Join the discussion

Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.

  • Hacker News
  • I do like the idea behind Have I Been Pwned, and honestly if a government took it over that might be nice if we had some guarantees. It feels like something that ought to be a public service with super duper special oversight to avoid it being used by law enforcement(since sending any information is necessarily bad)
  • Ehhhh, which government? Why would you want to build 200+ separate services for this? Would the US government report to a french citizen? Would we have two separate services from France/US?

    I agree public services are great but let governments focus on more critical services.

  • > if a government took it over that might be nice

    > to avoid it being used by law enforcement

    What?

  • Most people don't trust their government enough to run a service like this. For example, my government lets bridges collapse[0], and it can barely keep the roads paved. The fact that any government service works at all is nothing short of a miracle to me.

    [0] https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20240221.as...

  • Ouch
  • Viva Nepal !!!
  • Seems like an almost irresponsibly misleading headline.
  • Well Troy Hunt makes money off the back of your data being leaked so I expect nothing less.
  • https://www.troyhunt.com/tag/government/

    It's a pattern that is used for new welcomes.

  • Are you reading it as if the Nepalese government had a data breach? Given the positive connotation of 'welcoming', I read it differently but I can see the confusion indeed
  • Is this the new government after the old one was violently overthrown last year?
  • Yes, this is the new government elected in March of this year after the old one was overthrown in September of last year.
  • I know of no other governments of Nepal.
  • Please make it possible to change email addresses, so I don't have to create a new account and verify all domains again. Thank you for the great free service.
  • First thought was: ouch, government data got leaked and added to the database.
  • I'm surprised they can get past the CF captcha, I still can't. Ever since the beginning: https://imgur.com/a/AzNSreV
  • Someone said services like Twitter, FB or Instagram are walled gardens. Cloudflare said "Hold my beer".

    I am annoyed by bots, but I am even more annoyed by the internet being less open and less accessible every day.

  • The secret is to never click on the check box. Click anywhere else. I haven't been stuck at the captcha in ages due to that.
  • I've started email the customer support of pages that have overzealous CF settings saying that it's a pain and that if they want to keep me as a customer they need to fix it.

    Most give a canned response of "we can't do anything" ̄\_(ツ)_/ ̄ but some small sites do something. GitLab has the most annoying CF bouncer and I moved my company off them once I got the we can't do anything about it response.

  • It provides me relief that I am not the only one suffering from Clownfair bot protection running amok. Condolences to you.
  • This is good news considering the current state of government run IT services in Nepal (that the page to schedule a passport renewal appointment requires you change your local timezone or override TZ to Asia/Kathmandu should tell you the state of some of these services).

    In having to interact with Nepali government websites I've noticed things like endpoints not even doing basic input sanitization, letting your run arbitrary queries on biometric data. Asking around the tech industry on how to report this it seems like this is a common occurrence. Someone even found a vulnerability that was apparently purposefully unpatched to most likely aid in corruption.

  • One of the good things about these attacks is that it publicizes failings and gives data to good actors inside the government to drive reform. Surely other operators (Intel services of China, India, Pakistan, etc...; criminal syndicates) have been inside these systems for years so it's nice for the cybersecurity agency to have tools to make it clear where they're exposed.
  • That's the case for most countries in Asia and Africa, from my travel experience. I would spot vulnerabilities that leak extremely sensitive data all the time, just by using the services normally and legally. You immediately see that the verification is broken without even having to investigate. I don't investigate or report them, as it might lead to problems.