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Matt M

@mattm

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08.05.2023
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Latest posts by Matt M @mattm

people are always talking about a hypothetical technologically advanced alien race ... but I always wonder, if they exist, do they also have to deal with PKI?

01.02.2024 01:40 👍 9 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0

The disagreement is just whether “memory safety” is a programming language theory definition or a security one. I think you are wrong to say it’s “embarrassing” for people to choose the other definition, and reasonable people can be on both sides of this fence.

26.12.2025 19:34 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
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Addressing Linux's Missing PKI Infrastructure Earlier this year, LWN featured an excellent article titled “Linux’s missing CRL infrastructure”. The article highlighted a number of key issues surrounding traditional Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)...

Earlier this year, LWN.net featured an excellent article named "Linux's missing CRL infrastructure", and today
Canonical announced it will be working with me and @jbp.io over the coming weeks to start bridging the PKI infrastructure gap.

discourse.ubuntu.com/t/addressing...

08.12.2025 17:08 👍 26 🔁 5 💬 3 📌 0
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anyone need their horse rotated?

10.09.2025 19:03 👍 660 🔁 239 💬 35 📌 81
1972339 - cert.validation_success_by_ca bin collision between CAs and unknown entries in RootCertificateTelemetryUtils.h NEW (nobody) in Core - Security: PSM. Last updated 2025-06-16.

I spent a bit of time poking around the Firefox codebase and filed a bug with the findings: bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi...

Those entries are a combination of both Kamu SM as well as roots which have been locally added to Firefox's trust store

16.06.2025 15:01 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 2 📌 0

I think it’s a data error, possibly on Mozilla’s part - I found a comment suggesting bins 0 and 1 are reserved, but recently they put Kamu SM into bin 1. Maybe I’ll just exclude those suspicious bins.

14.06.2025 19:19 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Bar chart showing the largest CAs in Firefox's telemetry are Google, Digicert, ISRG, AWS, Entrust, Sectigo, Globalsign, and Godaddy. Other entries are all much smaller.

Bar chart showing the largest CAs in Firefox's telemetry are Google, Digicert, ISRG, AWS, Entrust, Sectigo, Globalsign, and Godaddy. Other entries are all much smaller.

Firefox's telemetry has data on how many times a CA is used to successfully validate certificates. This is a pretty good measure for how "big" a CA is. The data is hard to view in Mozilla's site, so I've made a script to combine a few data sources and graph it! github.com/mcpherrinm/c...

14.06.2025 17:47 👍 6 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Customers: We want a faster horse

Henry Ford: Ah. In fact—

Kubernetes: Let me stop you right there. What you really need is 1000 horses that die randomly

12.06.2025 02:04 👍 108 🔁 19 💬 3 📌 0

Inspired by the classic xeyes program, I made a thing:

ssh teyes.fly.dev

Or go install github.com/mcpherrinm/teyes@latest && teyes

Give your mouse a wiggle over the terminal!

10.06.2025 02:44 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Ontario Cryptography Day June 6, 2025 • University of Waterloo

I'll be speaking at the Ontario #Cryptography Day!

ontario-crypto-day.github.io

Where: University of Waterloo Davis Centre (DC) 1301 and 1302
When: Friday, June 6, 2025, from 10am to approx. 4:30pm

I hope anyone in the area interested in cryptography is able to attend!

14.05.2025 21:27 👍 9 🔁 4 💬 1 📌 0
Unsplash image of the Earth, mostly the nightside with a tracery of city lights on every continent.

Unsplash image of the Earth, mostly the nightside with a tracery of city lights on every continent.

OK, this is wild.

In September 2023, geophysicists across the world started monitoring a very odd signal coming from the ground under them.

It was picked up in the Arctic. And Antarctica. It was detected everywhere, every 90 seconds, as regular as a metronome, for *nine days*.

What the HELL?

1/

12.05.2025 15:20 👍 22442 🔁 7714 💬 744 📌 1490

A lot of Americans don't know this, but the winner of the Canadian election will be required live in a small cottage located in the backyard of the palace where the viceroy to the King of England lives.

The cottage just recently got a new wifi router, which was very exciting for all Canadians.

28.04.2025 12:24 👍 1757 🔁 400 💬 99 📌 219

Array indices start at 0 in C, but start at 32 in F.

18.04.2025 06:31 👍 55 🔁 14 💬 2 📌 1
Screenshot of the new certificate viewer on iOS, showing the certificate for blogs.webkit.org

Screenshot of the new certificate viewer on iOS, showing the certificate for blogs.webkit.org

Of all the things I didn’t expect to ever happen, iOS Safari actually got a certificate viewer in 18.4! webkit.org/blog/16574/w...

01.04.2025 05:31 👍 7 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
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We Issued Our First Six Day Cert Earlier this year we announced our intention to introduce short-lived certificates with lifetimes of six days as an option for our subscribers. Yesterday we issued our first short-lived certificate. Y...

