Why the practical applications of Bitcoin will be limited - <AUTHOR> http://sidazhang.com/3-reasons-why-bitcoin-wont-be-the-new-internet/ <comment><USER2> I think this essay is top heavy: the conclusions can't hold given the assumptions.

Take the first argument: for transactions to remain cheap one of three things has to happen, then those three things are painted as almost impossible.

But the second one; "At the same fee level, transaction count must increase 250 folds." Seems completely possible.

If transactions remain relatively cheap then bitcoin can be very useful for microtransactions. And if they are useful for microtransactions then, by there nature, there will be many more transactions.

Then the author is all over the map in the second section. At one point saying decentralized entities are useless, then that they don't provide value compared to traditional centralized entities, then than they /are/ real competition for those traditional services but the only real beneficiaries of trustless decentralized transactions are people engaged in illegal activity.

They close out by saying since cyberpunks, drug dealers, and gamblers use bitcoin now, it will never find a place in the public sphere. But the blockchain idea is a good one and will find some sort of use.

TL:DR The first point was interesting but flawed. The rest was garbage.

<comment><USER3> I think he means transactions per block, which is hard to increase 250x.

<comment><USER4> The Bitcoin devs are working right now on something that could increase the block size more than that.

The main thing that limits the size is latency in propagating large blocks. But most miners already have most of the transactions in each block. All you really need to send is a small data structure that lets the miner reconstruct the full block, from the transactions he already has. An invertible bloom lookup table makes that pretty easy: [http://www.i-programmer.info/programming/theory/4641-the- inv...](http://www.i-programmer.info/programming/theory/4641-the-invertible- bloom-filter.html?start)

Using this, a home bandwidth connection could handle about 45,000 tx/sec, which is more than Visa at peak: [https://gist.github.com/gavinandresen/e20c3b5a1d4b97f79ac2](https://gist.github.com/gavinandresen/e20c3b5a1d4b97f79ac2)

The other problem is blockchain storage. They're planning to prune old empty addresses, which should help a lot. A more radical solution is to store the full blocks only for the last couple months, and only a linked set of hashes back to the beginning. That might be a bigger change than Bitcoin can handle, but another currency could do it.

<comment><USER5> Transactions not having to propagate across the network a second time in blocks is certainly nice, but that doesn't solve all the problems of large blocks. As you said, that proposal is focused on maintaining an incentive for miners to create large blocks without having to worry about orphan races.

All full nodes still need to process everyone else's transactions, so bandwidth requirements are still hefty, just not squared. Even if someone's home connection can theoretically maintain 45k tx/s, how many of those generous full node maintainers out there will be excited about the prospect of their Bitcoin node using their entire internet connection? Storage requirements will also still be fairly intensive, even if nodes prune everything but the UTXO set (that needs to be stored in RAM--although that can change--it's a half gig).

Not to mention that proposal can create problems where miners withhold transactions from other miners so they can build secret chains that other miners can't build on until they have see the withheld transactions.

All that aside, your comment still ignores the reality of the situation. The Bitcoin network has been bleeding nodes for ages, and has settled around 6500-7000, probably a little more[1]. What that says to me is that even _if_ Gavin's 20MB block proposal works for him on paper and on his VPS, the reality is that we can barely maintain a healthy node landscape with the current stresses of the network. Upping it to 20MB will likely cause a "shedding" and we will come to the new normal, so on and so forth, until we increase the block size so much that we end up with only a handful of nodes.

This is all assuming the network continues grows to those needs, which I found doubtful.

[1][http://getaddr.bitnodes.io/](http://getaddr.bitnodes.io/)

<comment><USER4> VISA is typically around 2000 tx/sec, so it'd only saturate at peak. And anyone with gigabit fiber won't be bothered even at peak. If we reach that traffic level, gigabit will probably be fairly widespread by then.

I don't see how those nefarious miners could succeed, unless they were powerful enough to carry out a 51% attack anyway. Otherwise their secret chain will soon fall behind the public chain.

<comment><USER6> The fewer miners there are, the easier it is to carry out a 51% attack. And the top miners have much more processing power than the average miner. Just a few of the top ones collaborating could carry it off.

<comment><USER4> That's definitely a problem, and it's the reason other projects are working on ASIC-resistant proof-of-work. I just don't see how the method I described would make things any worse.

<comment><USER6> I'm just pointing out that limiting active miners to people with fast internet connections means there will be fewer of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Despite the click-bait title, the article makes valid points which are very often overlooked or downright ignored by hardcore bitcoiners. As someone who's been watching bitcoin for the past few years, this is in my opinion the plain reality.

<comment><USER8> The problem with that article is not that it makes 0 valid points, it's that it makes some terrible correlations as an attempt to prove cryptos won't be huge.

What does a scammer selling unlicensed shares in porn production have _anything_ to do with the success or failure of cryptocurrency? Bitcoin was simply the method of payment, nothing more.

That example is immediately followed with the eBay + TicketMaster examples and the importance of centralized reputation/trust. The leap is then made to "...drug dealers establish reputation through their PGP key or BitCoin address". Ok, an objectively factual statement. The author proceeds to go off the rails with the assertion that only criminals value decentralized trust. Please.

You know why I would prefer a decentralized trustful solution like OpenBazaar? Because eBay bends me over with fees. In fact, they double dip. And there's nothing I can do about it.

It's not about illegal use cases. It's about empowerment of the individual over seemingly insurmountable institutions. The author is having the wrong discussion.

<comment> post- > The problem with that article is not that it makes 0 valid points, it's that > it makes some terrible correlations as an attempt to prove cryptos won't be > huge.

Actually, the article doesn't set out "to prove cryptos won't be huge," and ends on a crypto-positive note:

> Bitcoin has shown us the promise of blockchain technologies despite its > design shortcomings.

> The future of the technology will probably evolve towards a model that more > resembles real world needs, rather than the needs of "cyberpunks".

To diverge from the article a bit and respond to your final point, I don't know that the mantra of individual empowerment in the Bitcoin world amounts to anything other than solipsism. Bitcoin, as far as I can tell, ignores structural biases preventing people from accessing the cryptocurrency. We can see evidence of this in the "Bitcoin in Africa" startups, which on the surface seem benign and even benevolent, but are hiding an uninterrogated colonialism: their chief assumption, it seems to me, is that the developed world will always control more of Bitcoin's limited resources, and the value of spreading a small portion of those resources to the developing world comes from lock-in. It's a classic unfair trade agreement, and it doesn't take much thought to see how problematic this situation can become.

eBay can bend you over with fees because they control the market; Bitcoin's limited resources are susceptible to the same kind of market control. That's the discussion I wish more people were having.

<comment><USER9> I like your ideas about the colonial aspects of Bitcoin in the developing world. That is an angle I haven't heard anyone else mention before. It pairs nicely with another critique I don't often see, that Bitcoin is undemocratic; there are economic assumptions baked in that, if it were a government-backed money, people could discuss, vote on, and ultimately change. With bitcoin, there is no way that the people whose lives could be affected by those assumptions can have a say in them--the design and operation of bitcoin doesn't answer to the people in a democratic way.

<comment><USER10> That Bitcoin is undemocratic is a good thing. Look around in the world at what democracy has done to currency. Not a single democratic currency has withstood the test of time. It's time for a different approach.

<comment><USER9> I am unable to agree with the statement, "It is time for an undemocratic approach to money".

<comment><USER10> I want an undemocratic currency and I don't want to forbid you from using a democratic currency if you prefer it. I doubt those that like you, who are unable to agree with the statement above, will willingly extend the same courtesy to those like me, who disagree with that statement.

I wonder which group might be in possession of the right idea, the group saying "you don't have to use it if you don't like it" or the group that is already forcing the new currency to be under the same democratic rules of the old, "democratic" currency.

Statism, ideas so good we have to force them on people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The first point is the only real argument IMHO and as others here have said, it's prediction, not reasons. Here's the crux of the first argument:

1\. At the same number of daily transactions, fees must increase 250 folds. Or,

2\. At the same fee level, transaction count must increase 250 folds. Or,

3\. Price increases 250 folds to $65000/BTC. Or,

4\. A combination of all 3

#4 seemed like the question answered itself. Instead the author doesn't acknowledge #4 at all:

"However, neither one of these scenarios is likely to occur. Scenario 1 represents a per transaction fee of $10. Scenario 2 represents 290 transactions per second and close to 25 million transactions per day"

The second part of the first argument is comparing Bitcoin costs to credit card costs. What the author is trying to say is that Fiat->XBT, buy something, then XBT->Fiat is more expensive than credit card fees of 3%. But on Coinbase, for example, that would be ~2% in transaction fees and that will only go down as XBT inventory is held and pooled so not every purchase transaction results in a fiat conversion. That's only being done now as a bootstrapping strategy (and it seems to be working).

I think the author has some good points here but didn't seriously address them, only thinly speculated on them. I'm giving it an up-vote to hopefully have some deeper discussion especially around the first argument of Bitcoin's inherent costs.

A quick side note: I'd like to see an analysis of electricity costs of mining vs. mining fees. Mining fees eventually need to surpass electricity costs for mining to be sustainable after inflation-payments are gone. The difference between costs and fees is the margin the miners will make. To me, that would really answer the first argument.

</comment><comment><USER12> I do belive that bitcoin has huge drawbacks, but there are allready system that are way better in most of these. Delegated prove of stack allows for extreamly low cost, high speed transactions.

The notion of a DAC is extreamly intresting, insead of destroying money be wasting it on energy companys we use this money to improve the infrastructure. This will allow development and even services.

The problem of the transaction and the lack of annonymity can be solved rather well. The goal is identity if you want it, annonymity otherwise.

