Top all-time · #247
Samy Kamkar
Personal blog · samy.plsecurityhardwareprogramming
Samy Kamkar writes samy kamkar ≈) home, a personal blog at samy.pl about security, hardware and programming. Since 2010, 187 different Hacker News readers have linked it 222 times, most often “Evercookie: A cookie that undeletes itself from 8 different storages”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Rarely recommended · 3 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Samy Kamkar's site as a catalogue of his security projects (EverCookie, PoisonTap, NAT Slipstreaming, pwnat, OpenSesame, KeySweeper, MagSpoof) and a source for attack write-ups.
- Recommended for · 3 comments
- One commenter calls a sample of his work a good post-relevant reference and says it is worth looking at; another says he was 'genius' for exposing router-based
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
samy kamkar's open source projects, code, hardware, applied hacking, videos, talks, and other infectious technology.
Most-linked posts?
- Evercookie: A cookie that undeletes itself from 8 different storages44 people · 47 mentions · first linked 2010-09-21
- Pwnat – Autonomous Nat Traversal (2010)16 people · 19 mentions · first linked 2016-09-08
- PoisonTap (2016)13 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2016-11-16
- NAT Slipstreaming12 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2020-10-31
- NAT-to-NAT direct connections with no proxy/STUN needed11 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2010-03-28
- OpenSesame – A device that can open fixed-code garage doors in seconds11 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2015-06-04
- Homepage that looks like windows7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2018-07-16
- Evercookie6 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2016-06-16
- The MySpace Worm (2005)6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2019-06-24
- Mapping to GPS coordinates via router XSS + Google Location Services6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2010-08-15
What Hacker News says?
I thought I was smart by doing "curl https://samy.pl/ ". :(
Comment linking /
on “Click”Submitted NAT Slipstreaming as a story · 555 points
HN discussionReminds me of Samy's website. For a fun time, try to view the page source: https://samy.pl/
Comment linking /
on “Click”Submitted KeySweeper – Arduino-based passive wireless keyboard sniffer as a story · 462 points
HN discussionProof of concept: https://samy.pl/poisontap/
Comment linking /poisontap/
on “Found hooked up to my router”Submitted Evercookie: A cookie that undeletes itself from 8 different storages as a story · 391 points
HN discussion> site showing the ads could easily fake Yes, that's what I mean by "unable to verify"; If the site is honest, everyone would be just as happy, but there is already so much fraud, even with (relatively) trustworthy Google and Facebook, that everyone wants some ability to verify; If all the traffic goes only through the site, that ability is lost. > Assuming that the advertising site would just have a proxy that tunn…
Comment linking /evercookie/
on “Insane state of today's advertising part 3”Submitted OpenSesame – A device that can open fixed-code garage doors in seconds as a story · 296 points
HN discussionLike I mentioned in parent comment, my project has had a lot of success with that. I know I was able to fool the Evercookie[1]. I can even have different profiles have different browser engines if I want. They each use individual prefs.js files. [1]: https://samy.pl/evercookie/
Comment linking /evercookie/
on “Google Container for Firefox – Prevent Google from tracking you around the web”Submitted NAT-to-NAT direct connections with no proxy/STUN needed as a story · 162 points
HN discussionSamy Kamkar who did Opensesame on the Radica Girltech also did a DefCon presentation about attacking rolling code remotes as well: http://samy.pl/defcon2015/
Comment linking /defcon2015/
on “Flipper Zero – Portable Multi-Tool Device for Geeks”Submitted USBdriveby – Exploiting USB in Style as a story · 100 points
HN discussionThat's circumstantial evidence at best. Here's more useless analytical evidence to suggest that most people don't know everything: when Samy Kamkar[0] first demonstrated geolocation via BSSIDs, I tried out every wireless router in my house, including one that had not been plugged into a wall in over 4 years and never at my current residence, long before Google started wardriving for street maps and well before the f…
Comment linking /mapxss/
on “Path uploads your entire iPhone address book to its servers”Submitted Pwnat – Autonomous Nat Traversal (2010) as a story · 97 points
HN discussionSince the other examples don't appear to have convinced you, how about this one: https://samy.pl/poisontap/ Visit a single HTTP page while that's plugged in and it'll trigger an exploit that siphons all non-secure-flagged cookies off of every popular site that doesn't use HSTS (including the config pages of insecure routers on your LAN), and installs a persistent backdoor in them so the attacker can continue accessi…
Comment linking /poisontap/
on “Chrome 68 will mark all HTTP sites as “not secure””Submitted Combo Breaker – 3D printed, battery powered lock cracking device as a story · 90 points
HN discussionThanks for the name, with it I was able to find the article I was thinking of: http://samy.pl/opensesame/
Comment linking /opensesame/
on “A previously unnoticed property of prime numbers”Submitted Find anyone's address from their router MAC code as a story · 68 points
HN discussionI would highly recommend looking into this (seemingly-obscure) technique for NAT hole punching: https://samy.pl/pwnat/ It would allow for a "magic wormhole"-style system without the need for a MITM (trusted or otherwise).
Comment linking /pwnat/
on “Magic-Wormhole – Get things from one computer to another, safely”Submitted PoisonTap (2016) as a story · 40 points
HN discussionIn other words, the situation hasn't changed since the 90s. http://www.unc.edu/depts/jomc/academics/dri/idog.html (By the way, is anyone using http://samy.pl/evercookie/ in practice?)
Comment linking /evercookie/
on “You’re not anonymous. I know your name, email, and company.”Submitted SkyJack - autonomous drone hacking as a story · 29 points
HN discussion> Firefox violates user privacy since years by allowing long term tracking cookies to be saved by default without asking the user. This statement doesn't make sense. All cookies can be tracking cookies and for example all session cookies are tracking cookies by definition. Assuming for the sake of argument that you're referring to third-party tracking cookies, such as those from Google Analytics, or Facebook, this i…
Comment linking /evercookie/
on “UnGoogled Chromium: Chromium with enhanced privacy, control and transparency”Submitted ProxyGambit – Anonymize net over GSM or PTP link as a story · 25 points
HN discussionThat's a good question. Is there anything to stop a disreputable advertiser/tracker hijacking the EME DRM scheme for tracking? The evercookie project doesn't appear to leverage EME, for what that's worth. https://samy.pl/evercookie/
Comment linking /evercookie/
on “Chrome phasing out support for User-Agent”Submitted NAT pinning as a story · 21 points
HN discussionI usually setup a reverse ssh tunnel from the destination to a VPS I own. For example, you could setup a reverse tunnel to sshd on the destination, exposing sshd of the destination on the VPS, to which I ssh and specfiy the VPS hostname + the reverse tunnel port, which tunnels me ssh the destination host. Also, if you can't open ports outbound at all, there's https://samy.pl/pwnat/ but it makes things very slow.
Comment linking /pwnat/
on “Setting up a home VPN server with WireGuard”Submitted Samy Kamkar: PoisonTap – exploiting locked computers over USB as a story · 18 points
HN discussionThis Wizard https://www.samy.pl/
Comment linking /
on “Unfork()”Submitted Combo Breaker – 3D printed lock cracking device as a story · 8 points
HN discussion
