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Security & Privacy

The most popular blog posts about security & privacy on Hacker News. 679 posts.

2025
302

A story on home server security

Happy New Year! Or so I thought. After a refreshing Christmas vacation with my family, I was stashing something away in our storage room when I noticed the server fan running at maximum speed. This was very unexpected, considering my server is powered by an Intel i3 and should handle all the light tasks I run quite…

303

If you are harassed by lasers

The green and blue "laser" dots at lower left are actually lens flare caused by the bright sun at upper right. The sun is reflecting off elements inside the lens, causing dots or flare. The flare is almost always located diagonally mirrored from a bright light source. Photo of a sunset, with upper and lower "beams"…

309

A dark adtech empire fed by fake CAPTCHAs

Late last year, security researchers made a startling discovery: Kremlin-backed disinformation campaigns were bypassing moderation on social media platforms by leveraging the same malicious advertising technology that powers a sprawling ecosystem of online hucksters and website hackers. A new report on the fallout…

312

Unexpected security footguns in Go's parsers

File parsers in Go contain unexpected behaviors that can lead to serious security vulnerabilities. This post examines how JSON, XML, and YAML parsers in Go handle edge cases in ways that have repeatedly resulted in high-impact security issues in production systems. We explore three real-world attack scenarios…

327

How to Delete Your 23andMe Data

This week, the genetic testing company 23andMe filed for bankruptcy, which means the genetic data the company collected on millions of users is now up for sale. If you don't want your data included in any potential sale, it’s a good time to ask the company to delete it.