Bitcoin has a clear first mover advantage but with the development of smart wallets and things like that, altcoins will be more easly integrated with the market.

This technology is in its early days but it does have lits of promis.

> People forget quickly that regulations were enacted in response to fraud and > to protect people.

If you really belive that, you have not studied the history of banking reglation.

Bitcoin suffers from the same problem that all trade on the international internet suffers from, the lack of contract enforcment.

There is a huge diffrece between finacial regulation and contract enforcment. Contracts can be self enforcing by simular mechanisms as it is on ebay. We just need a opt identity system.

</comment><comment><USER13> The title is very click-baity, I think we can all agree on that.

However, a lot of the points made within are completely legit. The Bitcoin world is rife with scams and one of the primary uses of Bitcoin is to engage in illegal transactions. The benefits of de-regulation are obvious, but the downsides are killing it right now. A lot of people are stuck on the "regulation is evil!" rehtoric due to the current issues with the NSA and the government in general, but I think everyone needs to take a step back and realize that a radical shift in the opposite direction is not the answer.

The technology is interesting, and I definitely think we'll see the ideas behind some of these new cryptocurrencies working to change the future of currency in general, but Bitcoin itself is not that future.

I also see that the /r/bitcoin defense force is in full swing here, unsurprisingly.

<comment><USER14> I find arguments against Bitcoin by talking about scams and illegal transactions completely baffling. The same thing happens with cash simply because it is a medium for exchanging value. It is an inherent property of currency.

<comment><USER15> That's also why suitcases full of cash are considered suspicious and you can't bring with you as much as you want across borders[0][1]. The problem is acknowledged (though not solved) when dealing with cash, so that's not a valid argument for ignoring it in Bitcoin.

0: [http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/customs/customs_control...](http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/customs/customs_controls/cash_controls/index_en.htm)

1: [https://help.cbp.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/778/~/declaring...](https://help.cbp.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/778/~/declaring- currency-when-entering-the-u.s.-in-transit-to-a-foreign-destination)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Bad arguments. 1. Reason one is wrong as both increase in transaction volume and BTC price are both not only possible but can actually be positive externalities that reinforce each other. The increase in transactions could lead to an increase in price as more people adopt BTC. This has already proven to be the case in the early history of BTC. 2\. See above. Once adoption increases, the incentive to convert to Fiat decreases thus making this problem gradually irrelevant once the market tips (the big if). 3\. The need for regulations: Obviously total garbage. No need to refute. 4\. Decentralization is better than monopoly central control. Legislators and Regulators are the only true monopolies. Market actors are not, so market based intermediaries will still have reasons to exist. This is not a necessary condition for widespread BTC adoption. 5\. Full decentralization and "censorship resistance(aka freedom)" are important when there is a threat of property confiscation, which will become increasingly relevant when states become desperate for more revenue (already happening). 6\. People don't find daily utility in fast decentralized transactions? That is ludicrous. 7\. Trust. That's the whole point of btc protocol. Achieving trust between unknown parties (refer to Byzantine Generals Problem) 8\. The section on blockchain is good and valid.

</comment><comment><USER17> Is anybody worried about the terrible consequences if Bitcoin does succeed? It will be a like putting the world back on the gold standard, except with even less inflation! Is anger at online transaction fees worth destroying the world economy?

<comment><USER18> I'm worried as you are. That silicon valley snobs will ignore a thousand years of learning, just to spite 'the man'. We've seen abominable cheating, lying and abuses in virtual currency systems - that surpass anything physical currency systems have experienced, in that they happen at the speed of the internet if nothing else.

<comment><USER19> I don't believe people should be banned from doing a whole host of things to ostensibly prevent cheating and fraud. The faith you have in centralised authority is extremely dangerous and leads to things like the multi-trillion dollar LIBOR scandal. Unlike with a market system, industries centralised through thousands of regulatory bans cannot evolve because they are typically dominated by a small number of super-giants, and are monocultures. Super large organisms and monocultures are rare in nature for that reason. If anything is snobbish, it's your willingness to impose your will on others through forceful bans that dictate their personal financial activity.

As for the hacks and thefts that have occurred thus far, it's worth nothing that Bitcoin is a young and immature sector, that is going through its growing pains. There were similar concerns about crime and fraud in the internet's early years too. I can link you to news stories from the 1990s that demonstrate this. It's not reasonable to generalize Bitcoin's first six years to the inherent qualities of p2p electronic cash.

<comment><USER18> No faith; just experience. Virtual currencies are unregulated, and behave like it. That sort of system got us the great depression and numerous recessions.

I appreciate some supporters are there for good reasons; 'snob' may be too strong a word. But it's naïve to believe a pure unregulated market is a good idea, especially one that responds at the speed of light.

And where did that comment about banning bitcoin come from?

<comment><USER19> The experience of a brand new tech industry is not indicative of its future. As mentioned, the internet matured, and became safer, on its own, without regulations. Regulatory prohibitions would have destroyed everything good about the internet.

The Great Depression was caused by the Federal Reserve, not free markets. The current system, in place since 1973, has overseen an increase in the banking sector's share of total corporate profits to 42%, while the Middle Class has been left behind, and the industrial core has been hollowed out.

There have never been as many regulatory bans, centralized regulatory agencies, and leeway for the central bank to manipulate the money supply, as there have been over the 42 years. I'd be interested to know why you don't blame the current state of the economy on the anti-free-market system, the way you pin 1929 on free markets.

>And where did that comment about banning bitcoin come from?

I got the impression that you were endorsing the prevailing political ideology that favors regulatory control over industries. Regulations are a type of ban in function, if not in popular wisdom. They ban action A, if conditions X, Y, and Z aren't met. We now have thousands of such bans, limiting our actions. It makes for an unfree society. It's naive to think that government bureaucrats will not do more harm than good when given the ideological cover to prohibit nearly any activity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> We've moved past the "Bitcoin will die" phase to the "Bitcoin may not be the largest technical innovation since the internet" phase. I'm okay with that.

<comment><USER21> That's not a "phase", that's just a rebuttal to a hyperbolic claim often made by bitcoin fanatics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The author makes a lot of statements but doesn't really back them up with solid facts or analysis. Consider the second reason of "Bitcoin will not end the need for trusted central parties" and claims that intermediaries do more than just payment processing. As an example, he talks about YouTube and revenue splitting.

I don't understand the connection between YouTube revenue splitting and Bitcoin replacing traditional currencies. I guess this is supposed to be an example of intermediaries providing value added, but can we at least provide an example in the payment processing space? What does a credit card company provide that is not provided by Bitcoin?

Overall, I am on the fence on Bitcoin. I get the feeling cryptocurrencies will drastically change the world economy in the future, but I don't think anyone really knows how and to what extent.

<comment><USER23> To build a bit more context, there are a lot of talks about how Bitcoin will:

\- Replace youtube in the form of a decentralized video platform \- Decentralized Spotify \- Decentralized Uber

A google search of DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) and you will find many many people talking about that. The thesis is that, no Bitcoin won't decentralize all these intermediaries, instead what is more feasible is that maybe future blockchain technologies could lower barriers to entry.

As for comparison payment processing space, this is more in point 1. Bitcoin is not cheaper. Bitcoin is extremely expensive to use and intended to be expensive.

<comment><USER19> >As for comparison payment processing space, this is more in point 1. Bitcoin is not cheaper. Bitcoin is extremely expensive to use and intended to be expensive.

Bitcoin is currently overly secure, due to the block subsidy, so therefore total mining costs relative to number of transactions is very high. As the block subsidy diminishes, this ratio will decline

Total security can be maintained, without transaction fees increasing, if transaction volumes increase, which is entirely possible, and is what has historically happened.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The real practical application for bitcoin that I see will be machine to machine transactions, not human to human transactions.

Pre-bitcoin if you want to set up a static website that accepts donations to keep on serving it's content you absolutely have to have a human in the loop to faciliate those transactions.

If your webserver is overloaded and you need to charge browsers 0.0001 cents per connection to filter out the legitimate browsers there is a clear path to do that with bitcoin, not so with any other payment scheme. The path to do that involves everyone loading bitcoin into the browser and doing some sort of side chain, trust channel, trusted third party to enable such a cheap transaction, but the point being that there is no one stopping people from developing and pushing these technologies with bitcoin. If you wanted to do this with paypal or cash or credit cards or any other known payment system there are very real road blocks and people that can simply pull the plug.

Bitcoin enables people to try out new ways of paying without asking anyone's permission.

The quickest to market is illegal trades, because there is no one to say no and no one to pull the plug. It is really fairly similar to bittorrent in that way. Everyone will first say the technology should die because it lets people do things illegally.

<comment><USER25> Did you read the article? If you accept his conclusions, then long term even using bitcoin for $1 transactions much less for $0.000001 isn't economically feasible since he proposes that the true cost of a bitcoin transaction is ~$10.

<comment><USER24> Thats for transactions on the main block chain. For true micro transactions there are a multitude of options for increasing throughput or decreasing latency.

<comment><USER25> But that wouldn't be bitcoin anymore. It would be a different crypto-currency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Congrats. That may be the dumbest bitcoin-related headline ever created (and the competition wasn't weak to begin with).

<comment><USER27> Reason 4: Bitcoin doesn't transmit ideas effectively, thus ruling it out as any internet "replacement" or successor.

Wait, that's the only reason it won't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Each point is a prediction, not a reason. Given that, I didn't read more than those.

<comment><USER29> Totally agree with you here. It smacks of "I think it's this way, so therefore here's why I'm right thinking these things."

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> > At the same fee level, transaction count must increase 250 folds. Or,

How is this not plausible, given how few transactions must occur there?

