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Cryptanalys.is – Hacker News for crypto, security, and privacy

33 points by markmassie 13y ago

brandonhsiao 13y ago
I have to ask: is it just me, or are those upvotes on the frontpage faked?
- presty 13y ago
  most probably he should've faked/imported some comments too, if he wanted to seem more legit
  - GigabyteCoin 13y ago
    That's not easy! But you're right, it probably needs to be done.
- leobelle 13y ago
  My thoughts. lobste.rs is the only really remotely viable alternative to HN and it doesn't have near that many upvotes for items on the front page, but it has some discussion.
- iuguy 13y ago
  There's articles with 40+ votes and no comments. That doesn't seem quite right to me.
  - GigabyteCoin 13y ago
    I just lowered the random karma value for new auto-submitted stories. The majority of the website is currently populated by me, the site's creator, but that will stop once it gains a large enough userbase to sustain regular submission rate. Thank you for taking a look! (I created cryptanalys.is)
- KMag 13y ago
  They don't even seem to have been seeded with faked values, but rather pinned to fake values. I upvoted one article and downvoted another, and several minutes later the scores remain unchanged. I can see the upside to manually tweaking the votes until you get critical mass, but pinning the votes to faked values makes the transition more difficult than just seeding with fake values and letting the community adjust from there.
  - GigabyteCoin 13y ago
    The reason your upvote remained unchanged is that anybody with 10 karma points or less bears no weight on the voting algorithms. I'm experimenting with having higher karma-valued posters have more weight when it comes to voting. Was that you who registered as KMag? You now have 100 karma and your votes will be counted from now on.
- GigabyteCoin 13y ago
  Creator here. The upvotes on the frontpage are indeed faked. It's quite obvious I'm sure to the HN crowd. Please accept my apologies. I posted the site originally with just a few articles and nobody even gave it a single upvote on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7339368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7339368 I assumed it was due to the fact that "nobody wants to start a conversation with themselves" so I tried to make the site look a bit more used.
throwwit 13y ago
"Warning! Cryptanalys.is will not work with javascript disabled!" A crypto site with mandatory javascript... seems legit
- GigabyteCoin 13y ago
  The site relies quite heavily on javascript. Sorry about that. All of the voting and commenting is handled with Ajax, and all of the comment sorting is done by javascript to lessen the load on my tiny servers.
balladeer 13y ago
Why everything needs to be "Hacker News" of something? Is it the circlejerk effect or just pure laziness?
shomyo 13y ago
> Passwords can only consist of the following characters: a-z, A-Z, 0-9, and !@#$%^&()-_. Please choose another. Sure. Epic: http://i.imgur.com/zT30wY1.png http://i.imgur.com/zT30wY1.png No thank you.
- GigabyteCoin 13y ago
  There really isn't a reason for the limit on the password characters. I suppose I can lift that restriction now. I don't get what you mean by "Epic:" and the link to the karma-collection script. If you care to explain what you don't like about the website I will try my best to improve the experience. The site just launched a few days ago and I need feedback from early-eyes like yours to help shape the user experience. I appreciate your taking a look at the website.
  - KMag 13y ago
    Restrictions on input characters are often as strong indication that a cryptographic key derivation function (or even just a salted cryptographic hash function) isn't being used to store the passwords. See http://plaintextoffenders.com http://plaintextoffenders.com
    - GigabyteCoin 13y ago
      It had simply been some time since I had worked with MySQL. I didn't fully understand prepared statments when I began creating the site (as I had never worked with them before), so I put in a check to make sure that nobody was trying to inject anything via SQL when registering, but I realize that is all for nothing now when using prepared statements. Every user's password is hashed using the default PHP 'PASSWORD_DEFAULT', which according to this page uses BCRYPT: http://www.php.net/manual/en/password.constants.php http://www.php.net/manual/en/password.constants.php Needless to say, I have removed the password restrictions... now the only restriction is that it must be at least 6 characters in length, and must be no more than 5,000 characters in length. You should be able to use any kind of crazy UTF8 combination of characters you can muster. Not only that, but attackers are limited to 3 attempts per IP per hour when trying to log in via brute force.
lisper 13y ago
> Wow, lisper, is that really you? Yeah, it was really me. But I don't have a bitcointalk.org account. There is more to crypto, security and privacy than bitcoin.
- GigabyteCoin 13y ago
  The site was originally conceived as a HN version of /r/Bitcoin so that's the reason for the bitcointalk.org karma collection. If I get more complaints about it I will surely remove it. the site just went live a few days ago and I thought it was a good idea when creating it. So that's why it's there.
  - lisper 13y ago
