Top all-time · #6281
Donncha Ó Cearbhaill
Personal blog · donncha.issecurity
Donncha Ó Cearbhaill's personal blog at donncha.is covers security. Since 2013, 13 different Hacker News readers have linked it 13 times, most often “Reliably compromising Ubuntu desktops by attacking the crash reporter”. The last post was in 2017, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (7) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Posts by Donncha Ó Cearbhaill on trawling Tor hidden services and on desktop security flaws in Ubuntu. Commenters cite them as supporting evidence for their own points, without judging the writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 7 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Donncha ("Done-a-ka") Ó Cearbhaill is a hacker and security researcher focused on exposing unlawful targeted surveillance and other human rights abuses enabled by technology.
Most-linked posts?
- Reliably compromising Ubuntu desktops by attacking the crash reporter6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2016-12-14
- Trawling Tor Hidden Service – Mapping the DHT5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2013-05-17
What Hacker News says?
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop HEADLINE: Better security processes DESCRIPTION: I've been quite disappointed that there wasn't really any public reaction from Ubuntu to a variety of security issues affecting the Linux Desktop in general and Ubuntu in particular. E.g.: https://scarybeastsecurity.blogspot.dk/2016/11/0day-exploit-... https://scarybeastsecurity.blogspot.dk/2016/11/0day-poc-risk... https://donncha.is/2016/12/com…
Comment linking /2016/12/compromising-ubuntu-desktop/
on “Ask HN: What do you want to see in Ubuntu 17.10?”Submitted Reliably compromising Ubuntu desktops by attacking the crash reporter as a story · 31 points
HN discussion>By default, there are no services listening. Desktop linux , not "the Linux kernel". The kernel isn't amazing, but on the desktop side you regularly see downright absurd stuff like this https://scarybeastsecurity.blogspot.com/2016/11/0day-exploit... and less surprising bugs like this https://donncha.is/2016/12/compromising-ubuntu-desktop/ The quality of software outside of some widely deployed server software tends…
Comment linking /2016/12/compromising-ubuntu-desktop/
on “Kaspersky AV injected unique ID allowing sites to track users in incognito mode”Submitted Ubuntu’s Crash Report Tool Allows Remote Code Execution as a story · 25 points
HN discussionThere isn't a definitive/exhaustive directory, but see this post: http://donncha.is/2013/05/trawling-tor-hidden-services/ tl;dr it's possible, and you don't have to rely on crawling the web searching for .onion addresses. You can instead become a HS directory authority, and pick your place in the DHT. Eventually you'd be able to get every address that goes into the DHT.
Comment linking /2013/05/trawling-tor-hidden-services/
on “Things You Should Know About Tor”Submitted Reliably exploiting the latest Ubuntu Desktop by attacking the crash reporter as a story · 4 points
HN discussion> but I'd enjoy some kind of citation on that claim that the majority of Tor users are using it for nefarious purposes. I don't know about exit nodes, but at least for hidden services that seems to be true (assuming you count torrents and drugs as 'nefarious'). See http://www.verisigninc.com/assets/labs/Measuring-the-Leakage... / http://www.ieee-security.org/TC/SP2013/papers/4977a080.pdf / http://donncha.is/2013/05/…
Comment linking /2013/05/trawling-tor-hidden-services/
on “Tor users are selected and monitored by the NSA as extremists”Submitted Coinbase – Owning a Bitcoin Exchange Bug Bounty Program as a story · 4 points
HN discussionWe know that a global adversary exists, and that Tor is vulnerable to certain types of attacks by such an adversary (e.g. [1,2]). Given that the list of relays is public by design, that their (albeit encrypted) communication can be monitored by the adversary, that popular hidden services will be moving a significant amount of traffic to and from a single static IP address in a manner modifiable by any user of it, an…
Comment linking /2013/05/trawling-tor-hidden-services/
on “Feds found Silk Road 2 servers after a six-month attack on Tor?”Submitted Reliably compromising Ubuntu desktops by attacking the crash reporter as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIt already exists. BTDigg: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BTDigg And sibling comments show there is a community of folks doing this. People also do it to Tor’s DHT too for discovering hidden services: https://donncha.is/2013/05/trawling-tor-hidden-services/ You can’t really stop open source tech like this from existing by choosing to not open source your implementation. You just end up staying out of the conversati…
Comment linking /2013/05/trawling-tor-hidden-services/
on “Ask HN: I've Built a DHT Torrent Sniffer and Search Engine. Should I Release?”Submitted Trawling Tor Hidden Service – Mapping the DHT as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAt the most unidea circumstances, you can scan the whole space of "{16 alphanumeric characters}.onion" at a space of 36^16 or around 7x10^24 addresses. That's not feasible. The other attack I've seen is turning on HSDir flag in /etc/tor/torrc and then logging all hidden service descriptors you receive. This method is obviously passive, but it does get the job done according to : http://donncha.is/2013/05/trawling-to…
Comment linking /2013/05/trawling-tor-hidden-services/
on “Xfinity's Security System Flaws Open Homes to Thieves”