<comment><USER31> The transaction count can only increase if they allow the block size to increase. Right now it's 1MB at maximum.

The community is torn about the issue so it's an open question if it will ever happen.

<comment><USER19> Almost everyone agrees with the 1 MB block size limit being removed, and replaced with something else. The only question is what it will be replaced with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> tuna-piano For his first point "You cannot be cheap and secured by proof-of-work at the same time".

The US dollar used to be part of a much more expensive "proof-of-work", the gold standard. In order to create dollars, someone had to buy expensive mining equipment and spend a ton of time and money physically digging gold out of the ground, melting it, and keeping it safe. Seemed to work out well for a pretty long time.

<comment><USER32> Being pegged to gold and being secured by gold aren't the same thing.

The gold that backed the dollar had already been dug up. It was already in the hands of the government. Whatever the costs were to get it, they were sunk costs based on the value of the gold, not the currency system layered on top of it. The dollar was secured via tricky-to-duplicate printing techniques and police powers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> "Per transaction cost is currently low because mining revenue comes from inflation."

It's actually the reverse. Mining speculates on deflation not inflation.

<comment><USER34> I think the point is that mining is subsidized by "printing" new bitcoins, which currently make up most of the block reward.

Speculation is in theory not a factor, since spending $ on buying a bitcoin == spending $ on mining a bitcoin, so the price would be the same, if a rational market existed.

<comment><USER35> You say this like it's not a thing... "if a rational market existed." Maybe we're experiencing a breakdown of understanding because your intent isn't clear, so forgive me if I've misinterpreted your sentiment.

Isn't the market mostly rational? Where is your evidence that it does not exist/that the price is not rational? To me it has the appearance that the price of bitcoin hovers around the cost of mining bitcoin, ever since the big rising bubble first popped. I am not an expert but I have been following for quite some time as mining hardware gets more efficient and the difficulty waggles mostly trending up over time.

There is no universal "electricity cost to mine a bitcoin" since mining hardware varies in efficiency, and it's true that any rational miner would stop mining if his hardware could no longer make a marginal profit on the cost of the electricity. You would get more bitcoin by just spending that part of your utility budget at an exchange. I have obsolete ASIC hardware from BFL that I only run because I have a source of free electricity and for the novelty / because it's cold. They made money for a time, and then the market corrected.

With the advances in hardware that are constantly coming from many different players in the mining hardware market, I would not be surprised to hear that many latest-gen ASIC miners are still hovering around "break-even" electricity cost to mine, and as the difficulty continues to rise, anyone waiting for delivery of their equipment goes on biting their nails, waiting to see if they will make a profit or if all their effort will have been wasted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The author's post is full of misguided opinions, and inaccuracies.

 _" Reason 1: Bitcoin will not replace retail payment systems"_

Bitcoin is more of an enabler than a replacer. There are many financial transactions that do _not_ take place because current financial platforms do not let them happen. For example with Bitcoin I could in theory pay an artist in Namibia who makes little sculptures and ships them to worldwide. This economic activity does not exist today because there is no safe/efficient way to pay some random guy in Namibia who does not have a bank account.

 _" Scenario 2 [transaction count must increase 250 folds] and 3 [Price increases 250 folds to $65000/BTC] are not likely to occur"_

So the author hand-waves that and says it cannot continue to happen with zero reasons? To see a combined 250 fold increase all we need to see is a number of transactions increasing by 25x (which will happen with the upcoming block size increase) and a price increasing by 10x. Consider that:

\- the number of transactions has already increased 1,000 fold (and more) in the past few years, and there is no sign of it slowing down: [https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?showDataPoints...](https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?showDataPoints=false&show_header=true&daysAverageString=7&timespan=all&scale=0&address=)

\- the price has already increased 1,000 fold (and more) in the past few years: [https://blockchain.info/charts/market- price?showDataPoints=f...](https://blockchain.info/charts/market- price?showDataPoints=false&show_header=true&daysAverageString=7&timespan=all&scale=1&address=)

So the author ought to explain to us why he thinks such increases would suddenly stop.

 _" Fiat conversion makes Bitcoin transactions even more expensive"_

The author completely ignores the economic incentive of transactions within the Bitcoin economy itself. When I give 1 BTC to my father, he can spend 1 BTC on Dell.com. No fiat conversion takes place.

 _" Reason 2: Bitcoin will not end the need for trusted central parties"_

I agree with this, but I do not see at all why the author listed this as a reason why Bitcoin will not succeed. In some cases having a central trusted party does make sense, in others it does not.

 _" When is censorship resistance so important that it is worthwhile to make those trade offs? The answer is: illegal use cases"_

Or: oppressive governments who seize the bank accounts of dissidents, Paypal when they decide to shut down the accounts of donation receivers (because their fraud system incorrectly interprets such sudden flows of money as fraud), etc. You see, the world is bigger than you. There are many instances where censorship resistance is important and is needed for _legal_ use cases.

 _" Whereas most Bitcoin users are primarily using Bitcoin as a speculative asset and illegal transactions"_

The author provides no source for the "illegal transactions", because he has no data to back this up, because this claim is false. In fact the biggest illegal shops have been shut down (SR 1.0, SR 2.0). And the number of legit merchants continues to increase (now surpassing 100,000 merchants accepting Bitcoin worldwide).

 _" Internet did not make design trade-offs to primarily focus on censorship resistance at the expense of other qualities (such as speed)"_

Yes it did make trade-offs. Internet was designed to be decentralized to make it resilient (which is similar to censorship resistance), at the expense of complexity (it took decades to develop a stack that works well: BGP / IP / TCP / UDP / DNS / HTTP).

 _" If online gambling were to become legal and widely accepted by banks, Bitcoin would not be used to gamble online"_

Another flawed argument. Let me try this: "if _online reselling_ were to become legal and widely accepted by banks, Bitcoin would not be used by _online merchants_ ". Yet 100,000 merchants are using Bitcoin...

 _" However, Bitcoin has shown us the promise of blockchain technologies"_

The author does not understand that Bitcoin's block chain technology simply cannot exist without Bitcoin (the currency): why would miners mine if they received no bitcoins rewards? For the block chain technology to succeed, Bitcoin needs to succeed, and vice versa.

<comment><USER31> > So the author ought to explain to us why he thinks such increases would > suddenly stop

Because they have already stopped. The price of bitcoin has only dropped for the last year. You should give a reason why the drop should stop and it would start to rise again.

> The author completely ignores the economic incentive of transactions within > the Bitcoin economy itself. When I give 1 BTC to my father, he can spend 1 > BTC on Dell.com. No fiat conversion takes place.

Dell does not accept bitcoin. Dell accepts dollars from bitpay. The expense is paid by bitpay having a worse exchange rate than the normal bitcoin exchanges.

So yeah there is fiat transfer happening.

Out of curiosity do you know any single big retailer that actually accepts bitcoin in the sense that they are not being actually paid in fiat?

> Yet 100,000 merchants are using Bitcoin...

Merchants might use bitcoin. But customers unfortunately are not. Wordpress just stopped accepting bitcoin because they got only 2 purchases per week using it. Data from overstock suggests that it's far more common phenomenon.

Thanks to bitpay there is not really any reason for merchants not to accept it though. They get paid in fiat and they don't get any expenses from accepting it.

<comment><USER37> > Because they have already stopped

No, tx/block certainly NEVER stopped increasing: [https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?showDataPoints...](https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?showDataPoints=false&show_header=true&daysAverageString=7&timespan=all&scale=0&address=)

And price is cyclical. After the bubble of June 2011, it took 21 months to surpass its previous high of $30. What makes you think this bubble and price correction is different? In fact, Bitcoin is on the rise since its $150 bottom on January 14th so it would indicate the drop in fact did stop.

> Dell does not accept bitcoin

This is irrelevant to the point the OP was making: transactions that remain within Bitcoin incur no fiat exchange fees. I sell something on craigslist for bitcoins, I use these bitcoins to pay back lunch money to my coworker, he gifts the bitcoins to his brother, his brother sends the bitcoin to his son overseas for remittance, etc. All this with zero fiat exchanges.

> But customers unfortunately are not

Growth is not through-the-roof, but it certainly is there: [http://avc.com/2014/10/bitcoin-adoption- metrics/](http://avc.com/2014/10/bitcoin-adoption-metrics/) You cannot quote 2 anecdotes and infer an industry-wide trend. The plural of anecdotes is not data. Anyway it's again irrelevant to the point the OP was making: the blog post's argument is flawed, not everybody who uses Bitcoin is doing it for illegal purposes.

<comment><USER31> tx/block did not stop increasing. But the transaction volume in USD has been flat recently due to the falling price: [https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction- volume-...](https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume- usd?timespan=1year) The amount of value transferred in bitcoin network has seen no growth at all lately. On the other hand it has not diminished either.

I simply wanted to point out that you cannot cherry pick the time periods. Right now on a 6-12 month timescale bitcoin has been absolutely terrible investment.

You are right that transactions that remain within Bitcoin do not incur transaction fees. However those transactions do not include the big merchants, which you did use as an example. So yeah you can give bitcoins to your friend without a fee but you cannot buy anything from a shop that 'accepts' bitcoin in practice without a fee.

The annual revenue of the merchants in those slides is the total annual revenue. There is no mention whatsoever on how many purchases they have that is being made with bitcoin. So it's useless data in that sense.

Do you happen to have any data about the purchases made specifically with bitcoin?

<comment><USER37> > But the transaction volume in USD

This is again irrelevant to the point the OP and blog post author were making. If the number of tx/block continues to increase, then the current level of network security will increase, all else being equal (eg. USD price of Bitcoin staying flat).

