HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

mh_

8,207 karma · joined January 2, 2009

http://blog.thinkst.com
submissionscomments
mh_··on It's our birthday – so we built everyone this retro game
We build tools (commercial: https://canary.tools) and free (https://canarytokens.org | https://opencanary.org) that help slowdown/detect attackers.

It supports normal(ish) pacman-like activity, except some of the dots you consume might be canaries, which will slow you down/likely lead to you being detected/caught.

mh_··on It's our birthday – so we built everyone this retro game
It’s our birthday - so we built everyone this retro game.

(Complete all levels, and we will send you a special 10-year edition t-shirt)

mh_··on Be careful of the examples you use. They stick
Heh. "You can totally put in any value here, as long as its exactly this one"
mh_··on Canary Tokens
You totally can?
mh_··on Apples AT&T demo was a good example of pg's “relentlessly resourceful”
Ouch. I’m super curious why you found it such a waste. I found it super interesting (I guess for all the reasons in the post)
mh_··on Ask HN: Can we ban Twitter links, please?
I wrote this about 13 years ago (a little tongue in cheek) but it held up:

https://sensepost.com/blog/2009/twitter-killed-the-infosec-b...

-snip- There’s something liberating about saying “here’s a link”, as opposed to taking the time to formulate your thoughts into a full blown posting.

We were curious if this twitter-effect was real, imaginary or only applicable to lazy people like us.. Thanks to python-twitter and a few lines of script we can look at the the blogging habits of some info-sec superstars (and maybe confuse correlation and causation to jump to conclusions while we at it). -snip-

mh_··on Ask HN: Will referral codes cheapen honest referrals?
We are already pretty ok at gifting back (our hoodies/gifts have a pretty good rep).

I kinda default to “don’t mess with it” but sometimes wish we could do more to say thanks.

mh_··on Good attacks make good detections make good attacks (a MySQL booby-trap)
You can wave the encoding away (with a tick-box) but in general, people over-estimate what attackers will "notice". In cases like this, many are as desperate to get the loot as users are when they get phished. dialogue boxes and browser warning fade into the background as they hit "accept" to move closer to their goal.
mh_··on We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR
I think it would depend on how those experts roll.

For infosec for example, i think if your product did "X amazing thing", then you'd definitely get a seasoned experts attention if you tweeted "hey, we built a thing that does X amazing thing, give me 5 minutes and i'll show it to you"

I think theres a part of this that means your products has to convince them in the 5 minutes they give you (or at least has to convince them to give you 5 minutes more)

mh_··on We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR
I've previously pondered how we would have approached our early steps if we were completely unknown, and the best option i can think of is a kind of sincere, influencer marketing approach.

i.e. if you dont have the voice in the industry that people will listen to, find people who do, and get them to see your product. Most industry leaders are constantly looking to up their game, so you should be able to catch their eye, and if your product is awesome, they will say so

mh_··on We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR
We do average to above average salaries, and all share a profit share bonus at the end of the year. Everyone gets a company credit card to buy books/tech needed to do their jobs. Everyone gets side benefits like an audible subscription, other mini stipends.

It's worth noting that we couldn't always do this (starting off we just went with "decent salaries and smart ppl to work with").

We try to keep doing this right so that we all do well as the company does.

mh_··on We bootstrapped to $11M in ARR
We were a little bit lucky in this regard, because we had some authority in the niche (2 members of our original team had spoken at security conferences internationally for the previous 10 years).

I have lots of thoughts on this though. I think with a low enough burn rate, you can overcome this with a great product, and taking just one bite at a time. ie. one happy customer, then another. Actual customer happiness is so low, that you just have to do a little better to have people talk about you, and over time it compounds nicely.

mh_··on NSA Owns Everything (2015)
Also, in our defense, we wrote this in 2015 :)
mh_··on NSA Owns Everything (2015)
What they (we) are talking about, is that nobody caught the attacks.

The article then goes on to explain why, even with hundreds of thousands of ppl doing incident response investigations, nobody caught / correctly attributed these attacks.

mh_··on NSA Owns Everything (2015)
As the original author of the piece... I agree :)
mh_··on Port knocking
To defend Canarytokens here (and I’m totally biased because we make it) some tokens can’t be easily avoided. Ie. If the token is a Slack/AWS/something API key, then the only way for the attacker to profit is to use it, and the moment they do, they tip their hand. The joy of Canarytokens is not having to set up infrastructure to get the alerting win, with very little effort.
mh_··on Ask HN: Can you source this pg quote?
Thanks! I'm guessing it must have been in the talk given at Google (that the essay is based on) that appears to no longer live on the internet.
mh_··on Show HN: URL Canary – Get an alert when someone finds your secrets
This is neat.. Its currently a single type of token (ie. a URL).

