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I didn't realize PoisonTap's creator, Samy, is also the creator of the Evercookie[0], a persistent identifying cookie that remains sharded(then recombines) in your system even after clearing your cookies. While a very cool project, it has some scary implications on users not trained in their removal.

[0] https://github.com/samyk/evercookie

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He's a prolific security researcher. Evercookie got him the fame and since then he's been researching all sorts of security vulnerabilities even on things like combination locks [1], I enjoy his video tutorials a lot.

[1] http://samy.pl/combobreaker/

I'd argue the Myspace worm [1] was what really got him the fame.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samy_(computer_worm)

Thanks, I had no idea he was also behind that one!

That's quite a severe sentencing for a "Guestbook Signing" XSS exploit. I wonder if the sentence was reduced.

Yeah, not sure why he was punished so harshly for something that probably didn't inconvenience users too much and was clearly intended as a prank. I do see that Myspace might've spent $20,000 or more to remediate th situation but it seems harsh to make him pay all that.

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