> on a 6-12 month timescale bitcoin has been absolutely terrible investment

Absolutely, but long price downtrends have happened multiple times in the past. That's why I asked "what makes you think this bubble, as opposed to the last N bubbles, is clearly different and clearly marks the end of Bitcoin?".

> which you did use as an example

Well I didn't, the OP did :)

> There is no mention whatsoever on how many purchases they have that is being > made with bitcoin.

I was pointing to these slides because they show a multitude of metrics increasing. It seems unlikely bitcoin purchases would be declining given everything else is increasing: number of bitcoin startups, number of wallets, number of merchants, number of daily tx, etc. Individually these metrics mean little, but all combined... Heck we went from 0 to 100,000 merchants since 2009, so it is certain bitcoin purchases have increased in that time frame. Why would you doubt that?

> Do you happen to have any data about the purchases made specifically with > bitcoin?

Very few merchants publish their bitcoin metrics. But 2 come to mind: Gyft and Newegg said that their 2014 Bitcoin black friday sales were the best ever: [http://blog.bitpay.com/2014/12/09/bitcoin-black- friday-2014-...](http://blog.bitpay.com/2014/12/09/bitcoin-black- friday-2014-recap.html)

<comment><USER31> OP made the argument that it's enough for the price to go 10x and transactions 25x. That's why I pointed out the price. If the price stays down the transactions must go 250x.

I didn't say this is necessarily the end of bitcoin. There are intermediate stages between "to the moon" and total crash. Personally I think it's quite likely that bitcoin will simply stagnate and remain little used.

I don't doubt that the bitcoin purchases have increased since 2009. It's just that the raw numbers which we do have (your link did not have any hard numbers) show that it's not really doing that well when absolute sales figures are taken into account.

The fact that only hard numbers which we do have show poor adoption indicates that it's the same elsewhere, otherwise we'd see bitpay and others jumping up and down and telling the great numbers to everyone to increase the adoption even more.

<comment><USER37> > If the price stays down the transactions must go 250x.

I understand you now. That's right. But my point was the price is unlikely to stay down... Anyway this debate of whether the price will go down or up is a little silly: even assuming the price stays down it will literally take DECADES for the network to "need" to increase the tx/block by 250x to maintain the same level of security. The bitcoin reward is halved every ~4 years, so we only need the tx/block to double every ~4 years to maintain the same level of security. So far Bitcoin as MORE than met this need: the tx/block has more than doubled every year since its creation.

> I didn't say this is necessarily the end of bitcoin

You were saying you did not believe the price drop would stop. Now you are saying it will quite likely stagnate. That's quite a different statement.

> It's just that the raw numbers which we do have show that it's not really > doing that well. > [...] > The fact that only hard numbers which we do have > show poor adoption indicates that it's the same elsewhere.

Yes we know that for merchants accepting Bitcoin, it represents an incredibly tiny fraction of their total sales. But why do you think this means Bitcoin is not doing well? A brand new payment technology unlike anything else going from zero to representing 0.1% of the sales of 100,000 merchants worldwide is a significant accomplishment in my opinion. I say 0.1% because 0.x% seems to be approximately what the average merchant reports. For example Overstock reported 0.2% of their sale revenues were in bitcoins for 2014.

Also why do you extrapolate your single anecdote (WordPress shutting down Bitcoin sales) to an industry-wide trend? Why do you ignore 3 other anecdotes that contradict your opinion (Overstock consistently doing 0.2% of their sales in bitcoins = $3 million/year so they are far from stopping to accept bitcoin, Newegg reporting their best bitcoin black friday sales in 2014, Gyft reporting the same)? Why do these 4 anecdotes, whether positive or negative, matter at all, when I showed you more indirect metrics (avc.com) that obviously show strong overall adoption? The avc.com metrics may not show actual bitcoin sales figures, but clearly they indicate something.

To answer your question: I think BitPay and Coinbase don't release current numbers of Bitcoin payments processed because this is sensitive financial data for competitors. But surely VCs wouldn't be pouring tens of millions of dollars in them if they showed no growth, don't you think?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This whole thing rests on the fundamental assumption that the current level of mining must be constant. If mining is less profitable, there will be less miners. This is the most likely scenario and not some crazy price increase or fee price increase.

Miners can't profit? Miners drop out and leave more breathing room for the other miners.

</comment><comment><USER39> "internet" I dont think that word means what you think it means.

</comment><comment><USER40> People are hyped about Bitcoins being trustless? That sounds wrong.

</comment><comment><USER41> Tl;rd

</comment><comment><USER42> Bitcoin won't be the new internet, true. Its impact will be far greater than that. Trolololo.</comment>


TeleShellBot – rule your server from your phone through telegram - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/marknote/TeleShellBot <comment><AUTHOR> It is still quite simple, while so far it can run most linux/shell commands and scripts.

One of the limitations so far is, it does not support interaction during the execution yet. For example, if you run a command that asks you to input your password, it will not work ...

Just for fun. Don't use it for evil :)</comment>


Ask HN: How often have you reinvented yourself (new tech stack)? - <AUTHOR> For example, you were a Rails person and are now going as a Scala expert. Or trying to. I think I've done it every 5 years or so.<p>The interesting thing is that companies use years  of experience as a proxy for quality, and a 'reinvented' dev doesn't score on that metric. Any tricks or workarounds you use? <comment><USER2> I am, as they says about Unix: Always changing, yet never changing.

I'm still using much of my original stack. The trick is not to chase fads and focus instead on core skills and technologies.

I've been using a Unix-like operating system since my first contact with SunOS, I've been developing in Python since version 1.x, C since Borland ruled the DOS world, JavaScript since it first appeared in Netscape 2.0 and Java since I saw the first applet (Java 1.2, perhaps?), PostgreSQL since, I dunno, whatever version shipped with Red Hat 5.0.

Of course I reserve the right not to mention my previous experience with Delphi, TCL, Symbian, J2ME, or (increasingly) Perl, if it suits me. Selectively forgetting no longer relevant technologies is a very useful workaround.

</comment><comment><USER3> For someone that's not a developer, using the words "reinvented yourself" because you've changed your programming language sounds a bit exaggerated :) of course I'm not the bearer of the universal truth, so please just take this as one more opinion.

Reinventing yourself IMHO could be to go from dev to manager, to product then to architect... Tackling different challenges, having different goals, dealing with unrelated technology, not just another way of doing the same.

If you are a very senior developer you don't suddenly become a junior developer because you've changed language. However if I'm a senior architect and I want to become a developer I'd hardly land a senior developer gig.

</comment><comment><USER4> Went from PHP to UI engineer using primarily Angular. Had 10 years of PHP, but 0.5 years of Angular and only a few years in very scripty/hacky jQuery / JS. Didn't stop me from getting a $23,500 raise though.

It really depends on the company. My company looks for people who have programming experience in general and care about code craftsmanship. Sure, some languages and paradigms are VERY different (e.g. Java vs Haskell) that many skills won't translate well to, but in my case, PHP -> JavaScript, many skills transfer over.

And at the end of the day, the programming is the easy part. It's the problem solving and reasoning skills that make a dev valuable, so if the company is hiring based on those, your (lack of) experience in your reinvented stack shouldn't necessarily prohibit you from getting a job in that new stack.

<comment><USER5> "Had 10 years of PHP, but 0.5 years of Angular and only a few years in very scripty/hacky jQuery / JS. Didn't stop me from getting a $23,500 raise though."

Thats a little depressing, trying to extrapolate upwards mobility as my career progresses

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Boiled down, over the course of 20 years:

HTML -> PHP -> Flash -> C# -> Java -> Obj-C -> Python -> C# -> Angular.

Across these platforms: Web, Mobile, and Games

So about once every 2-3 years I change, although I have to go back to previous tech stacks for some jobs too (like I used PHP at a job only a few years ago).

I realize these are languages and not tech stacks, but I thought it got overly messy when I was being more specific, so the stacks are implied by these languages.

Usually I've learned the tech at least somewhat on my own before encountering it in my profession. For example, I made a simple personal site in Angular a few years before I started a job that didn't mention Angular in the interview, but involved a lot of Angular development, so I wasn't completely lost when I needed to start using it professionally.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm on the IT side of the house. I went from a UNIX DBA / system programmer to running configuration management, exchange and ad on the Microsoft side of the house. Since I have been in both individual contributor and director level roles with security and other domains.

You need to present yourself as someone who solves problems. At the end of the day, any engineer who is applying technology (vs inventing) is studying problems and breaking them up into smaller, solvable scopes and finally delivering solutions to those problems.

Scala, C++, databases, etc are just tools in the toolbox.

It doesn't work for everything. If you want to be a world class practitioner of a tool or technique, whether that's C, Oracle or a guitar, you need to focus. There are entire companies on earth whose sole purpose is to build gas station signs -- they own that market because of that focus.

</comment><comment><USER8> > Learn at least one new language every year. Different languages solve the > same problems in different ways. By learning several different approaches, > you can help broaden your thinking and avoid getter struck in a rut. [1]

[1] [http://www.informit.com/store/pragmatic-programmer-from- jour...](http://www.informit.com/store/pragmatic-programmer-from-journeyman- to-master-portable-9780132100670)

I've taken that advise and learned a new language every 18 months for most of my career. I mostly used the language on side-projects, but occasionally on work projects for internal tools. Occasionally, a language I had learned 3 years prior became "the next mainstream thing" and it was easy for me to "reinvent" myself based on these past investments. So it can be a more organic evolution.

</comment><comment><USER9> I spend a portion of each project swapping out parts of the tech stack for better options. Fortunately, I work in a short-project part of the industry so I can do so 3-4x a year.

