Top all-time · #114
Adam Langley
Personal blog · imperialviolet.org · on HN as aglsecurityprogramming
Adam Langley writes ImperialViolet, a personal blog at imperialviolet.org about security and programming. Since 2008, 347 different Hacker News readers have linked it 521 times, most often “Apple's SSL/TLS bug”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-07-26, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 4 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers cite Adam Langley's posts as standard references on TLS, certificate pinning, OCSP/CRLSets and forward secrecy, and recommend several as clear explanations.
- Recommended for · 4 comments
- Called 'a great discussion' of forward secrecy, 'especially useful', and 'a nice explanation' of design; one commenter says the WebAuthn post is good but wants
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Apple's SSL/TLS bug23 people · 28 mentions · first linked 2014-02-22
- Public key pinning (2011)17 people · 17 mentions · first linked 2013-06-27
- Overclocking SSL (2010)16 people · 17 mentions · first linked 2013-06-28
- Overclocking SSL16 people · 16 mentions · first linked 2010-07-04
- Revocation checking and Chrome's CRL15 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2014-04-09
- Why not DANE in browsers13 people · 24 mentions · first linked 2015-01-18
- Public key pinning coming in Chrome 1312 people · 13 mentions · first linked 2011-05-04
- Cryptographic Agility12 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2016-05-24
- How to botch TLS forward secrecy9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2013-06-28
- No, don't enable revocation checking9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2014-04-20
What Hacker News says?
How about it's totally ineffective? OCSP is pointless if you "soft fail" when the OCSP server can't be reached. [1] This is why Chrome disabled OSCP by default all the way back in 2012-2013 era. Not to mention the performance cost of making all HTTPS connections wait for an OCSP lookup. [2] [1]: https://www.imperialviolet.org/2012/02/05/crlsets.html [2]: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/02/googl...
Comment linking /2012/02/05/crlsets.html
on “MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?”Submitted Apple's SSL/TLS bug as a story · 413 points
HN discussionActually, Firefox is going to start sending a CRL 4x daily in lieu of OCSP. Chrome hasn't supported OCSP since 2012, and publishes CRLSets instead. OCSP is considered bad by at least Chrome and Firefox due to leaking side channel information in exactly the way the article describes. https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2020/01/21/crlite-part-3-s... https://www.imperialviolet.org/2012/02/05/crlsets.html
Comment linking /2012/02/05/crlsets.html
on “Your Computer Isn't Yours”Submitted Juniper: Recording Some Twitter Conversations as a story · 335 points
HN discussionBlame attaches to the last thing that changed. ( https://www.imperialviolet.org/2016/05/16/agility.html ) And to be fair, I don't think that's completely illogical. It's often the case that the last thing that changed is the easiest thing to change back. And the results of recent changes are generally more predictable than the results of changes from a long time ago.
Comment linking /2016/05/16/agility.html
on “YouTube bans content “showing users how to bypass secure computer systems””Submitted Living with HTTPS as a story · 326 points
HN discussionCertificate Transparency would make it blatantly obvious if any existing CA were being compelled by governments to issue fraudulent certs. DANE is, unfortunately, not viable to implement in browsers right now for a variety of reasons: https://www.imperialviolet.org/2015/01/17/notdane.html
Comment linking /2015/01/17/notdane.html
on “MITM on HTTPS traffic in Kazakhstan”Submitted TLS 1.3 and Proxies as a story · 304 points
HN discussionIt isn't foolproof, user installed Root CAs or roots installed by 3rd party applications are given permission to override pins. So HPKP wouldn't protect against scenarios like Superfish. https://www.imperialviolet.org/2011/05/04/pinning.html
Comment linking /2011/05/04/pinning.html
on “Let's Encrypt is Trusted”Submitted BoringSSL as a story · 303 points
HN discussionThis all day. There is no reason I should have to go through a third-party to get a certificate just to distribute a key for secure communications (which is all a DV certificate is good for) if I already own a domain, or can get the domain owner to publish my TLSA record in theirs (which should be no more onerous than publishing the server A record, which they already have to do). The reason we don't have DANE suppo…
Comment linking /2015/01/17/notdane.html
on “eMudhra to exit global SSL/TLS certificate business”Submitted A Tour of WebAuthn as a story · 299 points
