Top all-time · #2028
Peter
Personal blog · bsdly.blogspot.comsystemssecurityprogramming
Peter writes That grumpy BSD guy, a personal blog at bsdly.blogspot.com about systems, security and programming. Since 2009, 39 different Hacker News readers have linked it 85 times, most often “What every IT person needs to know about OpenBSD”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-08, and you can follow it by feed.
Field notes and occasional musings by Peter on stuff that happens, from a free software perspective, mainly OpenBSD, FreeBSD.
Most-linked posts?
- What every IT person needs to know about OpenBSD4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-09-30
- Why Not Use Port Knocking? (2012)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-04-11
- A Few of My Favorite Things About the OpenBSD Packet Filter Tools2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-09-25
- The Sextortion Scams: The Numbers Show We Have A Failure of Education2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-02-29
- Implementation of the Carrier Pigeon Internet Protocol, RFC1149, 25 Years Later2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-04-25
- That grumpy BSD guy: Keep smiling, waste spammers' time2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-05-04
- OpenSMTPD Is the Mail Server for the Future2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-05-17
- Can Your Spam-Eater Manage to Catch Seventy-One Percent Like This Other Service?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-12-23
- What to expect in OpenBSD 5.0 onwards2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-07-19
- Forcing the password gropers through a smaller hole with OpenBSD's PF queues2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-04-19
What Hacker News says?
Worth looking at: http://bsdly.blogspot.com/2013/02/theres-no-protection-in-hi...
Comment linking /2013/02/theres-no-protection-in-high-ports.html
on “How I spend my first 5 minutes on a server”Submitted OpenBSD and the modern laptop as a story · 157 points
HN discussionThis reminds me of my own screed of a much simpler document (an ASCII table generated as a printer test back in the late 1980s) that was not possible to render correctly some years later - https://bsdly.blogspot.com/2013/11/compatibility-is-hard-cha... - also contains a link to a further rant about other document formats that were supposed to be "standard" and "portable".
Comment linking /2013/11/compatibility-is-hard-chartestdoc-is.html
on “Original WWW proposal is a Word for Macintosh 4 file from 1990, can we open it?”Submitted Yes, the Book of PF, fourth edition is coming soon as a story · 138 points
HN discussionMore likely than not, you will be up and running inside of minutes. My most recent laptop upgrade ran like this: http://bsdly.blogspot.com/2017/07/openbsd-and-modern-laptop....
Comment linking /2017/07/openbsd-and-modern-laptop.html
on “OpenBSD 6.4 released”Submitted The OpenSSH Bug That Wasn't as a story · 129 points
HN discussionhttps://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/ https://bentrask.com/ http://nullprogram.com/ https://drewdevault.com/ https://joeyh.name/blog/ https://bsdly.blogspot.com/ http://apenwarr.ca/log/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What are your favourite developer blogs?”Submitted Solaris adopting OpenBSD's pf as a story · 129 points
HN discussionIt may depend on the model; this guy got a lot of mileage out of his Clevo-made laptop: https://bsdly.blogspot.com/2017/07/openbsd-and-modern-laptop...
Comment linking /2017/07/openbsd-and-modern-laptop.html
on “The new MacBook Pros with T2 chips do indeed kernel panic randomly”Submitted Recent and not so recent changes in OpenBSD as a story · 99 points
HN discussionhttps://bsdly.blogspot.com/2021/09/what-every-it-person-need... is the original article mentioned at the very end of the submitted article.
Comment linking /2021/09/what-every-it-person-needs-to-know.html
on “OpenBSD: How it all started”Submitted A Few of My Favorite Things About the OpenBSD Packet Filter Tools as a story · 81 points
HN discussionThe probable reason is that somebody did not like my reporting on the fairly obvious "sextortion" scams, in this piece https://bsdly.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-sextortion-scams-numb... which is also available as https://nxdomain.no/~peter/the_numbers_show_we_have_a_failur... . Enjoy! And I still refuse to believe anybody would actually be sexually aroused by any of my published writing.
Comment linking /2020/02/the-sextortion-scams-numbers-show-that.html
on “A Few of My Favorite Things About the OpenBSD Packet Filter Tools”Submitted Forcing the password gropers through a smaller hole with OpenBSD's PF queues as a story · 70 points
HN discussionJumphosts have their uses, but in this case, I really don't see it. As others have pointed out, better yet is VPN only access. As for the port knocking silliness, well, I don't see any reason for it. http://bsdly.blogspot.com/2012/04/why-not-use-port-knocking....
Comment linking /2012/04/why-not-use-port-knocking.html
on “Bastion hosts”Submitted What every IT person needs to know about OpenBSD as a story · 51 points
HN discussionI just checked my account's security history, and there's been a failed login attempt every 7 hours for the past two days, all from different IP addresses. It reminds me of the "Hail Mary Cloud" posted previously on HN - http://bsdly.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-hail-mary-cloud-and-le...
Comment linking /2013/10/the-hail-mary-cloud-and-lessons-learned.html
on “Github seems to be experiencing security issues”Submitted OpenBSD's traffic shaping changing in future releases as a story · 40 points
HN discussionor with trackers https://bsdly.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-despicable-no-good-bl... #wankstortion #extortion #sextortion #cybercrime #blackmail #OpenBSD #spamd #onlinescams #greytrapping #fraud #spamtraps #spam #bitcoin My last ever piece about this silliness, I sincerely hope.
Comment linking /2022/12/the-despicable-no-good-blackmail.html
on “The Despicable, No Good, Blackmail Campaign Targeting Imaginary Friends?”Submitted SPF Protected Spammers in the Public Cloud, Spamware to Spamtraps, SSH Groping as a story · 39 points
HN discussionFor those looking for nicer formatting, the article is also available as a three part APNIC guest blog post https://blog.apnic.net/2021/10/28/openbsd-part-1-how-it-all-... (links to the other two articles should be very easy to find from there) or the original blogspot version https://bsdly.blogspot.com/2021/09/what-every-it-person-need... (and yes, the article was originally published in September 2021). The nxdoma…
Comment linking /2021/09/what-every-it-person-needs-to-know.html
on “What every IT person needs to know about OpenBSD”Submitted If We Go One Attempt Every Ten Seconds, We're Under The Radar as a story · 34 points
HN discussionA question on IRC I had to answer. Also with nicer formatting but trackers https://bsdly.blogspot.com/2022/12/can-your-spam-eater-manag... #openbsd #spamd #measuring #metrics #effectiveness #greylisting #greytrapping,
Comment linking /2022/12/can-your-spam-eater-manage-to-catch.html
on “Can Your Spam-Eater Manage to Catch Seventy-One Percent Like This Other Service?”Submitted What to expect in OpenBSD 5.0 onwards as a story · 29 points
HN discussionalso available with nicer formatting as https://bsdly.blogspot.com/2022/12/that-grumpy-bsd-guy-harve...
Comment linking /2022/12/that-grumpy-bsd-guy-harvesting-noise.html
on “That Grumpy BSD Guy: Harvesting the Noise While It's Fresh, Revisited”Submitted The Hail Mary Cloud And The Lessons Learned as a story · 26 points
HN discussionSubmitted RFC7505 Means Yes, Your Domain Can Refuse to Handle Mail as a story · 24 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Sextortion Scams: The Numbers Show We Have A Failure of Education as a story · 18 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why Not Use Port Knocking? (2012) as a story · 16 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Bus Ride and the (At Least) 3x UX FAILs as a story · 12 points
HN discussion
