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Show HN: URL Canary – Get an alert when someone finds your secrets

urlcanary.com

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Re: Show HN: URL Canary – Get an alert when someone finds your secrets

#61

Post by marcc »

CamTin wrote: post #19

You might think about embedding bounties in crypto blockchains. For example, create BTC wallets that can be unlocked using a secret sitting next to (or steganographically embedded in) the secret you're trying to protect. This gives the person uncovering the secret an incentive to activate the canary. {RI,MP}AA are apparently doing this with their music and movies, so they know when they are showing up on pirate sites…

I think this is a great idea and a great use of a BTC/LTC wallet. Breach notification often doesn't happen in a timely manner, and building a solution like this let's me, the consumer, get notified even when the vendor with the secrets doesn't send the notification.

Check out https://medium.com/@grantm/obtaining-instant-breach-transpar... for some more info about how this might be possible.

Re: Show HN: URL Canary – Get an alert when someone finds your secrets

#63

Post by nzjrs »

Semi related asking the wizard of HN. I recall reading a similar trick whereby one can embed a github key/token/api key/??? In a source file in one's repository and then if your code ever is stolen and pushed to github then you will receive a notification because github will revoke the token. Does this or similar ring a bell for anyone?

Re: Show HN: URL Canary – Get an alert when someone finds your secrets

#65

Post by softawre »

jstanley wrote: post #38
makarhum wrote: post #37

Similar idea than https://uriteller.io . This is nice way to check whether your end to end encrypted chat is really secure or not.

Uri Teller is a perfect name, that's brilliant.

Also a lot better for simple use cases since it doesn't require an email address.

Re: Show HN: URL Canary – Get an alert when someone finds your secrets

#66

Post by jonny_eh »

sli wrote: post #53
foepys wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As skeptical as I am about crypto currencies, this is a really interesting application. Basically exploiting human greed. Thank you for sharing it.

That's some awfully pessimistic and dehumanizing language. I just consider it to be paying someone for the trouble rather than jumping straight to "exploiting greed."

Exactly, it's as if my pay cheque is "exploiting human greed".

Re: Show HN: URL Canary – Get an alert when someone finds your secrets

#67

Post by softawre »

CapacitorSet wrote: post #60
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #25

Hah, that enterprise pricing is insane.

Indeed, at £1k (€1136, $1403) one might as well run an internal application. At a very basic level, it can be achieved with three lines of bash: while echo -en "HTTP/1.1 200 OK\r\n..." | nc -l $IP $PORT; do cat $MESSAGE | sendmail -i -t done More complex configurations could still be worked out in <50 lines of Python.

Why would anybody buy this (dropbox), I can recreate this with a simple ftp server and 30 minutes of coding!

Re: Show HN: URL Canary – Get an alert when someone finds your secrets

#68

Post by brianwawok »

oh_sigh wrote: post #30
dylanpyle wrote: post #12

FYI - I signed up and the email confirmation page showed me someone else's canary URL

Well, did you go to the URL so that that user will know they used an insecure service?

They forgot to dogfood their own product

Re: Show HN: URL Canary – Get an alert when someone finds your secrets

#70

Post by racer-v »

sli wrote: post #53
foepys wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As skeptical as I am about crypto currencies, this is a really interesting application. Basically exploiting human greed. Thank you for sharing it.

That's some awfully pessimistic and dehumanizing language. I just consider it to be paying someone for the trouble rather than jumping straight to "exploiting greed."

You say that like there's something wrong with exploiting greed.
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