Topics /

Security & Privacy

The most popular blog posts about security & privacy on Hacker News. 473 posts.

2015
181

The God Login

I graduated with a Computer Science minor from the University of Virginia in 1992. The reason it’s a minor and not a major is because to major in CS at UVa you had to go through the Engineering School, and I was absolutely not cut out for that kind

183

The Government Uses Zero Days for “Offense”

Little by little, the government is opening up about its use of computer security vulnerabilities. Last month, the NSA disclosed that it has historically “released more than 91% of vulnerabilities discovered in products that have gone through our internal review process and that are made and used...

185

Facebook Sponsors Let's Encrypt

We’re happy to share today that Facebook is the newest Gold sponsor of Let’s Encrypt. Facebook has taken multiple important steps to support and advance encryption this year, and we are glad to see Let’s Encrypt as the latest example. According to Alex Stamos, Chief Security Officer at Facebook, “Making it easier for…

187

Let's Encrypt Root and Intermediate Certificates

The keys and certificates that will underlie Let’s Encrypt have been generated. This was done during a key ceremony at a secure facility today. The following objects were created: Key pair and self-signed cert for the ISRG root Key pair and certificate for the ISRG root’s OCSP Key pairs and certificates for two Let’s…

191

Government-Linked Certificate Authorities in OS X

I’ve been sitting on this information for some time, waiting to get more research done before I publish a post. But since word has come out about how Lenovo preloads what amounts to very bad spyware on their PCs, I thought I should also just go right ahead to spill the beans on the Mac.

192

A Survival Guide for the Small Mail Server

Nowadays many companies and organizations (non-profits, units of governmental and educational institutions, etc) believe that running their own mail servers has become an impossible task, due both to the large amount of inbound spam and to the continuous attempts by spammers to send outbound spam through their mail…

195

Backdooring JavaScript using minifier bugs

In addition to unforgettable life experiences and personal growth, one thing I got out of DEF CON 23 was a copy of POC||GTFO 0x08 from Travis Goodspeed. The coolest article I’ve read so far in it is “Deniable Backdoors Using Compiler Bugs,” in which the authors abused a pre-existing bug in CLANG to create a backdoored…

199

Online Cheating Site AshleyMadison Hacked

Large caches of data stolen from online cheating site AshleyMadison.com have been posted online by an individual or group that claims to have completely compromised the company’s user databases, financial records and other proprietary information. The still-unfolding leak could be quite damaging to some 37 million…

203

Hostnames and usernames to reserve

If you're setting up a service where people can register their own usernames to be used as a hostname (username.example.com), email address (username@example.com), or URL path (example.com/username) within your domain, there are some common names you should avoid letting the general public register. Many …