Peter Hansteen, a BSD sysadmin and author, writes about OpenBSD, the PF packet filter, spam fighting, and network security.
HN commenters link it for OpenBSD guides, including running OpenBSD on a modern laptop, and list it among blogs worth following.
> Whether or not FB is deliberately blocking Tor now, how out-of-line would it be for them to eventually block it in the future?
> tl;dr: Why use Tor + FB?
Fair point, there may only be some arcane use cases for the combo, but the dilemma becomes far more stark at:
"How out-of-line would it be for users of the internet writ large to aggressively block IP addresses associated with malicious activity?"
There was a call to "name and shame" DDOS participants a few months back, with the argument that every operator has the obligation to keep their "systems in trim."
http://bsdly.blogspot.ca/2012/12/ddos-bots-are-people-or-manned-by-some.html
I was enamored with the idea. AV blacklists code, why not source? The AV industry has learned (for the most part) that sharing malware samples is for the good of everyone. But victims tend to stay silent about the IPs that participated in a DDOS, or worse, launched targeted intrusions.
Why not build a list of pariah IPs and refuse to talk to them until they get their act together?
Turns out that puts radical constraints on some useful projects, like Tor. Bot farmers might accidentally DDOS not only their target, but all of Tor if exit nodes were quickly blacklisted. Possibly worse, a government could intentionally spew noisy malicious activity through the network to get the endpoints shut down with deniability.
Is it possible for a Tor exit node to "keep their system in trim?" Preventing its use as a gateway for malicious…
This is completely false. The author of the original article (http://bsdly.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/the-uk-porn-filter-blocks-kids-access.html), Peter N. M. Hansteen, confused one ISP's opt-in parental whitelist with the UK's national opt-out blacklist. When informed of his error, he did not correct it but just added an update at the bottom ranting about opt-in parental filters, so sites like TGDaily and TechEye are still reading the first few pages and perpetuating the falsehood.
This makes opponents of UK censorship look like clueless idiots and hurts the entire cause. Nice job, Peter Hansteen.
This is the first physical copy of The Book of PF, 3rd edition ever handled and signed by its author.
The proceeds of this sale will go in its entirety to the OpenBSD Foundation, as outlined in my blog post at http://bsdly.blogspot.no/2014/10/the-book-of-pf-3rd-edition-is-here.html
The item is new, as I'm writing this the ink is barely dry and I will fill in the amount and winner's name after the acution concludes.
The regular product listing is at http://www.nostarch.com/pf3
This 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-chartestdoc-is.html - also contains a link to a further rant about other document formats that were supposed to be "standard" and "portable".
I 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-lessons-learned.html
Related to OpenBSD, and BSD in general. Peter N. M. Hansteen is auctioning off the first signed copy The Book of PF, 3rd edition. He will be supporting the OpenBSD Foundation by donating the amount raised.
http://bsdly.blogspot.ca/2014/10/the-book-of-pf-3rd-edition-is-here.html