Top all-time · #2390
RET2 Systems Blog
Company blog · blog.ret2.iosecuritysystems
RET2 Systems Blog is the company blog at blog.ret2.io, writing about security and systems. Since 2017, 32 different Hacker News readers have linked it 37 times, most often “JTAG 'Hacking' the Original Xbox in 2023”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-06-11, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (8) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Linked for security and exploit write-ups, including a Windows POSIX subsystem post, a Pwn2Own Safari JavaScriptCore exploit analysis, Xbox JTAG boot ROM dumping, and scalable security education.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 8 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
The RET2 Engineering Blog documents some of the research and technical musings of our engineers in the subjects of computer security, vulnerability research,...
Most-linked posts?
- JTAG 'Hacking' the Original Xbox in 20235 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-08-09
- Exploitation of a JavaScriptCore WebAssembly Vulnerability (CVE-2021-30734)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-06-02
- Hello World! Compiling Executables for the Classic POSIX Subsystem on Windows3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-09-20
- The Oddest Place You Will Ever Find PAC3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-06-16
- Snapcraft Packages Come with Extra Baggage2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-08-04
- Augmenting Esoteric Security Subjects with Gamification and Accessibility2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-09-11
- Root Cause Analysis of a Non-Deterministic JavaScriptCore Vulnerability2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-06-20
What Hacker News says?
HN hasn't focused on those topics in a long time, they rarely are on the front page. Skip the top 20 articles and you'll start to see some interesting content instead of all the VC & AI drivel. Hackaday is a content aggregator site that usually has more content on these topics - https://hackaday.com Or there are still some good old blogs out there with RSS feeds http://www.righto.com/ http://oldvcr.blogspot.com/ htt…
Comment linking /
on “Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help”Submitted JTAG 'Hacking' the Original Xbox in 2023 as a story · 189 points
HN discussionHaving grokked the abstract, I feel like can speculate a bit as to what is going on. Take this with a grain of salt; I have no clue what has actually been discovered. I believe that the researchers have found a way to remove PAC as a barrier to exploitation by disclosing PAC verification results via speculative execution. This is only useful to attackers going after a target that uses PAC, and those attackers will n…
Comment linking /2021/06/16/intro-to-pac-arm64/
on “MIT researchers uncover ‘unpatchable’ flaw in Apple M1 chips”Submitted A Sampling of Anti-Decompilation Techniques as a story · 120 points
HN discussionIt used to have a POSIX subsystem, but was removed in Windows 8.1: https://blog.ret2.io/2017/09/20/subsystem-posix/
Comment linking /2017/09/20/subsystem-posix/
on “Microsoft's Linux Kernel”Submitted Root Cause Analysis of a Non-Deterministic JavaScriptCore Vulnerability as a story · 90 points
HN discussionCheck out: https://blog.ret2.io/2018/09/11/scalable-security-education/ These guys have built an epic b0f research education platform - could be also sold as a cloud-based research platform for vuln developers Another one is https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClcE-kVhqyiHCcjYwcpfj9w/vid... for mostly C/C++ overflow type education
Comment linking /2018/09/11/scalable-security-education/
on “Pwn.college”Submitted Fuzzing Modern UDP Game Protocols with Snapshot-Based Fuzzers as a story · 80 points
HN discussionPointer authentication has been around for several years already. As with many things in hardware, though, it takes time for the software ecosystem around it to mature. Still, I've found it to be quite influential. Here are a couple "real world" examples-- Project Zero had a blogpost about some of the weaknesses on the original Pointer Auth spec [0], and even had a follow up [1]. Here is an example of what some miti…
Comment linking /2021/06/16/intro-to-pac-arm64/
on “AWS Graviton 3 Instances”Submitted The LDT, a Perfect Home for All Your Kernel Payloads as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThere's not a lot of comments here, so I'll give a tl;dr: They found a "use after free" bug in JavaScriptCore due to some asnyc GC and used it to get RCE in Safari at Pwn2Own. By making a large array of arrays, and then reversing them, they interfered with the "mark" part of "mark and sweep", resulting in some of the arrays not being marked and therefore being swept (freed) and used for other things. Pretty picture…
Comment linking /2018/06/19/pwn2own-2018-root-cause-analysis/
on “Root Cause Analysis of a Non-Deterministic JavaScriptCore Vulnerability”Submitted In Transactional Memory, No One Can Hear You Scream as a story · 5 points
HN discussionBetter to post a link to the direct article https://blog.ret2.io/2023/08/09/jtag-hacking-the-original-xb...
Comment linking /2023/08/09/jtag-hacking-the-original-xbox-2023/
on “Using JTAG to Dump the Xbox’s Boot ROM”Submitted Root Cause Analysis of a Non-Deterministic JavaScriptCore Vulnerability as a story · 5 points
HN discussionNo. This one. [0]. Even before that, there are several other sandbox escapes that predated the one you posted. [1] [2] and this one [3] can be used to trivially escape its sandbox with either of these vulnerabilities. So it is not the magical silver bullet one may easily think it is. [0] https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-11645 [1] https://blog.ret2.io/2021/06/02/pwn2own-2021-jsc-exploit/ [2] https://issues.c…
Comment linking /2021/06/02/pwn2own-2021-jsc-exploit/
on “Pyodide 314.0: Python packages can now publish WebAssembly wheels to PyPI”Submitted Hello World! Compiling Executables for the Classic POSIX Subsystem on Windows as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted JTAG 'Hacking' the Original Xbox in 2023 as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Snapcraft Packages Come with Extra Baggage as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Practical Decompilation of Ethereum Smart Contracts as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted JTAG 'Hacking' the Original Xbox in 2023 as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted JTAG 'Hacking' the Original Xbox in 2023 as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Tenet: An Execution Trace Explorer for Reverse Engineers as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Augmenting Esoteric Security Subjects with Gamification and Accessibility as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Single-Click Exploitation of Apple Safari with CVE-2018-4192 as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Oddest Place You Will Ever Find PAC as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Exploitation of a JavaScriptCore WebAssembly Vulnerability (CVE-2021-30734) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted 7 Days to Lift: A Mission in Microcode as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Timeless Debugging of Complex Software as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Root Cause Analysis of a Non-Deterministic JavaScriptCore Vulnerability as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Methodical Approach to Browser Exploitation as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
