YHK - yet another hacker news clone

503 points mbix77 1 day ago 232 comments

I have recently installed this extension on FF: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/port-authorit... and yesterday I visited this website: https://ceac.state.gov/genniv/ and I got a notification that the website tried to do a port-scan of my private network.

Is this a common thing? I have just recently installed the extension, so I am not sure if there are a lot of other websites who do it.

Since looking into it, I noticed that uBlock Origin already has the default list "Block Outsider Intrusion into LAN" but it wasn't enabled.

Maxious 1 day ago | parent

Perhaps to avoid people using misconfigured open proxies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_proxy

Like a less sophisticated Tor/VPN that is easily detected by port scans

galaxy_gas 1 day ago | parent

Many sites do it .Included in many standard device fingerprinting / anti anonymity SAAS. Ebay facebook etc all do this ! But it looks this is first party to prevent the adblocking of them

1MB of obfuscated fingerprinting + portscan + Webgl . But oddity this one is trying to find burp suite specific route's.

meitham 1 day ago | parent

Madness! How do I harden my network against that?

ale42 1 day ago | parent

You should actually harden your browser or PC... to block any unwanted requests. Apparently some browser extensions can do that.

bawolff 1 day ago | parent

Chrome is already in the process of killing it https://developer.chrome.com/blog/local-network-access

ahdanggit 22 hours ago | parent

The company I work for has a legitimate service that runs on the loopback (it provides our web apps APIs for some device integration) hopefully its just as simple as the user accepting the prompt else we'll be drowning in support. We had to go the path of the local service because they killed NPAPI. I've been thinking about using web serial as an alternative but Firefox doesn't support it.

That being said, I think this is an overall win, hopefully Firefox implements it in a consistent manner as well.

ayewo 15 hours ago | parent

How is your company's service started on the loopback interface? You bundle a web server that is installed alongside a native app?

ahdanggit 14 hours ago | parent

Roughly, yes. Customers (or more often, their IT department) runs our installer which installs the server as a windows service.

galaxy_gas 13 hours ago | parent

This how many of them work for transporting vs traditional old way of registering url scheme and requiring user interacts --- Discord, Blizzard net, Riot Client ... all localhost listener's that can interact

dns_snek 23 hours ago | parent

Enable "Block Outsider Intrusion into LAN" filter list in uBlock Origin.

meitham 20 hours ago | parent

Thank you!

bmacho 22 hours ago | parent

It would be the job of the operating system to give or take away the ability of your browser to access your local network. But you can run your browser in a container/vm and disable localhost. (And use a separate browser for localhost only if you need it.)

ahdanggit 22 hours ago | parent

my bank did this on the site they sent me to in order to activate my new card.

kolla 1 day ago | parent

My biggest grief with that site is that it's like something from the 90s.

bhaney 1 day ago | parent

As something from the 90s myself, I find this rude.

SnuffBox 21 hours ago | parent

It's also inaccurate, as this style of page (relating to layout and specific graphic style) didn't appear until 2006ish.

danw1979 1 day ago | parent

The 1990s web was actually good

thrown-0825 1 day ago | parent

Yeah it should have a fixed header and footer along with a pop-up consent drawer so you can only see 10% of the actual site content.

So much better.

Modern web design is a joke.

davsti4 18 hours ago | parent

t-shirt worthy quote - "modern web design is a joke" ;)

yard2010 1 day ago | parent

I think you are confusing something from the 90 with something from the gov

jansper39 22 hours ago | parent

These guys need to look at Gov.uk, this site is a total horror show.

SnuffBox 21 hours ago | parent

I wish gov.uk was even a smidgen as "outdated" looking as that page.

SnuffBox 21 hours ago | parent

>like something from the 90s

It looks useful and looks good, there's minimal unneeded whitespace and I'm glad it looks as it does. We'd be better off if the entire web switched to a style like this.

Sohcahtoa82 15 hours ago | parent

Looking like something from the 90s would be a feature, not a bug.

In the 90s and early 00s, we did tons of user-testing and feedback collection. We threw all that research away to create UX's that are minimal and "sleek". Tons of unnecessary whitespace and the concept of "Discovery" just thrown into the dumpster. Skeuomorphism was one of the greatest features of 90s-00s software, ironically thrown away as computers got faster and were able to handle the graphics better.

asimovDev 1 day ago | parent

Embarrassed to say that I wasn't aware of this practice. Are there malicious uses for this beyond fingerprinting?

asimovDev 1 day ago | parent

https://files.catbox.moe/g1bejn.png

When I visit the site from Safari on macOS I see this in the console. Are there any particular services that use port 8888 for the website to do this?

jadamson 22 hours ago | parent

https://my.f5.com/manage/s/article/K000138794

It seems to be part of some "bot defense" product by these F5 people, to "test the different browser capabilities". I doubt it's intended to hit a real endpoint on any system.

palmfacehn 23 hours ago | parent

Routers with vulnerable URLs. You can search for: "router" "authentication bypass".

causal 19 hours ago | parent

Isn't CORS supposed to prevent this?

layer8 18 hours ago | parent

CORS doesn’t prevent requests (i.e. GET requests from IMG tags, or XHR preflight requests), it only prevents web apps from processing the response if the responding server doesn’t agree. And a simple GET or even OPTIONS request can be enough to exploit vulnerabilities in routers and other local devices.

inferiorhuman 22 hours ago | parent

Mostly it's great for tracking although I'm sure it could also be used to exfiltrate data (e.g. if the user is running something sensitive on localhost).

https://www.digitalsamba.com/blog/metas-localhost-spyware-ho...

privacyking 21 hours ago | parent

Yes. Facebook was using this trick on Android. Meta's android apps would host a server on localhost, and their sites would communicate with this local server to pass tracking information that would otherwise be blocked by all browser protection methods on Android. I guess it is still fingerprinting, but at the most extreme end.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44169115

vaylian 1 day ago | parent

> Blocks malicious websites from port-scanning your computer/network

How does that work? A browser extension can't influence how your router and other machines in your network react to incoming requests.

est 1 day ago | parent

but it can hook javascript methods before that scan can happen.

