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Security & Privacy

The most popular blog posts about security & privacy on Hacker News. 578 posts.

2016
427

TOTP SSH port fluxing

Some people change their SSH port on their servers so that it is slightly harder to find for bots or other nasties and while that is generally viewed as an action of security through obscurity it does work very well at killing a lot of the automated logins you always see in /var/log/auth.log .

428

Apple Remote Code Execution with Image Files

Vulnerabilities discovered by Tyler Bohan of Cisco Talos. Many of the wide variety of file formats are designed for specialized uses within specific industries. Apple offers APIs as interfaces to provide a definitive way to access image data for multiple image formats on the Apple OS X platform. Talos is

429

How I verify data breaches

Let me start with this headline [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyber-passwords-idUSKCN0XV1I6]: Other headlines went on to suggest that you need to change your password right now [http://www.iflscience.com/technology/millions-passwords-hotmail-gmail-and-yahoo-have-been-stolen] if you're using the likes

430

Gas Theft Gangs Fuel Pump Skimming Scams

Few schemes for monetizing stolen credit cards are as bold as the fuel theft scam: Crooks embed skimming devices inside fuel station pumps to steal credit card data from customers. Thieves then clone the cards and use them to steal hundreds of gallons of gas at multiple filling stations. The gas is pumped into…

436

Frequent Password Changes Is a Bad Security Idea

I’ve been saying for years that it’s bad security advice, that it encourages poor passwords. Lorrie Cranor, now the FTC’s chief technologist, agrees: By studying the data, the researchers identified common techniques account holders used when they were required to change passwords. A password like “tarheels#1”, for…

438

Updated Firefox Security Indicators

Cross posting this. It was written a couple months ago and posted to Mozilla’s Security Blog This article was coauthored by Aislinn Grigas, Senior Interaction Designer, Firefox Desktop November 3, 2015 Over the past few months, Mozilla has been improving the user experience of our privacy and security features in…

443

Here’s to more HTTPS on the web

Security has always been critical to the web, but challenges involved in site migration have inhibited HTTPS adoption for several years. In the interest of a safer web for all, at Google we've worked alongside many others across the online ecosystem to better understand and address these challenges, resulting in real…