HN discussionYou can't forget the infamous "goto fail": https://www.imperialviolet.org/2014/02/22/applebug.html There seems to be kind of a common theme to these: - SSL certificates not validated at all - root authentication not validated at all - JWT token creation for arbitrary Apple ID users not validated at all I think these are all very likely due to error and not malice, but it's pretty crazy how these gaping holes keep be…
Comment linking /2014/02/22/applebug.html
on “Zero-day in Sign in with Apple”Submitted Maybe Skip SHA-3 as a story · 241 points
HN discussionSure, a standard exists, but that by itself isn't a great user experience. If you actually try to use something like a YubiKey you end up having to register multiple keys with each site to deal with lost key (assuming the site allows that in the first place). The you have to remember which keys correspond to which sites, and remember to get your backup key out each time you sign up somewhere new , etc. Google, Apple…
Comment linking /2022/07/04/passkeys.html
on “Bitwarden raises $100M”Submitted Security Keys as a story · 218 points
HN discussionProbably these: https://www.imperialviolet.org/2011/05/04/pinning.html https://www.imperialviolet.org/2011/11/22/forwardsecret.html
Comment linking /2011/11/22/forwardsecret.html
on “N.S.A. Foils Much Internet Encryption”Submitted No, don't enable revocation checking as a story · 180 points
HN discussionQuote from a google engineer in 2010 (it's only gotten cheaper in the last 6 years w/ advances in CPU tech) regarding SSL overhead: > On our production frontend machines, SSL/TLS accounts for less than 1% of the CPU load, less than 10KB of memory per connection and less than 2% of network overhead. Many people believe that SSL takes a lot of CPU time and we hope the above numbers (public for the first time) will hel…
Comment linking /2010/06/25/overclocking-ssl.html
on “Transmission BitTorrent app contained malware”Submitted Boring SSL as a story · 161 points
HN discussionIt is a little more complicated than that. If you start doing MITM on https connections where pinning is involved, typically those sites / apps will just stop working as they don't trust the CA for the cert that is injected during the MITM. So yes it 'protects' you, but it does so by not letting you access that page / app. Chrome (and I'm sure most other browsers / apps) can have their pins overriden by user install…
Comment linking /2011/05/04/pinning.html
on “Kazakhstan to MitM all HTTPS traffic starting Jan 1”Submitted Testing FIDO U2F security keys as a story · 151 points
HN discussion"On our production frontend machines, SSL/TLS accounts for less than 1% of the CPU load" according to Google back in January 2010 [1]. This was about the same time as Intel introduced AES instructions, but the post suggests that this wasn't a big factor in their conclusion that TLS simply isn't computationally expensive. [1] https://www.imperialviolet.org/2010/06/25/overclocking-ssl.h...
Comment linking /2010/06/25/overclocking-ssl.html
on “Encrypted web traffic now exceeds 90%”Submitted The ICANN Public Comments on WHOIS Privacy as a story · 151 points
HN discussionI'm so sad roughtime never got popular. It can be used to piggyback a "proof of known hash at time" mechanism, without blockchain waste. https://www.imperialviolet.org/2016/09/19/roughtime.html https://int08h.com/post/to-catch-a-lying-timeserver/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/roughtime/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12599705
Comment linking /2016/09/19/roughtime.html
on “Archivists work to save disappearing data.gov datasets”Submitted AEADs: getting better at symmetric cryptography as a story · 128 points
HN discussionMaybe flight crews/maintenance staff should configure the machine randomly after a flight/maintenance, so as to force the next crew to actually run the checklist carefully? This reminds me a little of Adam Langley's advice for keeping software protocol extensibility points well-oiled: You might want to define and implement dummy extensions once a year or such, and retire old ones on a similar schedule. When extensio…
Comment linking /2016/05/16/agility.html
on “Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident after takeoff”Submitted A shallow survey of formal methods for C code as a story · 128 points
HN discussionA lot of Robert C Martins pieces are just variations on his strong belief that ill-defined concepts like "craftsmanship" and "clean code" (which are basically just whatever his opinions are on any given day) is how to reduce defects and increase quality, not built-in safety and better tools, and if you think built-in safety and better tools are desirable, you're not a Real Programmer (tm). I'm not the only one who i…
Comment linking /2014/02/22/applebug.html
on “It's probably time to stop recommending Clean Code (2020)”Submitted Roughtime: a protocol for secure, auditable time synchronisation as a story · 120 points
HN discussion
