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Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a port-scan of my network?

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Re: Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a port-scan of my network?

#171

Post by teiferer »

Our_Benefactors wrote: post #162
throw10920 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to defend the US immigration system, but my experience is that this user-hostile behavior (modulo the port scanning lol) is endemic across US government websites - including those that nominally want to serve you, those that are at the state level instead of the federal level (such as the DMV sites), and those that are even internal for use by government employees only. It's bad enough that in some cases I believ…

This. The website for buying treasury products is straight out of the year 2002. The login is so bad I would never consider buying them there - the service fee charged by brokerages is absolutely worth it in this case.

Makes it obvious which lobby has a hand in this, doesn't it?

Re: Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a port-scan of my network?

#172

Post by snapetom »

jazzypants wrote: post #123
cromka wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You use the same system for Business visas. Hard to imagine US wouldn’t want those as easy as possible.

You don't have a good enough imagination for how stupid our current leadership really is.

I don’t know if you’re US-based or not but in the US, government work has the stigma of attracting the bottom of the barrel. It is nearly impossible to get fired for performance reasons. Combine low pay and high job security, and you’re not going to attract the most innovative, motivated, or competent people.

Early in my career, I was warned that if I took a job with the state of California, I’d be stuck there for my whole career. I’d be unhirable in the private sector.

Re: Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a port-scan of my network?

#173

Post by Filligree »

LarMachinarum wrote: post #156
dd_xplore wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that available in lite version too? Now that the origin js being phased out

… or you can instead phase out those browsers who try to force blocker restrictions i.e. spyware on you (e.g. chrome and such), and use one of the browsers where you can use the full-featured (not "lite") uBlock Origin instead, e.g. Firefox.

Firefox might be an okay browser, but that would imply supporting Mozilla.

I've been meaning to switch to Vivaldi. Just as soon as the onboarding dialog stops crashing.

Re: Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a port-scan of my network?

#174

Post by schlauerfox »

xp84 wrote: post #166
jazzypants wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have a good enough imagination for how stupid our current leadership really is.

During 8 years of Obama and 4 years of Biden, none of this was different or better. Perhaps this isn't a partisan political issue.

From 2014 until it was, in effect, obliterated by DOGE actions this year there was the "United States Digital Service", a crack team of programmers, a sort of skunkworks who worked to improve U.S. government websites of departments that wanted the help. So it seems to be partisan to want good websites, but there are countless people involved in politics with many agendas.

Re: Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a port-scan of my network?

#175

Post by buyucu »

b3lvedere wrote: post #91

"Since looking into it, I noticed that uBlock Origin already has the default list "Block Outsider Intrusion into LAN" but it wasn't enabled." Never knew that this existed. Thank you!

Likewise I didn't know it existed, but it was enabled on my laptop and mobile browsers.

Re: Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a port-scan of my network?

#176

Post by buyucu »

dd_xplore wrote: post #96
b3lvedere wrote: post #91

"Since looking into it, I noticed that uBlock Origin already has the default list "Block Outsider Intrusion into LAN" but it wasn't enabled." Never knew that this existed. Thank you!

Is that available in lite version too? Now that the origin js being phased out

It is not being phased out for Firefox.

Re: Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a port-scan of my network?

#177

Post by mrtksn »

peterfirefly wrote: post #165
mrtksn wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am EU citizen, I happen to know the Turkish perspective only because spent some years in Turkey and in fact it is the Turkish perspective that that EU doesn't want them and intentionally makes things harder but the moment you look at what's actually going on you see that this is not the case, just a Turkish fantasy about the "evil West and snobby Europeans". Considering that last year 50K Turks applied for asylum i…

[flagged]

>I'm Danish and we have lots of Turks. They are generally much nicer than the Danes but almost all of them are dunces

That's rich coming from someone who doesn't understand what the Schengen visa is about. FYI it's not about settling in Denmark, it's for up to 90 days stays in 180 periods for tourism and business purposes.

But hey, the inventors of of the mRNA vaccine are both Turkish immigrants to Germany and there are plenty of other quite successful Turkish immigrants in all kind of industries and the academia. Maybe the problem isn't Turks but you? Thank god your racism isn't shared by that many Europeans.

Re: Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a port-scan of my network?

#178

Post by adastra22 »

b3lvedere wrote: post #91

"Since looking into it, I noticed that uBlock Origin already has the default list "Block Outsider Intrusion into LAN" but it wasn't enabled." Never knew that this existed. Thank you!

I’m flabbergasted that this is even allowed. Who thought it was a good idea to allow any web page you visit to access your local network?

Re: Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a port-scan of my network?

#179

Post by 77pt77 »

dannyw wrote: post #164
tifkap wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is most likely an attempt to connect to a webserver on your own device to collect data and/or do tracking. Remember back in June when Facebook/meta got caught tracking users trough a webserver on Android phone thought Messenger and Instagram? Same thing. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44169115 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44175940

Why do you say that’s most likely? This is a common pattern for connecting to smart cards / hardware security devices. Probably a service or hardware that’s run on official CBP machines that should be disabled for prod, but forgot.

This is by far the most likely reason.

I personally use pages that authenticate via a smartcard using this exact scheme.

There is a Java "plugin" that is nothing but a mini webserver that listens on a specific port and performs authentication.

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