Best of 2024

The blog posts Hacker News loved most in 2024. 536 posts.

Security & Privacy
213

OpenSSH Backdoors

Imagine this: an OpenSSH backdoor is discovered, maintainers rush to push out a fixed release package, security researchers trade technical details on mailing lists to analyze the backdoor code. Speculation abounds on the attribution and motives of the attacker, and the tech media pounces on the story. A near miss

230

The Curious Case of MD5

Recently I came across a puzzling fact: the International Criminal Court hashes electronic evidence with MD5, even though MD5 is badly broken. So, why are lawyers using broken, outdated technology? The answer involves the common law system, cultural isolation, and a single man named Don L. Lewis.

231

Sei pays out $2M bug bounty

In April 2024, I found and reported two critical bugs to Sei Network concerning their layer-1 blockchain. One of these issues impacted the chain’s availability, and the other its integrity. The Sei Foundation awarded me $75,000 and $2,000,000 respectively for these reports.

235

The Nearest Neighbor Attack

In early February 2022, notably just ahead of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Volexity made a discovery that led to one of the most fascinating and complex incident investigations Volexity had ever worked. The investigation began when an alert from a custom detection signature Volexity had deployed at a customer site…