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

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4234

Arbitrary code execution via ldd utility

The `ldd` utility is more vulnerable than you think. It's frequently used by programmers and system administrators to determine the dynamic library dependencies of executables. Sounds pretty innocent, right? Wrong! In this article I am going to show you how to create an executable that runs arbitrary code if it's...

4236

Linux being secure is a common misconception

Linux being secure is a common misconception in the security and privacy realm. Linux is thought to be secure primarily because of its source model, popular usage in servers, small userbase and confusion about its security features. This article is intended to debunk these misunderstandings by demonstrating the lack…

4241

Schneier on UAE to Ban BlackBerrys

The United Arab Emirates—Dubai, etc.—is threatening to ban BlackBerrys because they can’t eavesdrop on them. At the heart of the battle is access to the data transmitted by BlackBerrys. RIM processes the information through a handful of secure Network Operations Centers around the world, meaning that most governments…

4243

Schneier on Filming the Police

In at least three U.S. states, it is illegal to film an active duty policeman: The legal justification for arresting the “shooter” rests on existing wiretapping or eavesdropping laws, with statutes against obstructing law enforcement sometimes cited. Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland are among the 12 states in…

4249

Bcrypt is now obsolete

I am speaking today at BSDCan'09 about my work on the scrypt key derivation function. In the context of hardware brute-force attacks, scrypt is thousands of times more secure than existing "best practice" solutions such as bcrypt and PBKDF2; in fact, under reasonable assumptions it is provably as strong as possible…

4254

Tracking Down a Stolen iPhone

( Note: some screenshots are quite obviously simulated. ) ( Note 2: this is my first blog post in over three years, feel free to read my ancient history if you like. ) ( Note 3: All said and done, the comments and Internet-fame have been awesome. I'm moving on though. If you're interested, check…

4257

Public key pinning coming in Chrome 13

Starting with Chrome 13, we'll have HTTPS pins for most Google properties. This means that certificate chains for, say, https://www.google.com , must include a whitelisted public key. It's a fatal error otherwise. Credit goes to my colleague, Chris Evans, for much of this.