61
HTTPS in the real world
In cryptography, trust is mathematically provable. Everything else is just faith.
62
Dropbear SSH, a lightweight alternative to OpenSSH
Dropbear is a small and lightweight SSH server and client that can replace OpenSSH on any POSIX platform such as GNU / Linux, * BSD, Cygwin … Dropbear is free software since it is released under MIT-style licenses.
63
Attack of the Week: Group Messaging in WhatsApp and Signal
If you’ve read this blog before, you know that secure messaging is one of my favorite topics. However, recently I’ve been a bit disappointed. My sadness comes from the fact that lately …
64
A little bump in the wire that makes the Internet faster
My parents live in a rural area, where the usual monopolist Internet service provider provides the usual monopolist Internet service: DSL, r...
65
Xerox Alto's 3 Mb/s Ethernet: Building a Gateway with a BeagleBone
The Alto was a revolutionary computer designed at Xerox PARC in 1973. It introduced the GUI, high-resolution bitmapped displays, the optic...
66
CloudFlair: Bypassing CloudFlare using Internet-wide scan data
Cloudflare is a service that acts as a middleman between a website and its end users, protecting it from various attacks. Unfortunately, those websites are often poorly configured, allowing an attacker to entirely bypass Cloudflare and run DDoS attacks or exploit web-based vulnerabilities that would otherwise be…
67
68
Some thoughts on security after ten years of Qmail 1.0
Some thoughts on security after ten years of qmail 1.0 Bernstein, 2007 I find security much more important than speed. We need invulnerable software systems, and we need them today, even if they ar…
69
TCP is an underspecified two-node consensus algorithm
I recently found myself dealing with TCP load balancing for a project and I've come to think that generic TCP proxies can't be implemented without substantial pain and how it makes TLS terminating proxies a bad idea.
70
71
72
Network Latencies and Speed of Light
In this short post I’m going to attempt to convince you that current network (Internet) latencies are here to stay, because they are already within a fairly small factor of what is possible u…
73
Netdev Day 1: IPsec
netdev day 1: IPsec!
74
75
76
How to read an RFC
For better or worse, Requests for Comments (RFCs) are how we specify many protocols on the Internet. These documents are alternatively treated as holy texts by developers who parse them for hidden meanings, then shunned as irrelevant because they can’t be understood. This often leads to frustration and – more…
77
Mastodon WTF timeline (2017)
In the last few days I've been fortunate to witness an interesting chapter in the Internet's history, and I'm trying to compile a timeline of what has happened while the memories are still reasonably fresh. This is incomplete and a work in progress; I'll be updating it, and n...
78
79
Progressive web apps are coming to iOS 11.3: Cupertino, we have a problem
IMPORTANT: iOS 11.3 final version is now published. Check my updated article on the topic: Progressive Web Apps on iOS are here
80
81
82
Generate ASCII RFC-like header diagrams for your own custom protocols
Protocol is a command-line tool to display ASCII RFC-like protocol header diagrams for both existing network protocols or user-defined ones (using a very simple syntax). Protocol is written in Python and it's open-source software.
83
Anatomy of a DNS Lookup – Part II
and determined that most programs reference /etc/resolv.conf along the way to figuring out which DNS server to look up.
84
Wireguard VPN: Typical Setup (2017)
I recently discovered the awesome Wireguard VPN tunnel and I was sold. Wireguard is a simple, kernel-based, state-of-the-art VPN that also happens to be ridiculously fast and uses modern cryptographic principles that all other highspeed VPN solutions lack.
85
The hidden cost of QUIC and TOU (2016)
Some new proposed protocols will encrypt the transport layer headers. Encryption is good, so more encryption must be better, right? Unfortunately there's going to be a huge hidden cost that'll be paid by anyone troubleshooting networking problems.
86