If you check out https://canarytokens.org you will notice the ability to create several others (be notified when someone resolves an IP address, be notified when someone opens a file, be notified when someone views a QR code, etc)

mh_··on Show HN: URL Canary – Get an alert when someone finds your secrets
Canarytoken allows you to download a docker instance, so you can host the server on any domain you like.
mh_··on Uber Database Breach Exposed Information of 50,000 Drivers, Company Confirms
You are spot on.. I mean, look at Target.. They were pillaged because they didn't have.. Oh.. Wait.. They had a security team of over 300 people..

This problem might just be a little more complex than we are giving credit for..

mh_··on New Snowden Docs Indicate Scope of NSA Preparations for Cyber Battle
Agree completely..

When the docs first leaked, I wrote this: https://medium.com/@haroonmeer/why-discussions-on-cyber-snoo...

mh_··on GCC 4.9 is doing “some seriously crazy shit” according to Linus Torvalds
(just to play devils advocate) How do you figure "the evidence contradicts him" ? His attitude: launched & maintains the largest free collaborative dev known to man (?) which has generated squillions as a by-product. Yours/My attitude: makes some friends

seems to me he has some runs on the scoreboard (and some facts on the ground)

mh_··on Bypass PayPal's Two-Factor Authentication
The disclosure process is always fraught with peril (and pain) and its a safe bet that no matter what a discloser does, there will be some person or group who thinks they should have handled it differently. In a case like this, when reasonable time is given, and the world gets to benefit from a great deal of work (effectively done for free), i tend to simply say thanks, and make notes..
mh_··on Turkey pushes through new raft of 'draconian' Internet restrictions
I'm assuming that when you point towards the story of Asma Bint Marwan you acknowledge that classical scholars have rejected this story? It also pretty amazing that you would complain about an ad hominem when your comment led with "what did you expect an islamist to do?" (I also note your silence on the fact that draconian Internet silliness seems ok when done by non-"islamists")

Again: There is certainly a lot in the OP's post relevant to HN, but i would submit that sweeping statements on religions are not

mh_··on Turkey pushes through new raft of 'draconian' Internet restrictions
Your statement: "islam means criticism of the government = criticism of the religion = punishable by death" is patently untrue (and is really better saved for clan meetings than HN). Do you have citations for: "The prophet executed people for that"? (Its kinda interesting that with all the recent documentation of states using the Internet to infringe on peoples rights, the moment Turkey does it, the response is: "see.. islam!")
mh_··on U.S. to China: We Hacked Your Internet Gear We Told You Not to Hack
I guess at this point, its fair to ask all those previous commenters who were telling us: "It just doesn't work like that.. We were in the dept of defense.. you guys don't understand" to comment..
mh_··on Be the best?
I must confess to finding this answer pretty insulting (but i guess in truth, you are calling everyone monkeys, and just distinguishing between those that climb to the top and those that don't)

I guess the counter-thought would be that of exploration & discovery, where we need trailblazers to set the path that others will follow later..

mh_··on Show HN: Phish your own organization (with our app)
Thanks. There are a manual ways to do it (through booting off a live-cd) and there are some companies selling it as a service, but we are aiming for quick, painless but useful..

Would love to hear your thoughts (humans@phish5.com)

mh_··on TRA denies jail and fine up to Dh1 million for using Skype in UAE
a) this comment is annoyingly simple minded and pretty plainly racist. ("Those people"? Really?) b) with all the talk of un-warranted wiretaps, and the state of surveillance building up in the US/Europe, it's probably a bad time to throw stones c) it's worth spending some time to investigate how "those" countries have had democracy deliberately crippled for decades by western powers needing puppet dictators to guarantee their flow of oil (try a YouTube search for "secrets of the seven sisters")
mh_··on Peter Thiel - You are Not a Lottery Ticket [video]
According to the Googles, you can grab the .mp3 of the talk here: http://mp3yeah.com/download.php?id=83442458&t=Peter%20Th...
Page 1 of 3Next →