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Michalis Polychronakis

@mikepo

Professor, CS Department, Stony Brook University | research on network and system security, network monitoring and measurement, online privacy | https://www.cs.stonybrook.edu/~mikepo/

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18.09.2023
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Latest posts by Michalis Polychronakis @mikepo

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Greek court finds four guilty of prying on private data in wiretapping scandal A Greek court on Thursday concluded that the founder of surveillance firm Intellexa and three other people were guilty of breaching personal data in 2020-2021 and sentenced them to prison terms, in th...

“The court also referred the case back to prosecutors for further investigation of other crimes and more serious offences potentially committed, including #espionage.”

www.reuters.com/business/fin...

27.02.2026 00:40 👍 15 🔁 6 💬 0 📌 0
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‘The bathrooms were rank, but we didn’t care’: how the grimy-but-great CBGB changed rock for ever Half a century ago, the famed New York venue run by a former marine and folk singer was ground zero for the punk and new wave scenes. Now the bands who played there are being celebrated on a 101-track...

CBGB&OMFUG. Iconic and mourned.

www.theguardian.com/music/2026/f...

26.02.2026 09:04 👍 19 🔁 4 💬 2 📌 0
Original post on mstdn.social

#IPv6 adoption is still terrible.

Akamai, Cloudflare, and Google all report roughly 45% of traffic to their services using IPv6 in the US...

https://www.akamai.com/security-research/ipv6-adoption-visualization

...but that's (a) not all that great, and (b) only HTTP traffic to major services […]

19.02.2026 22:58 👍 1 🔁 7 💬 1 📌 0
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Unsung heroes: Flickr’s URLs scheme – Unsung A blog about software craft and quality

In which I celebrate the craft of Flickr’s original, amazing URL scheme: unsung.aresluna.org/unsung-heroe...

16.02.2026 01:32 👍 16 🔁 7 💬 2 📌 1

What software companies are not CNAs for their own products, but should be? And why? 🤔

Boost for reach. 🙏

15.02.2026 15:39 👍 1 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
Conference of Synthetic Security Research SynSec 2026 is an in-person conference in Phoenix focused on automated security research by AI agents, including AI-led papers and AI-first peer review.

Hello security researchers! Like it or not, agentic AI is here. It’s time to explore its impact on novel, academic research in cybersecurity. To this end, we’re launching the Conference for Synthetic Security Research (https://synsec.org). Researchers, start your agents!

13.02.2026 18:15 👍 2 🔁 3 💬 1 📌 1
The first story is captioned "Meta plans to add facial recognition technology to its smart glasses"; the second is "Iran turns to digital surveillance tools to track down protesters."

The first story is captioned "Meta plans to add facial recognition technology to its smart glasses"; the second is "Iran turns to digital surveillance tools to track down protesters."

Two stories, side by side, in the NY Times Technology section.

13.02.2026 14:37 👍 2 🔁 18 💬 1 📌 0
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Beginning to scan some of my telecom stuff.
Here's an ATT map from 1893.

10.02.2026 23:44 👍 2 🔁 10 💬 0 📌 0
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Watch 404 Media’s Super Bowl Ad WE BOUGHT A SUPER BOWL AD.

404 Media just had an ad during the #SuperBowl! We Googled "smallest TV markets in the United States" and bought an ad for $2,550 that only ran in Ottumwa, Iowa, population 25,000. That still counts

www.404media.co/watch-404-me...

09.02.2026 02:48 👍 2540 🔁 391 💬 51 📌 43
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The video of my #FOSDEM 2026 talk on integrating the Fourth Research Edition Unix tape into the GitHub Unix history repository is now available online: ftp.belnet.be/mirror/FOSDE...

02.02.2026 22:21 👍 9 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 1
US court allows ICE to arrest and pepper-spray peaceful protestors in Minnesota

US court allows ICE to arrest and pepper-spray peaceful protestors in Minnesota

Appeals Court Stays Restrictions on Federal Tactics in Minnesota
The Eighth Circuit granted the Trump administration’s request to block, at least for now, a lower court’s injunction limiting how federal agents interact with protesters in the state.

Appeals Court Stays Restrictions on Federal Tactics in Minnesota The Eighth Circuit granted the Trump administration’s request to block, at least for now, a lower court’s injunction limiting how federal agents interact with protesters in the state.

One court decision, two different headlines.

Guardian on the left, NY Times on the right. Which one more directly conveys information and the stakes to the reader?

22.01.2026 03:30 👍 6333 🔁 2085 💬 133 📌 111
NSF building on Eisenhower Av. HUD now owns.

NSF building on Eisenhower Av. HUD now owns.

Destroying the NSF mural in the foyer. Of the Eisenhower building.

Destroying the NSF mural in the foyer. Of the Eisenhower building.

The National Science Foundation sign on our Eisenhower Av building is now gone.

The NSF mural in the foyer is removed and torn off in sheets.

We were supposed to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the agency in May 2025. That never happened.

18.01.2026 02:00 👍 1870 🔁 857 💬 70 📌 67
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Fav tech museums A photo essay of 20-something best tech museums I’ve been to

I wrote a photo essay with 20+ of my favourite tech museums in the world, and tried to figure out what makes a great museum in the process.