    My expectations were set by the HN headline: "Hacker News for crypto, security, and privacy." But I see now you didn't submit the item. You might want to consider putting a banner on the site: "Hacker News for Bitcoin". That would make transferring accounts from bitcointalk seem more reasonable.
    - GigabyteCoin 13y ago
      >You might want to consider putting a banner on the site: "Hacker News for Bitcoin". That is a great idea. I had been toying with the idea of some kind of banner for the last few days, either relating to a crypto-contest or karma-contest, but was worried it might detract from the "HN Look" which I had worked so hard to achieve. Thinking it over now it looks like more of a necessity than a distraction.
p4bl0 13y ago
Seeing the link title I thought "nice, an HN like with focus on my domain and less bitcoins related crap". Wow, I couldn't be more wrong. "crypto, security and privacy" should not mean "bitcoin, bitcoin, and vaguely web security stuffs, and bitcoins". That plus the obviously fake upvotes… I won't even try to register, too bad.
- nomailing 13y ago
  what's your problem with bitcoin? maybe you just have to accept that a lot of the HN and crypto audience is interested in bitcoin.
  - drdaeman 13y ago
    Articles like "Bitcoin's Satoshi Nakamoto Is Reportedly Worth Over $400 Million" or "Insuring the Bitcoin loss with another digital currency" have no relation to crypto (especially, cryptanalysis), security or privacy.
    - GigabyteCoin 13y ago
      Hello! Creator of Cryptanalys.is here. There is a downvote button, so presumably once more people start using the site those posts wont make it to the top so easily. Right now it's just me myself and I researching the most popular stuff being talked about that's somewhat related to "cryptucurrencies, cryptography, and privacy" which those two titles fall under.
  - kjs3 13y ago
    Bitcoin isn't really the point. If they put up a site claiming to be about "crypto, security and privacy", but 80% of the posts they attract (or post themselves because they don't have critical mass) are on a single topic, then either it's really not about "crypto, security and privacy", or they're doing a really bad job building out the site. It's not like there isn't a whirlwind of activity in cryptography outside of hashes, nor a lack of security incidents to discuss. And requiring JS? On a security site? Fail.
krapp 13y ago
It's ok. I don't see the point of forcing js on a site like this, though, and it's bound to turn a lot of crypto people away. Also, where is the source code? I looked for a link to it but couldn't find it. You can't expect to run a site for security/crypto people without code they can at least pretend to audit.
- GigabyteCoin 13y ago
  I am the creator here. Thank you for taking a look! You raise a good point, as others in this thread have. Forced-javascript + security just don't jive. I should have known that. But one aspect of the site's small server-footprint make the javascript somewhat necessary. For commenting and voting at least... I plan on making a text only version of the homepage, and linking to that at the bottom footer as I do the rss feed: https://cryptanalys.is/rss.php https://cryptanalys.is/rss.php (which is currently not visible due to an encoding error apparently!) Maybe a "retro" version of the homepage would be to your liking? Like this: http://retro.hackaday.com/ http://retro.hackaday.com/ The source code is not public, yet. I don't see what good it would do to publish the source of a website from a security perspective, though. It's not like you can take the digest of a webpage and prove that it's coming from the source code on github.
  - krapp 13y ago
    I understand using js to push some of the rendering time off on the user but surely you could mitigate some of the overhead with caching headers. I mean, the pages themselves are not that big... As far as the source code goes, true enough (that seems to be a fundamental problem with applying open source ethics to the web) but as long as you're trying to attract security-minded individuals, maybe let them make pull requests and improve the security of the site? Still though, it looks nice and I do like the collapsing threads.
    - GigabyteCoin 13y ago
      I appreciate your comments. I'm surprised you noticed the collapsing threads due to the lack of comments on Cryptanalys.is thus far, but there have been some. I'm working on a read-only version of the homepage that users without JS will be redirected to (And more politely informed that they must enable JS in order to participate) but nobody should be stopped from reading the website simply for not being able to run JS. You are right.
GigabyteCoin 13y ago
Well! So the second I go to sleep the other night, markmassie re-posts my baby to HN and it actually gets some traction. Just my luck :P I have worked on Cryptanalys.is for about 2 months part time. It's a complete re-write of the HN platform in PHP and Javascript. I posted this the other day and was all ready for HN stardom only to receive exactly 0 votes and ~45 visitors: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7339368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7339368 Needless to say, after seeing the "popsicle stick bomb" upvoted to the top of HN literally the next day I was quite disappointed. So, thanks for finally checking it out everyone! The site just went live a few days ago so yes there will be some problems. But if you'll post your qualms below I am all ears to try and fix them!