On the current project I'm on (since May), the codebase was moved from TypeScript to C++14, serialization from MsgPack to Cap'n Proto, messaging from WebSockets to Aeron, and we're also using a more sophisticated encryption approach (but still based on NaCl).

<comment><USER10> Typescript to c++? Thats a rare change and seems a bit backwards

<comment><USER9> I was worried about that as well, but the change has been very positive. I've found modern C++ to be very productive to code in ('auto' and lambdas are huge) and the libraries I have direct access to now (vs. working through a compiled Node extension) have significantly improved my productivity relative to Node.js/TypeScript.

I'm currently evaluating moving a few other codebases I've built from TypeScript to C++.

The main thing that's made C++ work for us, though, has been embracing Bazel[0] as our build/package management system. I had no idea how big a difference that would make, but it's been huge and I would go so far as to say that without Bazel, we would have probably abandoned C++ (at least for our use cases).

We do still have a few services that are still written in Node.js, but these are micro-services that use a vendor's Node.js library to call some API—typically < 100 LOC each. They connect to our C++ server over a WebSocket and we message them with JSON (currently) as needed. So we're not 100% C++ right now, but all of the primary logic is in C++ today.

[0] [http://bazel.io](http://bazel.io)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Looks like im average new stack every 2-3 years

2008-2010: ios

2010-2013: python / machine learning

2014-2016: nodejs

2016 - present: iot devices (c++)

These are more additive as i still use prior stacks with current work.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've enjoyed building side projects with unfamiliar technology. Use MySQL at work - build a side project with MongoDB. Use Apache at work - build another side project with Nginx.

Those side projects add to your portfolio and often make great interview topics. This has enabled me to upgrade positions/companies every 4 years or so and change up my day stack.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm doing that right now. Former stack: .NET (14 years) New stack: node-react- flux-mongo-postgres

</comment><comment><USER14> not much. The underlying skills (linux, C/C++, scripting languages, shells, gnu toolchain, ...) have been portable across IT, Telecommunications, Automotive, Energy. I prefer evaluating what actually constitutes a skill vs learning some tool or method based on closed/proprietary standards.

Reinvention took mostly place in terms of learning the new organizational languages, terms acronyms (which mean the same thing) in these different industries (IOT in Telecoms means Interoperability Testing and existed way loner than IoT). Also I found that many organization make us believe we learn new "skills" that are of no use outside that organization.

</comment><comment><USER15> 2005-2007: Like JAVA and C++ (School etc)

2008-2011: C# (University + 1st job)

2012-Now: Objective-C, iOS, Unix/OS X (lots of scripting), Python every now and then

If I do some web stuff, I use plain PHP since 2005. But those are mostly one off scripts etc so..</comment>


Firesheep: Easy HTTP session hijacking from within Firefox - <AUTHOR> http://codebutler.com/firesheep <comment><USER2> For anyone who has SSH access to a server (but not VPN) and is wondering what to do when you need some security in a pinch, here is a quick fix...

Open an ssh connection to a server you have access to using something like the following:

ssh -ND 8887 -p 22 firstname.lastname@example.com

where 8887 is the port on your laptop that you will tunnel through, -p 22 is the port the ssh server is on (22 is the default but I use a different port so I am used to specifying this) and the rest is your username and the address of the server

Set your network to point to the proxy. On a Mac that would be…

... Open Network Preferences…

... Click Advanced…

... Click Proxies…

... Check the SOCKS Proxy box then in the SOCKS Proxy Server field enter localhost and the port you used (8887)

... OK and Apply and you are done!

Now you can surf safely.

<comment><USER3> Also, remember that some programs don't respect the system's proxy settings and instead use their own. Firefox is one of those, you can find its proxy settings in "Advanced -> Network -> Settings"

<comment><USER4> Also unfortunately I think Flash and Silverlight media streaming don't respect proxies, leaving me unable to stream Hulu and Netflix when I'm in the UK.

<comment><USER5> They _should_, and do for me typically using Chrome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are probably going to be a lot of people negatively affected by this for quite some time to come. One thing to point out is that there are grades of things. There is "public", and then there is "top hit on Google". Similarly, there is "insecure" and then there is "simple doubleclick tool to facilitate identity theft".

How many millions of dollars and man hours is it going to take to lock down every access point? How many new servers are going to be needed now that https is used for everything and requests can't be cached?

America was a better place when people could keep their doors unlocked, and when someone's first response to a break-in was to blame the _criminal_. By contrast it's fashionable among a certain set (no doubt including the author of this mess, Mr. Butler himself) to hold that the real culprits are the door manufacturers. What said facile analysis excludes, of course is that there is _always_ a greater level of security possible. The level we currently employ reflects our tradeoffs between the available threats and the cost/convenience loss of bolting our doors and putting finials on our gates.

Butler has simply raised the threat level for everyone. He did not invent a new lock or close a hole. He's now forcing lots of people to live up to _his_ level of security. Congratulations to the new Jason Fortuny.

<comment><USER7> Butler has not raised the threat level on anything. This has been a widely known issue since _forever_. A friend of mine wrote a sniffer that could do this back in college, and he was one of the last to the party. Want something else to kvetch about? His tool could impersonate the router and act as a proxy, including serving up ssl-encrypted pages to users who didn't realize they shouldn't accept certs from unknown signers - again, that was _years_ ago, and even then it was nothing new or unique at all.

When a tool like this rises to even a minimum level of public consciousness, you're better off thinking "people have probably been doing this for close to a decade" than "this asshole just ruined the internet by pointing out an obvious flaw that someone will now be able to exploit".

And yes, at some point, a door manufacturer that knows how easily their doors will open and how frequently people will just walk through does take on some responsibility to add a lock (and the homeowner to use it). It's going to cost more in servers? Okay, so what? It costs more to install seatbelts, are you upset at Ralph Nader, too?

[Edited to bring it down a notch]

<comment><USER6> > Butler has not raised the threat level on anything.

Flat out false. Ever heard the term "crime of opportunity"?

What's your over/under on the number of identity thefts facilitated by Eric Butler's little gift? Let's make this empirical.

<comment><USER7> Anyone who wanted to hijack http sessions was five minutes of Googling and installing away from being able to do so before "Eric Butler's little gift" anyways. Are you claiming that the marginal impact of packaging it up into a firefox extension is so great as to make it a threat of a wholly different kind?

<comment><USER6> That is exactly what I'm claiming. That's also why this article has 200+ comments and was on the top of Hacker News all day!

You vastly underestimate the barrier that "five minutes of Googling" presents. I assure you, the overwhelming majority of aspiring script kiddies would never be able to figure it out. It took an expert to package an exploit in a nice GUI (and write cookie parsing code for every major social site under the sun).

<comment><USER7> As long as only the minimally motivated can exploit it, it's not really a problem, gotcha.

How about instead of shooting the messenger, you take some of that righteous anger and point it at the companies with millions/billions to spend who have simply ignored a longstanding known issue?

<comment><USER6> How about you recognize that there are a lot of innocent people who will be hurt by this stunt? There are hundreds of thousands of companies and millions of people who are targets for this, and most don't have a spare million lying around.

Hospitals, nonprofit groups, anyone running a website has to drop everything to lock it all down now. The effect is a lot like loosing a new virus (and might ultimately be treated that way).

> As long as only the _highly_ motivated can exploit it, it's not really a > problem, gotcha.

^ This modified statement is correct. All I'm saying that making something easy to use and publicizing it widely is going to result in a lot more people using it.

[Edits - hey jfager, I don't know you from adam and don't particularly enjoy flamewars. I agree that in the long run this should be fixed, ideally in such a way that 99.99% of people can blissfully go about their day. I just wish that the energy to secure stuff had taken the form of (say) a post on "here's how Google converted Gmail to https" rather than Firesheep. Hope we can find some common ground and you can see my POV.]

<comment><USER7> The intersection of 'evil enough to do something truly malicious', 'read a tech blog in the right 24-hour period', 'didn't already know the problem existed', and 'in enough cafes to pair with enough potential victims' is too low to cause "millions" more to be impacted by this, I promise.

Your implicit definition of 'highly motivated' (someone willing to put in 5 minutes of Googling) makes me sad.

I'm agitated because you're trying to hang someone for doing A Good Thing: putting real pressure on the bigs to finally actually fix a well-known, longstanding problem.

[Response to your edit: Facebook, Twitter, and other big sites know about the problem. How would explaining to them how Google secured Gmail change anything? They know how Google secured Gmail, and they know how to secure their own services. They just simply aren't, because it saves them money and their customers aren't demanding it. But the only reason their customers aren't demanding it is because the vast majority of their customers don't know the threat exists. This tool makes the threat clear as day to the most unsophisticated layperson, which makes it real, effective pressure, far more than yet another blog post asking nicely for SSL by default].

<comment><USER8> It might make you sad, but it's spot on. People were sharing MP3 files on usenet pretty easily, back in the day. It would have taken 5 minutes or less to work out how -- even easier than grabbing cookies.

It wasn't until Napster made that 0 minutes of googling that MP3 filesharing really took off.

For something like this to end up on millions of desktops, you have to be able to explain it to a half-stoned frat at a party. "Five minutes of googling and then some nerdery"? No chance. "Install this, go to the quad and you can sign into the facebook of any other person there?" Yup, that's going to spread like wildfire.

<comment><USER9> The responsibility is with every admin that setup an insecure access point, not with every security researcher to stay quiet about widely known and widely exploited vulnerabilities.

This isn't new. Point and click tools for doing this existed 10 years ago. Making a firefox plugin just pushed it back to the top of the headlines. This is actually a good thing because if word spreads more people will be aware of the already existing risk and will be more security conscious.