I am very curious what tech museums you like – and why!

aresluna.org/fav-tech-mus...

05.01.2026 17:25 👍 65 🔁 16 💬 12 📌 2
The discovered Fourth Edition tape (photo credit Rob Ricci)

The discovered Fourth Edition tape (photo credit Rob Ricci)

Several news outlets reported the amazing discovery of a 1970s Fourth Edition Research Unix magnetic tape. I incorporated the tape’s source code into the Unix History Repository hosted on GitHub and studied the code’s composition. Here's what I found.
www.spinellis.gr/blog/2025122...

23.12.2025 18:38 👍 18 🔁 8 💬 0 📌 0
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Harsh (@harshvp.bsky.social) presenting our work on enhancing the precision of CVE triage using code reachability information at ACSAC 2025 @acsacconf.bsky.social | paper: www3.cs.stonybrook.edu/~mikepo/pape... | source code: github.com/harshvp1621/...

10.12.2025 21:59 👍 5 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
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pwn.college Learn to Hack!

Hello hackers! A belated announcement of an awesome new thing we're trying out in @pwncollege: #AdventOfPwn! Every day (starting yesterday - sorry for the belated post!), we're launching a new challenge at pwn.college/advent-o... for your hack-racing pleasure.

01.12.2025 09:27 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0

On December 4, 2007, in the Usenet group “Friends of the Friendless,” someone wrote:
“Happy Friendsgiving Y’all!”

And that is the first recorded use of ‘Friendsgiving’ in print.

25.11.2025 19:36 👍 768 🔁 144 💬 17 📌 11
Stop Hacklore!

📢 Announcing hacklore.org 📢

It’s time to retire outdated cyber advice! More than 80 cybersecurity veterans have signed an open letter urging a shift from folklore to guidance that actually helps people avoid the most common attacks. 🔐

Blog: medium.com/@boblord/let...

Site: www.hacklore.org

24.11.2025 15:05 👍 104 🔁 62 💬 6 📌 13

We can have old Google back by setting the Web tab as default (at least with Firefox): bsky.app/profile/mike...

23.11.2025 15:28 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

I gave these as a gift ages ago! In the 2000s, our gadgets dressed better than we did.

22.11.2025 17:23 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Paschalis (@pbekos.bsky.social) presenting our work on PII leakage through Meta Pixel at ACM CCS 2025 | paper: www3.cs.stonybrook.edu/~mikepo/pape... | code+data: github.com/pasxalisbeko...

16.10.2025 08:38 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
23rd Conference on Detection of Intrusions and Malware & Vulnerability Assessment (DIMVA '26)

🗣️ Call for Papers – #DIMVA26
Deadlines are out!
📅Cycle 1 is Dec 3.
CfP is live 👉 dimva.org/dimva2026
📍 Chania, Greece | 1–3 July 2026
Don’t miss your chance to share your research! #CFP

01.10.2025 10:04 👍 2 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 1
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Open Social — overreacted The protocol is the API.

i wrote about atproto and why it matters

26.09.2025 15:33 👍 2823 🔁 508 💬 122 📌 148
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The day Return became Enter A deep dive into the convoluted and fascinating story of one of the most important keys on the keyboard

I posted online the 2023 essay that was available as a Shift Happens booklet before: The convoluted history of Return and Enter on keyboards. aresluna.org/the-day-retu...

25.08.2025 15:15 👍 40 🔁 7 💬 1 📌 3
Phrack 40th Anniversary ansi art by Harvest

Phrack 40th Anniversary ansi art by Harvest

Phrack turns 40.
The digital drop is live.
Download it. Archive it. Pass it on.
💾 www.phrack.org
#phrackat40 #phrack72

19.08.2025 05:08 👍 158 🔁 83 💬 0 📌 2
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Frame of preference A story of early Mac settings told by 10 emulators.

I wrote something new! It’s a UI design history essay about Mac’s Control Panel, and it uses emulation in some… maybe new and maybe interesting ways?

aresluna.org/frame-of-pre...

08.07.2025 23:37 👍 331 🔁 90 💬 24 📌 29
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Arrival time 25:45

09.07.2025 09:35 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
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Maryam (@mrostamipoor.bsky.social) presenting our work on protecting Kubernetes Secrets at IEEE EuroS&P 2025 | paper: www3.cs.stonybrook.edu/~mikepo/pape... | source code: github.com/mrostamipoor...

03.07.2025 09:35 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
AI and Secure Code Generation AI is reshaping code security—shifting metrics, unknown bugs, and autonomous decisions humans may never understand.

Dan Geer and I write on lawfare about AI and code security : www.lawfaremedia.org/article/ai-a...

27.06.2025 17:54 👍 23 🔁 4 💬 1 📌 1

A reminder that the @nytimes.com told New Yorkers to not rank Mamdani at all, & instead endorsed former hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson.

Tilson sits at a whopping .8%.

Corporate media trust is dead. They killed themselves by failing to fulfill their promise of holding the powerful accountable.

25.06.2025 14:43 👍 19203 🔁 4206 💬 406 📌 248