33 points by markmassie 13y ago

brandonhsiao 13y ago

I have to ask: is it just me, or are those upvotes on the frontpage faked?

presty 13y ago
most probably he should've faked/imported some comments too, if he wanted to seem more legit
- GigabyteCoin 13y ago
  That's not easy! But you're right, it probably needs to be done.
leobelle 13y ago
My thoughts. lobste.rs is the only really remotely viable alternative to HN and it doesn't have near that many upvotes for items on the front page, but it has some discussion.
iuguy 13y ago
There's articles with 40+ votes and no comments. That doesn't seem quite right to me.
- GigabyteCoin 13y ago
  I just lowered the random karma value for new auto-submitted stories. The majority of the website is currently populated by me, the site's creator, but that will stop once it gains a large enough userbase to sustain regular submission rate. Thank you for taking a look! (I created cryptanalys.is)
KMag 13y ago
They don't even seem to have been seeded with faked values, but rather pinned to fake values. I upvoted one article and downvoted another, and several minutes later the scores remain unchanged. I can see the upside to manually tweaking the votes until you get critical mass, but pinning the votes to faked values makes the transition more difficult than just seeding with fake values and letting the community adjust from there.
- GigabyteCoin 13y ago
  The reason your upvote remained unchanged is that anybody with 10 karma points or less bears no weight on the voting algorithms. I'm experimenting with having higher karma-valued posters have more weight when it comes to voting. Was that you who registered as KMag? You now have 100 karma and your votes will be counted from now on.
GigabyteCoin 13y ago
Creator here. The upvotes on the frontpage are indeed faked. It's quite obvious I'm sure to the HN crowd. Please accept my apologies. I posted the site originally with just a few articles and nobody even gave it a single upvote on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7339368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7339368 I assumed it was due to the fact that "nobody wants to start a conversation with themselves" so I tried to make the site look a bit more used.

throwwit 13y ago

"Warning! Cryptanalys.is will not work with javascript disabled!" A crypto site with mandatory javascript... seems legit

GigabyteCoin 13y ago
The site relies quite heavily on javascript. Sorry about that. All of the voting and commenting is handled with Ajax, and all of the comment sorting is done by javascript to lessen the load on my tiny servers.

balladeer 13y ago

Why everything needs to be "Hacker News" of something? Is it the circlejerk effect or just pure laziness?

shomyo 13y ago

> Passwords can only consist of the following characters: a-z, A-Z, 0-9, and !@#$%^&()-_. Please choose another. Sure. Epic: http://i.imgur.com/zT30wY1.png http://i.imgur.com/zT30wY1.png No thank you.

GigabyteCoin 13y ago
There really isn't a reason for the limit on the password characters. I suppose I can lift that restriction now. I don't get what you mean by "Epic:" and the link to the karma-collection script. If you care to explain what you don't like about the website I will try my best to improve the experience. The site just launched a few days ago and I need feedback from early-eyes like yours to help shape the user experience. I appreciate your taking a look at the website.
- KMag 13y ago
  Restrictions on input characters are often as strong indication that a cryptographic key derivation function (or even just a salted cryptographic hash function) isn't being used to store the passwords. See http://plaintextoffenders.com http://plaintextoffenders.com
  - GigabyteCoin 13y ago
    It had simply been some time since I had worked with MySQL. I didn't fully understand prepared statments when I began creating the site (as I had never worked with them before), so I put in a check to make sure that nobody was trying to inject anything via SQL when registering, but I realize that is all for nothing now when using prepared statements. Every user's password is hashed using the default PHP 'PASSWORD_DEFAULT', which according to this page uses BCRYPT: http://www.php.net/manual/en/password.constants.php http://www.php.net/manual/en/password.constants.php Needless to say, I have removed the password restrictions... now the only restriction is that it must be at least 6 characters in length, and must be no more than 5,000 characters in length. You should be able to use any kind of crazy UTF8 combination of characters you can muster. Not only that, but attackers are limited to 3 attempts per IP per hour when trying to log in via brute force.

lisper 13y ago

> Wow, lisper, is that really you? Yeah, it was really me. But I don't have a bitcointalk.org account. There is more to crypto, security and privacy than bitcoin.

