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Internet Archive: Security breach alert

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431–440 of 648 posts

Re: Internet Archive: Security breach alert

#431

I was disappointed to discover that https://haveibeenpwned.com does not report an email as pwned if it is subaddressed/plus addressed. myemail@gmail.com is reported as still safe, but myemail+archive@gmail.com is pwned. I wonder if my email has been leaked by any other websites without me knowing.

I don't think they can do that, because they do not store plaintext addresses in their database, merely hashes. It certainly reduces the impact of someone hacking HIBP.

Re: Internet Archive: Security breach alert

#433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also on HIBP over 10x. What are we supposed to do? Create a new email address for every service we sign up for? I don't know what the best practice is for keeping our personal data safe anymore.

Using unique email addresses makes phishing attempts extremely obvious… (No, this official looking email from my bank is fake since it was sent to Grocery@my.domain …)

I get a ton of "This is your email administrator -- your email password needs to be reset" to github@mydomain

Re: Internet Archive: Security breach alert

#434

Just in terms of privacy, it's worth noting that anyone who has uploaded something on IA already has their email address publicly viewable. This isn't something that commonly known (even judging by comments here) but in the publicly viewable metadata of every upload it contains the uploader's IA account email address. So from a security perspective it's bad but from a privacy perspective a lot of users probably weren…

This raises an interesting question: should email addresses be private? Addresses of buildings aren't private, and they're somewhat analogous as with many computing concepts. (Aside: Before spam filters were quite good, it was typical to avoid scraping of addresses by mild obfuscation, but I think those days are gone, and this is distinct from privacy anyway.) If someone wants to upload and never be found out, then t…

This raises an interesting question: should email addresses be private?

GDPR is clear on this and there have been significant fines for revealing email addresses against the will of their owners (e.g. using cc instead of bcc). Not saying this is the ultimate wisdom, just a data point to consider.

Re: Internet Archive: Security breach alert

#435
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But was that code placed there by IA or by the malicious party?

Verge reports someone has taken credit for an ongoing DDOS against IA. "An account on X called SN_Blackmeta said it was behind the attack and implied that another attack was planned for tomorrow" https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/9/24266419/internet-archive...

This bad actor has videos of them supposedly “ddosing” Spotify by pinging 1.1.1.1 in two terminal windows on their Twitter.

Is there any link between them and the real attack or are they just unrelated people claiming credit for it?

Re: Internet Archive: Security breach alert

#436
post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This raises an interesting question: should email addresses be private? I sadly don't think that's viable. What might be, in our current world, would be having a mail server/client setup where you can generate random addresses for yourself like Wf1JJUBHLu@domain.com and never re-use an e-mail address, much like with passwords, while being able to see all of the incoming mail in the same place and respond with the c…

I also have my own mailserver and I don't create new accounts, I have a wildcard filter that drops all emails that come to my domain in my inbox. This is of course only viable when you are the only person using the domain, but I just sign up with a new mail address every time I sign up, for example my hackernews account would be hackernews-acc@xx.com That way I have a clear differentiator for every domain.

I do something similar except that I do not allow wildcard reception - I create unique service-identifying user@ for each service I give an address to, and have a simple script that immediately adds that to the Postfix virtual table.

That way the SMTP server can reject all unknown user@ without accepting them in the first place - preventing spamming and some types of denial of service through resource starvation.

I also apply greylist based on a unique tuple (From, To, client IP address) so on first connection with that tuple valid SMTP clients need to re-deliver the email after a waiting period. Any subsequent delivers are accepted immediately.

Re: Internet Archive: Security breach alert

#438
post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also have my own mailserver and I don't create new accounts, I have a wildcard filter that drops all emails that come to my domain in my inbox. This is of course only viable when you are the only person using the domain, but I just sign up with a new mail address every time I sign up, for example my hackernews account would be hackernews-acc@xx.com That way I have a clear differentiator for every domain.

That's a pretty cool approach! I'd only be worried about the risk of leaking the main account address when responding to anything, but it's probably doable with a bit of research, like Postfix catch-all setups seem straightforward enough.

FWIW that should just be a matter of using the right configuration and mail client. With Fastmail for example I get to use a catch-all setup with my domain, and respond to whatever email it was sent to.

And the other way around as well. Send an email from an arbitrary @domain email address.

Re: Internet Archive: Security breach alert

#440

As of 01:09 GMT on October 10, the Internet Archive is back up. In fact, the Wayback Machine and the book archives are responding more quickly than they did for me a week ago, when I showed the Archive to the students in an online class I teach. I gave the students a homework assignment that involves accessing some old books at the Archive. That assignment is due in about 12 hours, and I was just getting ready to e-m…

As of 08:34 GMT on October 10, the Internet Archive is down again.
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