Does this mean everyone should stop logging into their personal accounts over unsecure wifi at school or starbucks? ABSOLUTELY.

Hopefully this new attention on an old hole will motivate more admins to fix their networks and more users to realize how vulnerable they are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is kind of a big deal. Not a whole lot of people are aware of this vulnerability and among those who are it's likely only a small subset that knew how to exploit it until now. I suspect all of the coffee shops in the college town where I live will have people using this starting tomorrow.

I've personally been working from cafes and tunneling everything through SSH for years, but in my experience almost no one else does this.

<comment><USER11> _I've personally been working from cafes and tunneling everything through SSH for years_

To where? I suspect it's to a server, VPS, or similar, and the connection is unencrypted from there to its endpoint. This being the case, could someone with a server on the same subnet be running a browser remotely (or even just tcpdump) and doing a similar thing with your logins?

 _(This is just some thinking out loud and I may be totally wrong - correct me ;-))_

<comment><USER12> Virtually no modern wired networks use hubs anymore, they're for the most part switched. Unlike wireless networks where packets are broadcast freely in to the air, the switch checks the destination address and sends the packets only to the endpoint. There are some attacks like arp-spoofing and flooding which can defeat this, but they don't work well against modern enterprise-grade switches like you would find in a data center.

<comment><USER11> Have a bazillion karma points. I didn't realize that switching resolved that whole problem. This is why I continue to bring up stupid hypothetical situations on HN from time to time ;-)

<comment><USER13> Switching doesn't resolve the problem completely. There are a range of complicated attacks that could be done, but can be detected in various ways in a well run NOC.

<comment><USER11> But we're talking a lot more complicated and deliberate than running tcpdump or this Firefox plugin, right?

<comment><USER13> I guess if you really wanted to you could run a GUI tool like Cain (<http://oxid.it/>), but most people doing this type of thing would use something like Scapy or at worst, Yersinia.

So I'd agree, more complex definitely, significantly not as much perhaps (it depends on the type of attack as tool), as for deliberation I'd say about the same as the firefox plugin.

If you do run tcpdump you do pick up broadcasts and such, one of our VPS instances actually sees a load of DNS traffic for our subnet, which we think is the other VPS instances.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is one of many reasons Loopt has used SSL for all[1] traffic from the very beginning. At least WiFi has fairly limited range. Cell networks[2] (and satellite internet[3]) can be sniffed miles away.

In addition to making session hijacking harder, using SSL keeps crappy proxies from caching private data. Remember when some AT&T users were getting logged in as other users on Facebook's mobile site? The cause was a mis-configured caching proxy.

Raising awareness of issues like this gets them fixed. Until a service's users demand SSL, it won't be offered. Unless the service is Loopt :) It's not a noticeable computational burden, but it does increase latency and cost money (for certs).

      1. Not images
      2. Older GSM crypto can be hacked in real time with rainbow tables now
      3. Usually not encrypted at all

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed, Loopt appears to be one of the few high-profile sites to have done this right. SSL for everything, and cookies that are relevant to login sessions are marked secure. This is what we need everywhere!

<comment><USER15> I'm proud of <http://ourdoings.com/> having done this since 2004.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _Nice_. A solid demonstration to show next time your webmaster doesn't want to set up SSL everywhere.

That said, the current cartel-like setup of certificate authorities (protection money and everything!) makes SSL annoying and expensive if you want the browser to not have a fit. Especially for small-scale projects. But there's really no excuse for larger sites.

<comment><USER17> You can get SSL certificates for free for one domain, and they work with all browsers (except Opera, IIRC). Also, you can use Perspectives for Firefox, which I think is much better than the current system.

<comment> ryan-allen I've had a bit of a look on Google, but I'm not 100% sure which provider you mean? Where can you get free SSL certificates that don't upset browsers?

<comment><USER17> Ah, I can't remember the name now... Rapidssl? That's probably it. Check historio.us, the ssl cert there is a free one (which is, sadly, why subdomains don't validate).

EDIT: I searched and it's actually <http://cert.startcom.org/>.

<comment><USER18> _Check historio.us, the ssl cert there is a free one (which is, sadly, why subdomains don't validate)._

AFAIK this is common to all certs (free or otherwise). You need a separate one for each subdomain (including www).

<comment><USER17> No, there are also wildcard certificates that match all subdomains, but are rather more expensive.

<comment><USER19> Wildcard certificates are available for USD $49.90 from StartSSL (<http://www.startssl.com/?app=40>), which is rather more expensive than free, but shouldn't be a hardship.

<comment><USER20> The only downside to wildcard certs through StartSSL is that getting one requires high-resolution proof of personal identity, to be kept on file outside local jurisdiction (the company's based in Israel) until the cert's final renewal or revocation, plus seven years.

I admire their model of only charging for operations which require human intervention, like identity validation, but handing over that degree of documentation for that amount of time requires a lot of trust, not just of the company as it currently exists, but as it will exist in the far future.

If there was a way to validate organizations which wasn't layered on top of an earlier validation of an individual, or if their decentralized web-of-trust was usable for class 2/wildcard certs, I'd be a big fan.

As it is, there's no reason not to use Start for class 1, single-domain certs, for which the validation is automated and reasonable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _"Double-click on someone, and you're instantly logged in as them."_

Ouch. I think it's time to set up that VPN I've been putting off...

<comment><USER22> Am I the only one who thinks this is spoon feeding the script kiddies to cause mayhem?

<comment> mike-cardwell Even the dumbest script kiddies have been doing this for years anyway. There are plenty of existing tools. This one just lowers the bar so your mum can perform the attack too.

It almost makes me angry that websites like Facebook and Twitter don't force all traffic over https. They've got the money and the expertise. They just don't care if your account gets sniffed and taken over at a web cafe.

<comment><USER23> Exactly. I'm not a blackhat and my only "hacking" consists of forcing myself into my own systems which I've stupidly locked myself out of, yet I've managed to do much that this plugin can do.

The most un-ethical thing I have done was to take one of the OLPC XO laptops and convert it into a MITM machine, rebroadcasting the SSID it connects to while routing and logging all traffic anyone who connects to it generates. It took a weekend to setup using pre-existing tools and scripts and can be deployed anywhere I want within 2 minutes and run for up to 6 hours hidden in the bottom of my backpack. It was a fun experiment, and surely made me more aware of just how vulnerable I was outside of my home network.

Another point of interest, this weekend I hacked on a Minecraft bot for the Alpha version. In order to understand and dissect the connection protocol I needed to recreate, I used wireshark to dump and parse how the client authenticates and connects to the server. Even that transmits your username and password in plaintext.

<comment><USER24> re: the OLPC, what were you running on it? I have one in my closet and I've been meaning to put something that isn't the stock software on there for a long time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Thanks for posting this. It convinced me to upgrade SSL support from "something that would be nice to implement if I was bored someday" (BCC is not exactly security critical -- except, on reflection, the admin pages) to "drop everything and get it done."

<comment><USER26> You're saying that the BCC server doesn't have even a self-signed SSL cert installed? Or something else?

<comment><USER25> I had a SSL certificate for a while, but actually using it throughout the site without showing users Big Scary Error Messages is not quite trivial. The activation energy for digging through several hours of edge cases was lacking... until today. ("Whoops, while you don't know you're doing it, you pull an unnecessary CSS file into the cached CSS for the registration page which references a background image on an absolute <http://> URL. Your registration page now throws an error on IE. You lose." "You have approximately 150 images on the site linked as handcoded img tags rather than through Rails' image_tag helper, because when you were a Rails newbie you did not know that existed. You now get to rewrite all of them so that they can use SSL asset caching magic." etc, etc)

<comment><USER26> I've seen some sites which figure out a way to force the user in and out of SSL for certain URLs. You might be able to implement a fix which forces SSL for the admin section and non-SSL for everything else.

<comment><USER25> That doesn't help, because my all-powerful admin session is as secure as the least secure page I access (or _can be made to access_ ) while on a compromised network.

<comment><USER26> Doh. Of course. It's all on the same domain. Do you think, that if designing a new application, it would make sense to make a separate admin sub-domain (assuming no wildcard cookies)?

Does the solution entail purchasing legit ssl certs for your static content domains?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I thought the title of this submission was slightly misleading. This is not a security vulnerability from within Firefox, it's a Firefox plugin to reveal security vulnerabilities in a wide range of websites.

<comment><USER28> To be fair that is exactly what I got out of the title and not that it was using Firefox vulnerabilities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Sites that are tracked:

amazon basecamp bitly cisco cnet dropbox enom evernote facebook flickr foursquare github google gowalla hackernews harvest live nytimes pivotal sandiego_toorcon slicemanager tumblr twitter wordpress yahoo yelp

</comment><comment><USER30> Thanks to the EFF and the Tor Project we need not worry as much thanks to their HTTPS Everywhere project, a plugin for Firefox: <http://www.eff.org/https-everywhere/>

Any questions:

<http://www.eff.org/https-everywhere/faq>

<comment><USER31> Logging into insecure sites over Tor is probably not a good idea. It's always good to assume that people running exit nodes are not the most trustworthy.

HTTPS Everywhere is good but only works on known sites (and known domains for those sites).

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Be careful when trying this out. You could be breaking a law or two...

<comment><USER33> Also don't web-mail your friends to tell them about the new accounts you just broke into :) At least not on that open wireless connection.

<comment><USER34> Good thing GMail has SSL enabled by default ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, they're one of our examples of a "good" setup. However, Google leaks iGoogle and some other things (Latitude, address book, reader, ...)