GigabyteCoin 13y ago
The site was originally conceived as a HN version of /r/Bitcoin so that's the reason for the bitcointalk.org karma collection. If I get more complaints about it I will surely remove it. the site just went live a few days ago and I thought it was a good idea when creating it. So that's why it's there.
- lisper 13y ago
  My expectations were set by the HN headline: "Hacker News for crypto, security, and privacy." But I see now you didn't submit the item. You might want to consider putting a banner on the site: "Hacker News for Bitcoin". That would make transferring accounts from bitcointalk seem more reasonable.
  - GigabyteCoin 13y ago
    >You might want to consider putting a banner on the site: "Hacker News for Bitcoin". That is a great idea. I had been toying with the idea of some kind of banner for the last few days, either relating to a crypto-contest or karma-contest, but was worried it might detract from the "HN Look" which I had worked so hard to achieve. Thinking it over now it looks like more of a necessity than a distraction.

p4bl0 13y ago

Seeing the link title I thought "nice, an HN like with focus on my domain and less bitcoins related crap". Wow, I couldn't be more wrong. "crypto, security and privacy" should not mean "bitcoin, bitcoin, and vaguely web security stuffs, and bitcoins". That plus the obviously fake upvotes… I won't even try to register, too bad.

nomailing 13y ago
what's your problem with bitcoin? maybe you just have to accept that a lot of the HN and crypto audience is interested in bitcoin.
- drdaeman 13y ago
  Articles like "Bitcoin's Satoshi Nakamoto Is Reportedly Worth Over $400 Million" or "Insuring the Bitcoin loss with another digital currency" have no relation to crypto (especially, cryptanalysis), security or privacy.
  - GigabyteCoin 13y ago
    Hello! Creator of Cryptanalys.is here. There is a downvote button, so presumably once more people start using the site those posts wont make it to the top so easily. Right now it's just me myself and I researching the most popular stuff being talked about that's somewhat related to "cryptucurrencies, cryptography, and privacy" which those two titles fall under.
- kjs3 13y ago
  Bitcoin isn't really the point. If they put up a site claiming to be about "crypto, security and privacy", but 80% of the posts they attract (or post themselves because they don't have critical mass) are on a single topic, then either it's really not about "crypto, security and privacy", or they're doing a really bad job building out the site. It's not like there isn't a whirlwind of activity in cryptography outside of hashes, nor a lack of security incidents to discuss. And requiring JS? On a security site? Fail.

krapp 13y ago

It's ok. I don't see the point of forcing js on a site like this, though, and it's bound to turn a lot of crypto people away. Also, where is the source code? I looked for a link to it but couldn't find it. You can't expect to run a site for security/crypto people without code they can at least pretend to audit.

GigabyteCoin 13y ago
I am the creator here. Thank you for taking a look! You raise a good point, as others in this thread have. Forced-javascript + security just don't jive. I should have known that. But one aspect of the site's small server-footprint make the javascript somewhat necessary. For commenting and voting at least... I plan on making a text only version of the homepage, and linking to that at the bottom footer as I do the rss feed: https://cryptanalys.is/rss.php https://cryptanalys.is/rss.php (which is currently not visible due to an encoding error apparently!) Maybe a "retro" version of the homepage would be to your liking? Like this: http://retro.hackaday.com/ http://retro.hackaday.com/ The source code is not public, yet. I don't see what good it would do to publish the source of a website from a security perspective, though. It's not like you can take the digest of a webpage and prove that it's coming from the source code on github.
- krapp 13y ago
  I understand using js to push some of the rendering time off on the user but surely you could mitigate some of the overhead with caching headers. I mean, the pages themselves are not that big... As far as the source code goes, true enough (that seems to be a fundamental problem with applying open source ethics to the web) but as long as you're trying to attract security-minded individuals, maybe let them make pull requests and improve the security of the site? Still though, it looks nice and I do like the collapsing threads.
  - GigabyteCoin 13y ago
    I appreciate your comments. I'm surprised you noticed the collapsing threads due to the lack of comments on Cryptanalys.is thus far, but there have been some. I'm working on a read-only version of the homepage that users without JS will be redirected to (And more politely informed that they must enable JS in order to participate) but nobody should be stopped from reading the website simply for not being able to run JS. You are right.

GigabyteCoin 13y ago

Well! So the second I go to sleep the other night, markmassie re-posts my baby to HN and it actually gets some traction. Just my luck :P I have worked on Cryptanalys.is for about 2 months part time. It's a complete re-write of the HN platform in PHP and Javascript. I posted this the other day and was all ready for HN stardom only to receive exactly 0 votes and ~45 visitors: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7339368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7339368 Needless to say, after seeing the "popsicle stick bomb" upvoted to the top of HN literally the next day I was quite disappointed. So, thanks for finally checking it out everyone! The site just went live a few days ago so yes there will be some problems. But if you'll post your qualms below I am all ears to try and fix them!