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Ask HN: How did the internet discover my subdomain?

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Re: Ask HN: How did the internet discover my subdomain?

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That's not what that phrase means. That's not even what the word "obscure" means. Obscurity is trying to not draw attention to something, or keep it hidden (as in "nobody knows that it's there", not "you know that it's there but can't access it"). Encryption doesn't obscure data unless you're stretching the definition of the word beyond its useful purpose.

verb: keep from being seen; conceal.

In what way is what he’s describing not obscurity?

Re: Ask HN: How did the internet discover my subdomain?

#202

Hi, our company does this basically "as-a-service". The options how to find it are basically limitless. Best source is probably Certificate Transparency project as others suggested. But it does not end there, some other things that we do are things like internet crawl, domain bruteforcing on wildcard dns, dangling vhosts identification, default certs on servers (connect to IP on 443 and get default cert) and many oth…

Subdomainfinder.com ?? Dozens of others will also find it. Really, it's this simple today.

Sorry for a bit of self promo, but just to explain we run https://reconwave.com/, basically EASM product but more focused on network/DNS/setup level.

Finding all things about domains is one of the things that we do. And yes, it's very easy.

There are many services like subdomainfinder - i.e. dnsdumpster and merklemap. We built our own as well on https://search.reconwave.com/. But it's a side project and it does not pay our bills.

Re: Ask HN: How did the internet discover my subdomain?

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That's not what that phrase means. That's not even what the word "obscure" means. Obscurity is trying to not draw attention to something, or keep it hidden (as in "nobody knows that it's there", not "you know that it's there but can't access it"). Encryption doesn't obscure data unless you're stretching the definition of the word beyond its useful purpose.

[dead]

Re: Ask HN: How did the internet discover my subdomain?

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what that phrase means. That's not even what the word "obscure" means. Obscurity is trying to not draw attention to something, or keep it hidden (as in "nobody knows that it's there", not "you know that it's there but can't access it"). Encryption doesn't obscure data unless you're stretching the definition of the word beyond its useful purpose.

verb: keep from being seen; conceal. In what way is what he’s describing not obscurity?

It is about the existence or the methodology being obscured, not the contents of an encrypted message. The point of that phrase is to contrast one type of security for another. You and I can know exactly what tool was used to encrypt something, and all the mathematics behind it, but still fail to decrypt it without the requisite private key.

Re: Ask HN: How did the internet discover my subdomain?

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what that phrase means. That's not even what the word "obscure" means. Obscurity is trying to not draw attention to something, or keep it hidden (as in "nobody knows that it's there", not "you know that it's there but can't access it"). Encryption doesn't obscure data unless you're stretching the definition of the word beyond its useful purpose.

verb: keep from being seen; conceal. In what way is what he’s describing not obscurity?

In every way, because context matters, and the original commenter intentionally recontextualized it just to be contrarian.

Re: Ask HN: How did the internet discover my subdomain?

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what that phrase means. That's not even what the word "obscure" means. Obscurity is trying to not draw attention to something, or keep it hidden (as in "nobody knows that it's there", not "you know that it's there but can't access it"). Encryption doesn't obscure data unless you're stretching the definition of the word beyond its useful purpose.

verb: keep from being seen; conceal. In what way is what he’s describing not obscurity?

Yes that is what the word obscure means.

But the phrase “security through obscurity” is an industry term that refers to keeping things secure purely by not letting people know they exist.

In contrast with encryption, where I can tell you exactly where the encrypted data is, but you can’t access it.

Security through obscurity is hiding a bicycle in a bush and hoping no one notices it, encryption is more like locking it to a bike rack with a very good lock.

Re: Ask HN: How did the internet discover my subdomain?

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> “Security through obscurity” is the only security there is. > Encryption obscures data. I don't think you understand what "security through obscurity" means. What encryption does is literally the opposite of obscure, in this context. It is out in the open and documented. And the same with the rest of your examples.

[dead]

Re: Ask HN: How did the internet discover my subdomain?

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what that phrase means. That's not even what the word "obscure" means. Obscurity is trying to not draw attention to something, or keep it hidden (as in "nobody knows that it's there", not "you know that it's there but can't access it"). Encryption doesn't obscure data unless you're stretching the definition of the word beyond its useful purpose.

verb: keep from being seen; conceal. In what way is what he’s describing not obscurity?

Two points:

1. Encrypted data is not hidden. You still know that there is data, it's just in a form that you can't understand. Just as difficult higher-level math isn't "obscured" from a non-mathematician (who knows that it is math, but can't decode it), encrypted data is not obscured.

2. You could make the argument that the data is actually hidden, but the fact that data is there is not hidden. This is pointless pedantry, though. It is both contrary to the way that everybody uses the word and stretches the meaning of the word to the point that it's not useful. There is a common understanding of what "Security through obscurity" means ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity ) and interpreting it far beyond that is not useful. It simply breaks down communication into annoying semantic arguments. I enjoy semantic arguments, but not tedious, pedantic ones where one person just argues that a word isn't what everybody understands it to mean.

More specifically, it's about WHAT is being obscured. "Security through obscurity" is about trying to be secure by keeping the details or mechanisms of a system secret, not the data itself.

Re: Ask HN: How did the internet discover my subdomain?

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what that phrase means. That's not even what the word "obscure" means. Obscurity is trying to not draw attention to something, or keep it hidden (as in "nobody knows that it's there", not "you know that it's there but can't access it"). Encryption doesn't obscure data unless you're stretching the definition of the word beyond its useful purpose.

verb: keep from being seen; conceal. In what way is what he’s describing not obscurity?

This was explained in the third sentence of the post that you're responding to
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