<comment><USER35> However they don't share the same session cookie for different service as far as I know (which they negotiate that through TLS protected link) Likewise they have also made several other services TLS only (e.g. calendar, docs)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The explanation I've always heard for not using HTTPS 100% of the time is that it puts an substantial load on the server, and for many sites it's overkill. Setting aside the subjective topic of "overkill" ... how much more CPU- intensive is it to serve pages over HTTPS compared to HTTP?

<comment><USER37> There was a great write-up of a talk on SSL/TLS performance at Google linked here a few months back (<http://unblog.pidster.com/imperialviolet- overclocking-ssl>, HN discussion at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1485425>)

Quoting from that, "On our production frontend machines, SSL/TLS accounts for less than 1% of the CPU load, less than 10KB of memory per connection and less than 2% of network overhead."

<comment><USER38> OK, that's most likely too late to contribute to the stated article, but there was a talk by Michael Klishsin about a year ago, here're his slides: <http://bit.ly/90qORL> (ssl, performance, certificates, lots of stuff)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Does this kind of wi-fi sniffing work with WEP or WPA encrypted networks? What about 802.1x?

<comment><USER40> Yes, assuming you know the password to connect to the network. Otherwise no.

<comment><USER41> This is incorrect. Traffic on an access point using WPA2 + AES is not sniffable without significant cryptanalysis or use of exploits.

<comment><USER42> It's fairly easy to do if you are logged in on the network already. For example, for the iPhone you can use something like pirni to spoof the mac address of the router. That way you'll receive all data on the network, and can send it on the router yourself. In the meantime, you can dump all cookies that are passed on. I think the tool even allows you to list all twitter and google cookies, and set them in Safari.

<comment><USER41> Pirni uses a vulnerability of a common WPA2 configuration to execute a MITM attack using ARP spoofing. There are ways to prevent this exploit as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Is there another application besides the FF extension to dump the packets and process them? How does this work?

EDIT: Sorry, I asking specifically how this FF extension works.

<comment><USER44> libpcap [http://github.com/codebutler/firesheep/blob/master/backend/s...](http://github.com/codebutler/firesheep/blob/master/backend/src/http_sniffer.cpp)

<comment><USER45> (atomical: You seem not to have realized what this answer was saying. The extension uses libpcap, as evidenced by the linked source code.)

<comment><USER43> Ah right, sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Makes a strong case for everyone to start tunneling their traffic back to a trusted network.

I've been trying out sshutttle <[http://github.com/apenwarr/sshuttle>](http://github.com/apenwarr/sshuttle>). It only tunnels TCP traffic, so you still have DNS and UDP traffic on the local network.

</comment><comment><USER47> Always use encryption, while using open wifi. I use openvpn ( <http://openvpn.net/> ) for this.

</comment><comment><USER48> I think this should be a call to arms to network, web and system admins everywhere. This is a problem that everyone knows about but nobody wants to do anything about since it requires additional setup. Usually the barrier is a technical issue that the end user can't figure out. However since submitting forms via SSL is something the developer can do without impacting the end user at all, this is a simple fix for just about any website. You need a static IP and an SSL certificate, and they are both cheap.

Running out of IPv4 space is an issue in this regard, but hopefully with more people wanting SSL it will push providers to IPv6 quicker. Nicely done EricButler!

</comment><comment><USER49> Title is a bit misleading. This is a front-end to libpcap, and can be used for hijacking any token-based-auth, not just HTTP.

It just happens that they released w/ support for social networks as a demonstration.

</comment><comment><USER50> It seems fine to just enable SSL everywhere. But indulge me for a second in thinking of alternate solutions.

Instead of sending a cookie, send a piece of javascript code (as part of the SSL-cloaked login handshake) that generates a new cookie for each request, and consider each new cookie in this sequence a "one time use" token. You can turn off SSL for subsequent requests and just use one of these new cookies each time to verify identity because an attacker won't have your cookie generator.

This javascript is really just an encryption key and algorithm, and if you implement it correctly, it should take quite some time for snoopers to reverse engineer the encryption key based on a sequence of one-time-use cookies.

Logistically, I suppose you would run into some trouble setting a new cookie for each request depending on how the page is loaded. For instance, if the user pastes a url into a new tab manually, then this system wouldn't have a chance to set the new cookie first.

However, I think you could architect a system that solves this. For instance, put the javascript token generator source in local storage. If a new page loads with an invalid key, that new page can just get the cookie generator code out of local storage and manually refresh the page's content by making a request with a valid token. This should be quick enough for most users not to notice, in the rare case that they circumvent the site's usual navigation.

A downside is obviously that the content itself is still not safe, but at least the account would be. Any thoughts?

<comment><USER16> I _think_ all cookies are sent with every request, so cookies can't be used to (securely) pass data to the next page. It'd work just fine on the login page, but every page after that would have to renegotiate to generate a new cookie, meaning you basically just created SSL everywhere.

Local storage, however, could probably be used to do just such a thing, as it exists only locally. In which case you could just have the login page generate an RSA key pair, receive the server's public key in the response, and use that for any kind of secure communication on each page load. The server would have to remember sessions => encryption keys, but that's not too hard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Wow, good work. And pretty scary- imagine what one could do with this on any college campus.

<comment><USER52> A guy I know used to do this in airports (just for fun, didn't do anything malicious) by grabbing webmail logins. Running wireshark with some simple filters and watch the cookies roll in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Wow, I've been wanting to do this for a while to raise awareness. Great implementation by plugging it into Firefox - well done.

</comment><comment><USER54> You can slightly reduce the dangers stated here by logging out immediately after you are done doing whatever it is you are doing. This will make the captured session useless.

The best solution is of course to get a VPN acct and use it when you are at free/open wifi spots. I use WiTopia (www.witopia.net)

<comment><USER55> Or just get a mac mini server that will run vpn 24/7

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Has anyone checked the source code to check that the passwords aren't sent to the author's website? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's 100% open source! Please feel free to review it.

<http://github.com/codebutler/firesheep>

It doesn't currently do anything with passwords, it's only pulling out cookies from HTTP Response headers. But it would be trivial to also get passwords in non-HTTPS requests for logins with the same method.

<comment><USER56> Again, not assuming you're evil, but it's possible that the compiled binary (.xpi) was _not_ created from the source posted on the github account :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> What can an end user do to minimize this?

This exploit is for insecure Wifi networks- so only using encrypted Wi-fi or Ethernet would seem to remove this attack vector. Is there a real risk that someone (besides the government) can see your cookie?

<comment><USER54> logging out will cause the captured sessions to be useless.

So remember to logout.

VPN is really the best overall option.

<comment><AUTHOR> Most sites don't properly invalidate sessions when you log out, you can't protect yourself as well as you think. See our slide on this topic:

<http://codebutler.github.com/firesheep/tc12/#18>

<comment><USER54> Excellent points on the slideshow. The general lack of care on this topic among web companies is worrisome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> This looks really cool. I can't wait to try this out. Very nice work, Eric.

<comment><USER31> Thanks! If you or anyone has any problems, email me (email@example.com) with the details.

<comment><USER59> On Mac OS X, it gives an error saying: Run --fix-permissions first.

Run with which command? and how?

<comment><USER60> I found the binary "firesheep-backend" in:

        ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/<profile>.firstname.lastname@example.com/platform/Darwin_x86-gcc3

I ran both:

        ./firesheep-backend --fix-permissions

and

        sudo ./firesheep-backend --fix-permissions

and it still asks me to run it with "--fix-permissions". I guess it's time to go digging around in the source to try and find out what it wants me to do.

EDIT:

After a bit of digging, I found out that running it with --fix-permissions really just chowns the binary to root then setuid's it. I don't see anything wrong with it on the surface, but I'll keep digging.

<comment><USER59> There is an another firesheep-backend at /firesheep- backend.dSYM/Contents/Resources/DWARF inside the Darwin folder. However this one wont run using ./

Any ideas?

<comment><USER60> I believe that it is a file containing debug info, not an actual program, so you can't run it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> The main problem will be with SaaS apps that allow custom domains names (i.e. _mywebsite.com_ instead of _mywebsite.mysaasprovider.com_ ).

I made an early decision to enable SSL everywhere in Trafficspaces with the obvious downside being that I need to allocate a dedicated IP address each time someone requests a custom domain name.

I used to get worried that perhaps it would have been better to _only_ provide SSL in specific stages (such as sign-in and payment) and _only_ through a generic domain name. Not any more.

Firesheep clearly vindicates that decision.

<comment><USER62> Wouldn't it be easier to get a wildcard SSL certificate for *.mysaasprovider.com? That way you can serve all subdomains off a single IP address, since the name will always match.

<comment><USER61> That's what we are currently doing now.

I was referring to cases where the account holder wants to use an custom domain name e.g. _ads.mywebsite.com_ , instead of the generic _mywebsite.mysaasprovider.com_.

In that case, we'll need to host their certificate within our Pound load balancer and get it to listen on a dedicated IP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Why don't Facebook and other major sites check the user agent and IP address of client as well, instead of just relying on a cookie? That would solve this problem in 99% of the cases, right?

<comment><USER64> If you're on the same wireless network as someone, you have the same external IP address.

<comment><USER63> I realize that but at least my neighbors won't be able to hijack my session from home. Logging in over a public network always seems risky.

<comment><USER34> Are your neighbours on your private network? If not, you don't need to worry about them capturing your network data, because they're _not on the same network_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> It states that it works for "open networks". What does that mean? All networks that you have access to? Including those in Cafes where they give you a key to log in? Or just networks that are completely open? And why does it work at all? I thought the wlan access point would encrypt the communication between itself and the computer. Would be interesting, which protocols are vulnurable to this and which are not.

I guess the logging of raw wlan packets is a one-liner under linux? Does anybody know it?

