Top all-time · #2892
Dan Geer
Personal blog · geer.tinho.netsecurity
Dan Geer's personal blog at geer.tinho.net covers security. Since 2012, 27 different Hacker News readers have linked it 70 times, most often “Cybersecurity as Realpolitik”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (10) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Dan Geer's security talks, mostly the 2014 Black Hat and NSA talks, to support points on router security, vulnerability markets and software liability.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 10 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Cybersecurity as Realpolitik8 people · 35 mentions · first linked 2014-08-07
- Tradeoffs in Cyber Security2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-10-22
- Trends in Cyber Security2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-11-27
- We Are All Intelligence Officers Now - Dan Geer2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-03-06
What Hacker News says?
Even if you ignore JFK, a good case can be made that the security agencies (probably FVEY?) currently seem to have at least de facto control basically anywhere they want. Exercising that control got a lot easier - and less obvious - as technology became available. Traditional informants and enforcers sometimes get noticed, but JOIN...WHERE user.id=foo across phone location data is very hard to discover. The key part…
Comment linking /geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt
on “US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program”Submitted Cybersecurity as Realpolitik as a story · 49 points
HN discussionY Not - Adventures in Functional Programming by Jim Weirich https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FITJMJjASUs The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing by Cory Doctorow http://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html Cybersecurity as Realpolitik by Dan Geer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT-TGvYOBpI http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt
Comment linking /geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt
on “Ask HN: What's your favorite tech talk?”Submitted Tradeoffs in Cyber Security as a story · 11 points
HN discussionDan Geer at his important talk at Black Hat: The central dynamic internal to government is, and always has been, that the only way for either the Executive or the Legislature to control the many sub-units of government is by way of how much money they can hand out. [...] Suppose, however, that surveillance becomes too cheap to meter, that is to say too cheap to limit through budgetary processes. Does that lessen the…
Comment linking /geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt
on “A Decade-Old Gag Order, Lifted”Submitted Blackhat keynote: Cybersecurity as Realpolitik as a story · 7 points
HN discussion> Obfuscation may be our best digital weapon. From Dan Geer's talk "Cybersecurity as Realpolitik" (which everyone should hear[1]/read[2]): >> There are so many technologies now that power observation and identification of the individual at a distance. They may not yet be in your pocket or on your dashboard or embedded in all your smoke detectors, but that is only a matter of time. Your digital exhaust is unique henc…
Comment linking /geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt
on “The Fantasy of Opting Out”Submitted Prediction and the Future of Cybersecurity – Dan Geer as a story · 6 points
HN discussionIt has been a while since I read it but the first thing that came to mind is this talk by Dan Geer (who is closely connected to US intelligence agencies): http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt
Comment linking /geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt
on “Hackers ransack Citrix, make off with 6TB+ of emails, biz docs, secrets”Submitted Security of Things as a story · 4 points
HN discussionIt's been a cold civil war for many years. Encryption - and communication technology in general - is a power usable by anybody, not just established institutions. As Dan Geer explains: In other words, [c]onvergence is an inevitable consequence of the very power of cyberspace in and of itself. [I]ncreasingly powerful, location independent technology in the hands of the many will tend to force changes in the distribut…
Comment linking /geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt
on “German government to use Trojan spyware to monitor citizens”Submitted Tradeoffs in Cyber Security as a story · 4 points
HN discussion> technology is going to make mass surveillance relatively easy > a la Gestapo In 2013 Tom Scott made an incredibly prescient sketch of our grim surveillance-state future. It absolutely terrifying . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIuf1V1FhpY It's terrifying because it's the power of Stasi-style informants modernized into a simple Uber-like app. No more scary clandestine meetings, now you can inform on your friends,…
Comment linking /geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt
on “Pentagon testing mass surveillance balloons across the US”Submitted Michael Crichton: “Why Speculate?” & The Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect (2002) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionAll it takes is metadata . The "digital exhaust" we leave behind is extremely revealing. I usually use COTRAVELER as my example of how just a few data points (without any PII) can reveal a LOT about your social interactions, but browser history is another powerful data source. I believe this is why Dan Geer, in his incredible talk last year[1], suggested that "privacy" should now be defined as "the effective capacit…
Comment linking /geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt
on “From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities”Submitted A Quant’s View of Software Supply Chain Security [pdf] as a story · 2 points
HN discussionCorrection: the URL for [2] should be http://geer.tinho.net/geer.source.27iv17.txt
Comment linking /geer.source.27iv17.txt
on “CBS's Showtime caught mining crypto-coins in viewers' web browsers”Submitted Hard Choices in Cybersecurity by Dan Geer as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> "The Science of Insecurity" The langsec approach of using formal recognizers that validate the validity of input before processing it in any way (stop creating weird machines!), and designing network protocols that are actually decidable without solving the halting problem (network input must be no more complex than deterministic context-free) should be considered the bare minimum for all network-associated softwa…
Comment linking /geer.rapid7.14ix17.txt
on “CBS's Showtime caught mining crypto-coins in viewers' web browsers”Submitted For Good Measure: The Undiscovered [pdf] as a story · 2 points
HN discussionMore ground is lost in the cold[1] civil war[2] for control of the General Purpose Computer. I hope that everyone choosing to centralize computing power likes the future they are creating. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT-TGvYOBpI#t=2824 (sec. 10 - http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt ) [2] http://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html
Comment linking /geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt
on “Google reveals its servers all contain custom security silicon”Submitted Cybersecurity as Realpolitik as a story · 2 points
HN discussionhttp://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt - some more technical analysis on what can be done Another interesting site here is http://citizenlab.org/ and the idea of 'distributed security' they champion.
Comment linking /geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt
on “The End of the Internet Dream”Submitted We Are All Intelligence Officers Now - Dan Geer as a story · 2 points
HN discussionWhat you call "fraud" I call "privacy". Anonymous transactions happen all the time with cash, and any new payment method needs an equivalent. In the modern era where it is no longer possible to gain privacy by being unobservable, a new definition of privacy is required. Dan Geer has a very good replacement definition; privacy is "the effective capacity to misrepresent yourself"[1]. If cash isn't possible, misreprese…
Comment linking /geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt
on “Going dark: online privacy and anonymity for normal people”Submitted Trends in Cyber Security as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAs Dan Geer warned[1], embedded devices must not be both unfixable and immortal . Either they have some sort of remove management interface and receive regular security updates, or they must have a limited lifespan. Creating embedded systems that won't be updated and live indefinitely is knowingly creating a hazard and nuisance to society. [1] http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt
Comment linking /geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt
on “Say Cheese: a snapshot of the massive DDoS attacks coming from IoT cameras”Submitted Criticality, Rejectionists, Risk Tolerance as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> the Senate [is] charged with preventing this from happening. But the Senate was gutted There is a gradual drift over time; most complex systems accumulate errors, imbalances, and unexpected problems over time. However, there is another problem happening right now that I've only seen mentioned[1] by Dan Geer. He suggests that technology has changed the balance of powers: The central dynamic internal to government i…
Comment linking /geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt
on “Obama Administration Set to Expand Sharing of Data That N.S.A. Intercepts”Submitted Digital Watermarks Are Not Ready for Large Language Models – Dan Geer [pdf] as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