We've issued our first short-lived (6 day) certificate! letsencrypt.org/2025/02/20/f...

20.02.2025 15:56 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

The key line here is:

> ... certificates issued on or after June 15, 2026 MUST include the extendedKeyUsage extension and only assert an extendedKeyUsage purpose of id-kp-serverAuth.

14.02.2025 22:12 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Chrome Root Program Policy, Version 1.6

Chrome has published version 1.6 of their root store policy.

Notably, this includes a deadline of June 15, 2026 to get TLS Client Auth out from any intermediates under roots in Chrome's program.

TLS client cert users from public CAs may need to make changes.

www.chromium.org/Home/chromiu...

14.02.2025 22:02 👍 10 🔁 4 💬 1 📌 0
Screenshot of Firefox 135 showing an Insufficient Certificate Transparency error on https://no-sct.badssl.com

Screenshot of Firefox 135 showing an Insufficient Certificate Transparency error on https://no-sct.badssl.com

04.02.2025 22:35 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Certificate Transparency is now enforced in Firefox on desktop platforms starting with version 135

Congratulations to the Firefox team for shipping CT enforcement!

> Starting in Firefox 135, Certificate Transparency is now enforced on all desktop platforms.

groups.google.com/a/mozilla.or...

04.02.2025 21:02 👍 70 🔁 15 💬 1 📌 1
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Canadian MP Charlie Angus: Our beloved Canada is under threat.

The threat comes from the president of the US—a convicted felon and known predator. But the threat is also being driven by the hate algorithms of oligarchs like Elon Musk….

31.01.2025 19:35 👍 27352 🔁 8233 💬 963 📌 922
Manitoulin Stuck in Ice Offshore in Buffalo, NY.

heads up for fans of the "ship is stuck" genre, the Manitoulin is currently stuck in icy Lake Erie just outside Buffalo
www.reddit.com/r/GreatLakes...

25.01.2025 02:45 👍 213 🔁 50 💬 1 📌 24
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AIS year in review 2024 Stats and interesting ships I saw come sailing in

Boatify wrapped 2024! Stats, maps, timelapses and silly stuff from my AIS receiver and webcam overlooking the Firth of Forth. (recommend viewing on a grown up computer, works on phones but not optimised for them) vessels.marinesightings.com/review/2024/

24.01.2025 16:53 👍 12 🔁 5 💬 2 📌 3
Improving the SRE Experience for 10 Years as a Free, Open, and Automated Certificate Authority | USENIXusenix_logo_notag_white

I'm speaking at #SREcon in Santa Clara this March! Come learn how Let's Encrypt issues millions of certificates with just a handful of staff and servers! www.usenix.org/conference/s...

22.01.2025 18:12 👍 8 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0

I hear that the Ontario Government is directing Metrolinx to start investigating 'the massing link' and if it actually amounts to anything is quite impactful project for Toronto region passenger and freight

10.01.2025 04:16 👍 26 🔁 8 💬 1 📌 2
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XShot Dart Chain Expansion - 3D model by Hacksmith on Thangs This 3d printable model lets you expand the length and capacity of your XShot Nerf dart chain giving you the ability to load in as many darts as you want. - 3D

If you have access to a 3d printer, thangs.com/designer/Hac...

25.12.2024 18:04 👍 15 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I think this comment really made it click for me why this is useful in a way that the docs alone hadn't!

17.12.2024 17:48 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
A chart of quantum computing comparing number of qubits to error rate. This is a very visual chart and is better explained in text on my website.

A chart of quantum computing comparing number of qubits to error rate. This is a very visual chart and is better explained in text on my website.

2024 update for my chart on the landscape of quantum computing: sam-jaques.appspot.com/quantum_land...

Not much visible on the chart, but Google's result (the one with the recent press attention) is a pretty big deal

12.12.2024 17:30 👍 39 🔁 15 💬 2 📌 1
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La Côte-Nord a connu des conditions météorologiques extrêmes ces dernières semaines. Environ 75 mm de verglas se sont accumulés sur nos lignes de transport à certains endroits et nous avons dû y dépêcher des équipes rapidement afin de déglacer les lignes.

10.12.2024 22:03 👍 142 🔁 30 💬 11 📌 16
Post image Post image Post image

The train livery for the return of the Ontario Northland Railway "Northlander" train.

Source: news.ontario.ca/en/r...

07.12.2024 01:22 👍 20 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 1
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2025 Crossword Calendar What if every month was a crossword? The 2025 Crossword Calendar is a folding wall calendar where each month's grid doubles as an American-style crossword puzzle, with one letter to write in each day'...

I made a calendar where every month is also a crossword, and you can get one today!

Introducing the 2025 Crossword Calendar:

crosswordcal.com/products/202...

19.11.2024 16:03 👍 42 🔁 15 💬 2 📌 3