</comment><comment><USER66> So wait... this works regardless of wireless card? I've tried to use BackTrack on my mac before and it failed due to the card not being able to run in passive mode.

<comment><USER67> Yes, I believe it should work on any wireless card because you're not doing packet injection.

<comment><USER68> It doesn't work on my late 2009 MBP (sniffs sessions from other browsers on my laptop but not other laptops on our wifi).

<comment><USER69> are you sure you aren't on a WPA encrypted network? My understanding is that it doesn't work over WPA. WEP apparently does work though.

<comment><USER70> I'm on an open network (no security) and I too am only seeing traffic from the computer I'm running it on. I have two Macs on the same wifi network, but no luck so far =/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> What a shame. There are going to be so many kids whose Facebook accounts get broken into and abused this week as a result of this.

</comment><comment><USER72> Doesn't work in 3.6.4, even if you override install it or change the minVersion (which is 3.6.10)

Once I upgraded to 3.6.10 worked awesome.

</comment><comment><USER73> SSL requires a unique IP per hostname, correct? Maybe _this_ will be what actually ends up getting IPv6 going... :)

<comment><USER74> It used to be so, but newer servers can now serve more than one HTTPS domain using the same IP. For more details, check out [http://serverfault.com/questions/109800/multiple-ssl- domains...](http://serverfault.com/questions/109800/multiple-ssl-domains-on- the-same-ip-address-and-same-port)

<comment><USER75> Newer servers can serve more than one HTTPS domain using the same IP... _to users who are not using IE/Chrome/Safari under Windows XP_. If you depend on SNI, you're leaving out something like a third of your user base.

<comment><USER74> Thanks. There really isn't anything more dangerous than just a bit of knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> Anyone going to get HN on HTTPS? I'm very partial to my kharma points and don't want anyone to log in as me!

</comment><comment><USER77> It's an interesting assortment of sites that are "supported" out of the box. Some of them are pretty harmless (bit.ly, Flickr), some could cause some pretty serious hassles (Google, Amazon), and some could be absolutely devastating (Deleting someone's Slicehost account? Ouch...).

</comment><comment><USER78> The sidebar is not showing up for me after installing and restarting.

Firefox 3.6.11 OS X 10.6 firesheep-0.1-1.xpi

<comment><USER79> Same setup. Sidebar shows for me after selecting it from the View -> Sidebar menu, however it pops up with a message that says "Run --fix-permissions first." Not sure where I'm supposed to run this flag.

<comment><USER80> There is so many hoops I have to jump to make this work in OS X.

$ mv firesheep-backend firesheep-backend.binary $ cat > firesheep-backend #!/bin/sh sudo /path/to/firesheep-backend.binary $@ ^D $ sudo chmod +x firesheep-backend

Then restart Firefox and start capture. You need to run sudo once every certain period.

<comment><USER60> I keep getting a "Failed to fix permissions" error. Any insight into that?

<comment><USER79> FYI if you're still looking into this, this comment helped me <http://codebutler.com/firesheep#comment_5843350>

I have filevault turned on. Moving the binary out of my home folder (and adding a symbolic link) solved the problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> What does this mean for HTTP basic authentication? How about digest access authentication?

<comment><USER82> Basic is useless - sends password in the clear.

Digest authentication is safe against _passive_ sniffing (it doesn't exchange any password/token in the clear and uses nonces), but it doesn't protect against active attacker who could modify server headers and replace "Digest" with "Basic" to reveal password.

<comment><USER81> Ok, so digest authentication is safe against this new firefox extension?

If so, why don't facebook et al. switch to digest based authentication?

Surely its better than unencrypted cookie based logins. Is it just that its ugly (the browser login popup)?

<comment><USER82> Yes, Digest is safe in this case, but one could write a more advanced (packet- injecting) tool/Firefox extension that breaks Digest too.

Terribly bad UI and lack of standard way to log out are dealbreakers for HTTP auth.

There's also no reliable way to customize UI to offer help, password reminders, branding or anything like that.

There has been proposal to improve this in 1999:

<http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-authentform>

and recently discussed in HTML5 WG, but the conclusion was Digest and countless JS tricks proposed in its place are only partial solutions, cookies have unstoppable momentum, so it's better if everyone just switches to SSL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> On my Macbook Pro (purchased 1 year ago) it doesn't seem to be able to capture traffic on my wifi. It can see sessions originating from another browser on the same Mac, but not other macs on the wifi network.

Is there a way of debugging what's going on?

<comment><USER83> Which sites are you using this on? It only works on a few select sites (and you can add more with some more javascript code). It worked for me on my MBP on the main sites, twitter some igoogle.

<comment><USER68> I tried it on Facebook.

I have a WPA2 protected Wifi network. Two laptops (a MB and a MBP) on it. I run it on the MBP, on the MB I refresh a logged in Facebook page, and nothing appears as captured on the MBP.

If on the MBP I refresh Facebook in another browser it appears.

<comment><USER84> Try on an open wireless network.

<comment><USER68> Why? It should work on a WPA encrypted network as long as I have the network key - from the perspective of my network interface nothing is encrypted.

This indicates that the card has not properly been put in to listening mode, which means the plugin is not operating my card correctly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> I'm eagerly waiting trying this out once a Linux version becomes available.. looks very nice! Unfortunately I don't have a Windows or OS X installation available to me at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER86> PHP session_regenerate_id(true)

[http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.session-regenerate- id....](http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.session-regenerate-id.php)

</comment><comment><USER87> Here is a simple tutorial on how to set up an SSH Tunnel for Mac OS X <http://bit.ly/cffjOY>

This way all your communication is encrypted

<comment><AUTHOR> I love SSH tunnels, but in regards to this particular problem, it really just pushes the problem off to wherever you ssh tunnel terminates. Do you trust you server operator? ISP? This is addressed in our presentation, here (VPN's are essentially doing the same thing): <http://codebutler.github.com/firesheep/tc12/#20>

<comment><USER87> Totally agree!

But right now I'm more worried about a co-worker or stranger in a Starbucks taking over my personal Facebook or Gmail account than my server operator trying to spy on me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> It would help a bit if there was a way to automatically encrypt sessions on an open wifi access point without requiring a password to connect.

</comment><comment><USER89> On a positive note, at least a lot of people will be updating to the latest secure version of Firefox to run it.

</comment><comment><USER90> On the other hand, stealing somebody's real life identity is not that hard either. But it does not happen too often, in part because it's illegal. Stealing somebody's cookie on the Internet is a crime just as is stealing somebody's driver's license. Although technical solution to this security hole is desirable, it's not the only solution available.

</comment><comment><USER91> Linux installation needs work. README is empty, and the INSTALL says use ./configure which doesn't exist. ./autogen.sh complains about needing xulrunner-sdk path, which is isn't something normal for linux.

Edit: Oops! Linux support is "on the way." I guess I assumed since linux is the easiest platform to get your driver to go into monitor mode.

</comment><comment><USER92> I just tried this here in a coffee shop. This is fucking evil.

</comment><comment><USER93> I couldn't install it on FF 3.6.9 on Windows XP.

<comment><USER31> What was the error?

<comment><USER93> "Firesheep 0.1 could not be installed because it is not compatible with Firefox 3.6.9."

And yes, WinPcap is installed. I don't think it should matter, but I'm running Windows XP on a VirtualBox.

<comment><USER31> Oh, you just need to update to the latest version of Firefox (3.6.11). Your version is out of date and not secure. [http://www.mozilla.org/security/known- vulnerabilities/firefo...](http://www.mozilla.org/security/known- vulnerabilities/firefox36.html)

<comment><USER94> What should happen if you use iPhone tethering? Could it top into the vast people on that network? (I have absolutely no idea). If this is the case, the internet will have a panic attack in 2 days max.

<comment><USER9> No. Cabled tethering to a cell phone only gives you access to your own packets. It's like a switched network where only packets addressed to you are sent to you.

On 802.11 wireless networks your wireless network card is capable of capturing traffic addressed to other computers. When encryption isn't used or is compromised, you can steal their credentials.

Doing something similar against cellular networks would require a much more sophisticated attack with specialized hardware that's largely illegal in the United States. I would also hope that cellular communications are encrypted these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> Isin't this extension great ? =D

</comment><comment><USER96> what version of firefox do you need to have to run it? i can't get it to work.

</comment><comment><USER94> please don't tell 4chan

<comment><USER97> /b/ is going to have a field day with this. A long unbroken string of field days. For a long time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER98> Interesting. I was going to do something similar but keep it limited to Facebook chat. That way you could eavesdrop on conversations in the room and impersonate people, etc. This is actually probably easy to program and more versatile at that.

</comment><comment><USER99> Works for me.

</comment><comment><USER100> Well, whatever... encrypt all you like, $5 will still crack your session: <http://xkcd.com/538/>

<comment><USER100> wow, -1. HN readers sure left their senses of humour at home today.

I shall call this experiment a success.</comment></comment>


How Banksy authenticates his work through certificates - <AUTHOR> https://reprage.com/post/how-banksy-authenticates-his-work <comment><USER2> I don't get it. The post author is clearly very excited, but the process itself is very boring: each work has a serial number. A company verifies serial number on request, as well as maintains owner contact details and handles the ownership transfers.

This is exactly how most ownership systems work - replace "di faced tenner" with "license plate", and you will get a vehicle registry.

</comment><comment><USER3> Establishing provenance has always been in interesting issue in the world of high art. I have a friend who's trying to tackle the issue in regards to digital art right now via the blockchain: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cyruslohrasbpour/zoma-e...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cyruslohrasbpour/zoma- eternal-artifacts). I suggested to him the other day that he should try to tie in a solution to tangible pieces as well.</comment>