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Security & Privacy

The most popular blog posts about security & privacy on Hacker News. 8,775 posts.

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8347

Dismantling a Crappy Malware Operation

Dismantling a Shoddy Malware Operation The Discovery I had been made aware of a malware spreading site called obspremium.com. This site is claiming to offer a so-called “premium” version of the popular open source recording and streaming program Open Broadcaster Software at obsproject.com. “OBS Premium” hosts a direct…

8350

Entropy Attacks

The conventional wisdom is that hashing more entropy sources can't hurt: if H is any modern cryptographic hash function then H(x,y,z) is at least as good a random number as H(x,y), no matter how awful z is. So we pile one source on top of another, hashing them all together and hoping that at least one of them is good.

8352

The Snowden Principle

At the heart of Edward Snowden's decision to expose the NSA's massive phone and Internet spying programs was a fundamental belief in the people's right-to-know. "My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them," he …

8362

How Safe Browsing Works in Firefox

Firefox has had support for Google's Safe Browsing since 2005 when it started as a stand-alone Firefox extension . At first it was only available in the USA, but it was opened up to the rest of the world in 2006 and moved to the Google Toolbar . It then got integrated directly into Firefox 2.0 before the public launch…

8366

Security and Privacy Implications of Zoom

Over the past few weeks, Zoom’s use has exploded since it became the video conferencing platform of choice in today’s COVID-19 world. (My own university, Harvard, uses it for all of its classes. Boris Johnson had a cabinet meeting over Zoom.) Over that same period, the company has been exposed for having both lousy…

8367

Belgium Is Unsafe for CVD

This post is about the reason I will probably never try to warn any organisation in Belgium about any vulnerability again. Recently I have been dealing with an attempt at coordinated vulnerability disclosure (CVD) with an organisation in Belgium. This post is not about that, because I’m not allowed to write about it…