Best of 2021

The blog posts Hacker News loved most in 2021. 255 posts.

Networking & Internet
94

Bitsquatting Windows.com

Earlier this month, I came back around to seriously considering an attempt at bitsquatting. While the prior link goes into great depth on the topic, I will attempt to give a very high level overview here: If this sort of thing interests you: I tend to do stuff like this weekly. Give me a follow @_mattata

95

Mitmproxy 7.0

We’re delighted to announce the release of mitmproxy 7, a free and open source interactive HTTPS proxy. This release is all about our new proxy core, which bring substantial improvements across the board and represents a massive milestone for the project.

97

The Confusing World of USB

For decades, my perception of USB was that of a technology both simple and reliable. You plug it and it works. The two first iterations [1] [2] freed PCs from a badly fragmented connector world made of RJ-45 (Ethernet), DA-15 (Joystick), DE-9 (Serial), DIN (PS/2), SCSI, and DB-25 (Parallel). When USB-3.0 came out…

111

The Actual OSI Model

I have said before that I believe that teaching modern students the OSI model as an approach to networking is a fundamental mistake that makes the concepts less clear rather than more. The major reason for this is simple: the OSI model was prescriptive of a specific network stack designed alongside it, and that…