from people who have paid to download Firefox, and have then discovered a) that it's actually free, and b) that it's very hard to get the company they paid to stop charging their credit card. For those who have never had the misfortune to visit one of these trap sites, I…

4223

Advanced SSH Techniques

At one site where I provide technical assistance, access to the network is all done via ssh over the Internet. However, one can't get access to the machines directly; one must first make an ssh connection to a gateway box I'll call martha. martha doesn't allow one to use regular passwords or keys, though. We're all…

4225

From kafkatrap to honeytrap

The short version is: if you are any kind of open-source leader or senior figure who is male, do not be alone with any female, ever, at a technical conference. Try to avoid even being alone , ever, because there is a chance that a “women in tech” advocacy group is going to try to collect your scalp.