Best of 2012

The blog posts Hacker News loved most in 2012. 233 posts.

Security & Privacy
111

Master Keys

Earlier this month, a retired New York City locksmith was selling a set of “master keys” on eBay: Three of the five are standard issue for members of the FDNY, and the set had a metal dog tag that was embossed with an FDNY lieutenant’s shield number, 6896. The keys include the all-purpose “1620,” a master firefighter…

114

Format string vulnerability found in 'sudo'

A flaw exists in the debugging code in sudo versions 1.8.0 through 1.8.3p1 that can be used to crash sudo or potentially allow an unauthorized user to elevate privileges. Sudo versions affected: 1.8.0 through 1.8.3p1 inclusive. Older versions of sudo are not affected. CVE ID: This vulnerability has been assigned…

118

When Will We See Collisions for SHA-1?

On a NIST-sponsored hash function mailing list, Jesse Walker (from Intel; also a member of the Skein team) did some back-of-the-envelope calculations to estimate how long it will be before we see a practical collision attack against SHA-1. I’m reprinting his analysis here, so it reaches a broader audience. According…