Top all-time · #1597
Least Authority
Company blog · leastauthority.com/blogsecurityprogramming
Least Authority is the company blog at leastauthority.com, writing about security and programming. Since 2012, 46 different Hacker News readers have linked it 54 times, most often “Simple, secure cloud storage”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-27, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 1 of 33 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link leastauthority.com mainly as a pointer to Tahoe-LAFS-based encrypted cloud storage and to the blog's security audit write-ups, such as the Cryptocat audit. One comment praised its BLAKE2 article.
- Recommended for · 1 comments
- One commenter called its 2014 BLAKE2 article 'nice' and pointed readers to it.1
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 33 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
We believe that people have a fundamental right to privacy and that the use of secure solutions enables people to more freely use the Internet and other connected technologies.
Most-linked posts?
- Simple, secure cloud storage15 people · 17 mentions · first linked 2012-04-27
- Tahoe-LAFS on S33 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-01-21
- Least Authority's Security Audit of Cryptocat3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-04-02
- BLAKE2: “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” Than MD53 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-03-22
- BLAKE2: “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” Than MD5 (2014)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-05-21
What Hacker News says?
Yup, here are a number of articles on the subject https://leastauthority.com/blog/debunking-the-nothing-to-hid... https://www.techrepublic.com/blog/it-security/why-nothing-to... http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/surveillance-you-may-have-nothing... https://www.wired.com/2013/06/why-i-have-nothing-to-hide-is-... https://www.zdnet.com/article/privacy-is-innately-flawed-not... https://mashable.com/2013/06/13/julian-sanchez-ns…
Comment linking /blog/debunking-the-nothing-to-hide-rhetoric/
on “Google chief: I'd disclose smart speakers before guests enter my home”Submitted PrivateStorage.io: A secure and privacy-focused cloud storage solution as a story · 194 points
HN discussionI worked on the OTF-funded security audit of Cryptocat. (The report: https://leastauthority.com/static/publications/LeastAuthorit... ) While I wasn't involved in arranging the work, my vague memory is that a publically-disclosed audit was a condition of the funding -- I think the OTF had that policy in general. (It's been a few years, and I haven't kept up.) Even the author of CryptoCat now thinks you should not use…
Comment linking /static/publications/LeastAuthority-Cryptocat-audit-report.pdf
on “Telegram founder: US intelligence tried to bribe us to weaken encryption”Submitted BLAKE2: “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” Than MD5 as a story · 122 points
HN discussionThe front-end is already there : https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs . Backends are currently being developed ( https://github.com/mk-fg/tahoe-lafs-public-clouds ), and there will even be a public offering from the very same guys ( https://leastauthority.com/ )
Comment linking /
on “RedditStorage”Submitted Introduction to Mix Networks and Anonymous Communication Networks as a story · 73 points
HN discussionthis is a political problem, but can also be addressed as an engineering problem: https://leastauthority.com/ and https://www.tahoe-lafs.org/
Comment linking /
on “Dropbox is in your Office”Submitted BLAKE2: “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” Than MD5 (2014) as a story · 40 points
HN discussionTahoe-LAFS-on-s3 from Least Authority Enterprises https://leastauthority.com Bonus: one user, 'sickness', showed how to replicate your encrypted data across Dropbox, gdrive, etc. http://www.sickness.it/crazycloudexperiment.txt
Comment linking /
on “Watch what you store on SkyDrive–you may lose your Microsoft life”Submitted Simple, secure cloud storage as a story · 7 points
HN discussionAnd if you don't want some govt to take down a single provider like what happened with Lavabit email vis-a-vis backup, go with a distribute (multi-provider) solution like Tahoe LAFS https://leastauthority.com/ The proxy is run locally and all encryption happens locally, so it's end-to-end encrypted.
Comment linking /
on “Tarsnap price cut”Submitted Security Audit Reports: A Guide for Everyone as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThere is Destiny https://leastauthority.com/community-matters/destiny/ . Although there hasn't been much activity lately.
Comment linking /community-matters/destiny/
on “Magic Wormhole: Get things from one computer to another, safely”Submitted Tahoe-LAFS on S3 as a story · 4 points
HN discussionIn Tahoe-LAFS, it is actually a proven truth that, up to the level of cryptographic unguessability, server operators cannot read stored files without knowing the client-side key. If you can prove otherwise, then you can earn a spot in their hall of fame: https://tahoe-lafs.org/hacktahoelafs/ Tahoe-LAFS providers like Least Authority [1] and Matador Cloud [2] pride themselves on not being able to access your data. [1…
Comment linking /
on “We will no longer use the phrase “zero knowledge” to describe our software”Submitted Destiny: End-to-end encrypted file transfer app using magic wormhole protocol as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIf this is interesting, recommend looking at Tahoe-LAFS too: https://www.tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs (And https://leastauthority.com/how_it_works )
Comment linking /how_it_works
on “S3QL: an S3 FS with encryption, de-dup, immutable trees and snapshotting”Submitted Ethereum 2.0 Specifications Security Audit Report [pdf] as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI'm curious what the pricing will be when this is opened up to the public. Some years ago when I compared encrypted online storage, I found Least Authority to be quite expensive. It still seems to be ($25 a month). [1] [1]: https://leastauthority.com/
Comment linking /
on “PrivateStorage.io: A secure and privacy-focused cloud storage solution”Submitted [Wanted] MagicFolder – Private, Resilient Filesharing on Tahoe LAFS as a story · 2 points
HN discussionLeast Authority is actually a German company now (although it was started in the US): https://leastauthority.com/about-us/
Comment linking /about-us/
on “PrivateStorage.io: A secure and privacy-focused cloud storage solution”Submitted Least Authority's Security Audit of Cryptocat as a story · 2 points
HN discussionNice BLAKE2 article from HN in March, 2014 https://leastauthority.com/blog/BLAKE2-harder-better-faster-...
Comment linking /blog/BLAKE2-harder-better-faster-stronger-than-MD5.html
on “How I created two images with the same MD5 hash”Submitted BLAKE2: “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” Than MD5 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionWhat's the point? Tarsnap is modestly cheap and extremely secure, and there other backup services which are equally cheap and almost as secure. Use at least 2x services always, so Tarsnap going down or bust (heaven forbid) isn't a big deal. There is never a perfect real-world solution, but risk mitigations that reduce risk at a higher levels of abstraction is how to get real, production-grade fault-tolerance the eas…
Comment linking /
on “FreeBSD 10.2”Submitted S4: PRISM-proof cloud storage as a story · 2 points
HN discussionduplicity + s4[0], because s4 is greater than s3. [0] https://leastauthority.com/
Comment linking /
on “Duplicity + S3: Easy, cheap, encrypted, automated full-disk backups”Submitted Open Letter to Phil Zimmermann and Jon Callas of Silent Circle as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSpeaking of the vulnerabilities that our team found, here is our blog post about it and a link to our report and the github issue tickets that we opened: Here is our blog post about our audit of Cryptocat, which was also announced today: https://leastauthority.com/blog/
Comment linking /blog/
on “CryptoCat iOS Application Penetration Test [pdf]”Submitted White Noise (encrypted group chat over Nostr) completes security audit as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
