Top all-time · #8509
Ethan Heilman
Personal blog · ethanheilman.com/x · on HN as EthanHeilmansecuritysystems
Ethan Heilman's personal blog at ethanheilman.com covers security and systems. Since 2023, 9 different Hacker News readers have linked it 23 times, most often “A Brief History of NSA Backdoors (2013)”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (4) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Commenters cite these posts as references: a brief list of NSA backdoors and a 2013 history of NSA backdoors, plus a 2014 piece asking whether IP address allocations are property. The comments only link them as sources.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 4 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- A Brief History of NSA Backdoors (2013)5 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2024-02-04
- Replacing SGX with GitHub Actions: Or How to Turn GitHub Actions into a Trusted2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-09-08
- Opkssh integrating single sign-on with SSH (2025)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-07-31
- God created the real numbers2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-08-28
What Hacker News says?
We shouldn't rule it out, but it seems unlikely to me. This is more reckless than any backdoor I can think of by a US agency . NSA backdoored Dual EC DRBG, which was extremely reckless, but this makes that look careful and that was the Zenith of NSA recklessness. The attackers here straight up just cowboy'd the joint. I can't think of any instance in which US intelligence used sock puppets on public forums and maili…
Comment linking /x/12/index.html
on “Backdoor in upstream xz/liblzma leading to SSH server compromise”Submitted God created the real numbers as a story · 136 points
HN discussionFor non-legacy allocations, point taken (but my original comment still stands if you replace "ownership" with "registration"). For legacy allocations, it's more complicated. See: Are IP Address Allocations Property? (2014) https://www.ethanheilman.com/x/19/index.html
Comment linking /x/19/index.html
on “Launching RDAP; sunsetting WHOIS”Submitted How many IP addresses can a DNS query return? (2015) as a story · 71 points
HN discussion> I wrote blog entry on this subject with a very similar name [0] which covers the CryptoAG story in more detail. It doesn't have the 2020 news. [0]: A Brief History of NSA Backdoors (2013), https://www.ethanheilman.com/x/12/index.html Wow this is super interesting I noticed this paragraph in the text. > 2013, Enabling for Encryption Chips: In the NSA's budget request documents released by Edward Snowden, one of the…
Comment linking /x/12/index.html
on “A brief history of the U.S. trying to add backdoors into encrypted data (2016)”Submitted A Brief History of NSA Backdoors (2013) as a story · 45 points
HN discussionI wrote blog entry on this subject with a very similar name [0] which covers the CryptoAG story in more detail. It doesn't have the 2020 news. [0]: A Brief History of NSA Backdoors (2013), https://www.ethanheilman.com/x/12/index.html
Comment linking /x/12/index.html
on “A brief history of the U.S. trying to add backdoors into encrypted data (2016)”Submitted God created the real numbers as a story · 31 points
HN discussionBrief list of NSA backdoors: https://www.ethanheilman.com/x/12/index.html
Comment linking /x/12/index.html
on “XKeyscore”Submitted A brief history of NSA backdoors. (2013) as a story · 13 points
HN discussion(2013) Also mirrored on his site: https://www.ethanheilman.com/x/12/index.html (Shared recently by them https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39247497 )
Comment linking /x/12/index.html
on “A brief history of NSA backdoors (2013)”Submitted Replacing SGX with GitHub Actions: Or How to Turn GitHub Actions into a Trusted as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted GitHub Actions is a trusted computing oracle as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Missile vs. Laser: The Game of Terminal Maneuvers as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Are IP Address Allocations Property? (2014) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Turning GitHub Actions into an oracle (2025) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Brief Examination of Hacking Team's Crypter (2015) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Terminal Escape Sequences Ocean Is Deep and Dark as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Open-sourcing OpenPubkey SSH (OPKSSH): integrating single sign-on with SSH as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Opkssh integrating single sign-on with SSH (2025) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Game of Terminal Maneuvers as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted How many IP addresses can a DNS query return? (2015) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted ASCII Art Timeline of the Circle-CI Hack as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
