Top all-time · #4750
Leviathan Security Group
Company blog · leviathansecurity.com/blogsecurity
Leviathan Security Group is the company blog at leviathansecurity.com, writing about security. Since 2012, 16 different Hacker News readers have linked it 17 times, most often “ASLR Protection for Statically Linked Executables”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-13, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (7) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Leviathan's security research posts on topics such as ASLR and static PIE binaries, Tor exit node tampering, Go's lagged Fibonacci generator, and gzip versus deflate checksums.
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.
Leviathan Security Group - The Leaders in Penetration Testing, Security Assessment, Web Application Assessments and Risk Advisory Services since 2006.
Most-linked posts?
- ASLR Protection for Statically Linked Executables5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2018-06-27
- The Case of the Modified Binaries3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-10-24
- The Case of the Modified Binaries2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-10-24
What Hacker News says?
Yes, see http://www.cs.kau.se/philwint/spoiled_onions/ and http://www.leviathansecurity.com/blog/the-case-of-the-modifi...
Comment linking /blog/the-case-of-the-modified-binaries
on “Running a Tor Exit Node for Fun and E-mails”Submitted Attackers can decloak routing-based VPNs as a story · 446 points
HN discussionDo any Linux/glibc or Linux/musl systems support static PIE binaries, yet? Without static PIE support you don't benefit from ASLR (at least not fully). This 2018 article seems like a good breakdown of the issues: https://www.leviathansecurity.com/blog/aslr-protection-for-s... OpenBSD has supported static PIE since 2015; not just supported, but all system static binaries (e.g. /bin and /sbin) are built as static PIEs…
Comment linking /blog/aslr-protection-for-statically-linked-executables
on “Dynamic linking”Submitted The Case of the Modified Binaries as a story · 193 points
HN discussionCould it be a man in the middle that tries to install updates that aren't signed by Microsoft? It reminds me of this: http://www.leviathansecurity.com/blog/the-case-of-the-modifi... .
Comment linking /blog/the-case-of-the-modified-binaries/
on “Windows 7 Update appears to be compromised?”Submitted What can you do with an Android application with no permissions? as a story · 138 points
HN discussionThat publication doesn't seem to mention the "lagged" part, or maybe I missed it. I am aware of https://www.leviathansecurity.com/blog/attacking-gos-lagged-... which also refers to it as a lagged Fibonacci generator. Rob Pike and I exchanged mail with Don Mitchell (who wrote the original C version of the Go 1 generator) a few months back to see how he would describe the algorithm, and he said "As I recall Jim and I…
Comment linking /blog/attacking-gos-lagged-fibonacci-generator
on “Secure Randomness in Go 1.22”Submitted Automated Analysis of Firefox/Tor Payload as a story · 5 points
HN discussionProducing static PIE binaries is a bigger challenge still. $ go build -ldflags '-linkmode external -s -w -extldflags "--static-pie"' -buildmode=pie -tags 'osusergo,netgo,static_build' main.go For anyone curious to delve into what is this and why: https://www.leviathansecurity.com/blog/aslr-protection-for-s...
Comment linking /blog/aslr-protection-for-statically-linked-executables
on “Building static binaries with Go on Linux”Submitted ASLR Protection for Statically Linked Executables as a story · 4 points
HN discussion> already been feeling the heat I think you're misdiagnosing where Tor is "feeling the heat" from. From an engineering perspective, it's been oversold as solving problems it can never hope to. People who route their traffic through Tor are nearly guaranteed to get malware back [1]. Hidden Services are a hack that don't adequately protect your privacy [2]. And several who have staked their livelihood on being anonymo…
Comment linking /blog/the-case-of-the-modified-binaries/
on “Tor hires former EFF chief as executive director”Submitted The Problem with RELRO/ASLR in Statically-Linked Executables or Lack Thereof as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAdler32 is very broken, but it doesnt really matter as you can use other checksums on top. http://www.leviathansecurity.com/blog/archives/16-Analysis-o... Browsers should just stop supporting deflate, dont say they can in the request, and servers should drop it too. Ideally gzip support should be required not negotiable.
Comment linking /blog/archives/16-Analysis-of-Adler32.html
on “Why you should always use gzip instead of deflate compression”Submitted ASLR Protection for Statically Linked Executables as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Case of the Modified Binaries as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Encoding Bitwise Functions as Polynomials as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Misunderstandings About the Need for RELRO/ASLR in Statically-Linked Executables as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