Mashimo 1 day ago | parent

Judging just from the screenshots, it seems it blocks websites from accessing 127.0.0.1 get requests. Not a port scan to the outside, more of what do you have running on the local machine inside your network.

ale42 1 day ago | parent

As far as I understand it, it is supposed to be a scan done by the browser on the user's computer, not an external scan, which a browser extension wouldn't be able to detect.

bawolff 1 day ago | parent

Hopefully should soon be a thing of the past with https://developer.chrome.com/blog/local-network-access

vaylian 1 day ago | parent

I see. So the website would try to access private IP adresses (RFC 1918) by having elements like <iframe src="http://10.0.0.1"> in the web site and then the web site would check if the iframe was loaded successfully?

Delk 23 hours ago | parent

It could also just try making the request with javascript. Or try a websocket connection.

edarchis 1 day ago | parent

Visa application is riddled with scams. From the simple website that charges you twice the price to websites that will tell you that you were rejected and then fake your documents to get in with your name. So they're probably trying to see that you're not one of those web servers, a proxy for them or detect some known C2 channels.

jaimehrubiks 1 day ago | parent

This is a very clever answer.

testdelacc1 1 day ago | parent

Another data point - 5he Indian visa system is similar. The official website ending in .gov.in, which is hard to find, offers a visa for $10 and minimal hassle. The scam websites, with better SEO sell the same shit for $80. They’re just proxying your application to the real website and pocketing the difference.

It would be good if the Indian government could block the scammers but I guess it’s a lower priority for the moment.

sumedh 23 hours ago | parent

The scam websites are probably owned by someone who works in the Indian govt.

p3rls 20 hours ago | parent

Almost certainly, entire industries have been given over to indian scammers and their government allies.

cyanydeez 19 hours ago | parent

Modhi, for one

tonyhart7 18 hours ago | parent

damn bro, how bad situation on there????

I know that Indian scam stereotype is racist and bad but how much it is "that bad"

datadrivenangel 17 hours ago | parent

This was the case with Ghana. The Embassy in the US had an unofficial offical partnership with an expediter scam (charge more for faster shipping, looks very official). They fired the whole visa staff when it finally came to light. Probably because someone forgot to let their manager's manager in on the scam.

bluGill 19 hours ago | parent

I found the real website, but the application never went through, always some issue. My boss told me which service to use and everything just worked. (I could expense that service so cost didn't bother me)

ghaff 16 hours ago | parent

My understanding is that India visa processing improved quite a bit. Back when I was speaking internationally quite a bit, I actually had to cancel trips to India on two separate occasions because of delays in getting visas. (Once was under the old visa system and the other was because of delays in switching to a new system. Both times were through a visa expediting service.)

somenameforme 19 hours ago | parent

Not sure if this is the case for India, but I've experienced similar situations for other countries, but the 'scam websites' actually provided a real service - if you needed some ultra-urgent processing (like you only realized you needed a visa to this country before boarding a flight, once you were already at the airport check-in...) they were able to provide 30 minute approval, whereas the official site's accelerated processing was 24 hours.

So obviously the only way they could to this is with government contacts meaning the government themselves could already do it, but a lot of immigration stuff everywhere is full of people taking kickbacks.

testdelacc1 14 hours ago | parent

No the scammers were slower than the official Indian website.

actionfromafar 1 day ago | parent

If the proxy scams are just a little clever, they'll run the proxy on an another IP.

dns_snek 23 hours ago | parent

Huh, how do you imagine that would work? This "scan" is happening inside client-side javascript, delivering the file through a proxy wouldn't "detect" anything about the proxy.

JosephRedfern 23 hours ago | parent

I imagine it may not be a proxy in the true sense, but a headless browser that's "proxying" the application process rather than the network traffic itself.

alistairSH 22 hours ago | parent

Proxy is being used in the traditional sense here. It’s common for a business (scam or legit) to handle visa applications on behalf of customers.

mrtksn 23 hours ago | parent

That would be quite clever for an incredibly horrible website. The other day my SO, who is a Turkish citizen, was filling up her visa application and after half an hour of meticulous form filling the system just kick her out. I think the session times out or something. If you haven't created an account or you haven't write down the current application ID everything is lost. In the process she was also directed to a non-.gov website for something during the process, I thought she was getting scammed but no.

It actually makes sense to have a paid service that makes this abomination less painful. Though they work with VFS Global for collecting the applications and relevant documents, the VFS Global itself is an abomination and doesn't help with the handling of the form filling anyway.

Recently EU streamlined the Schengen visa application process for Turkish citizens as those "visa agencies" that are the official agencies and the only way to apply for a visa for many countries don't actually help with anything and are scamming people by selling the "good hours" for the visa appointment on the black market. An agency was dropped for this and the scams by agencies were listed among the reasons to streamline the application process.

Both with US and EU people are losing scholarships etc. due to outrageous wait times that are sometimes are years ahead or there's an issue with the systems handling the applications.

I guess there must be an opportunity there to fix all this together with smaller stuff like handling transliteration and character encodings, I wonder if some of those scam site are not scams and actually help with it. An AI agent can be useful here.

paganel 22 hours ago | parent

The hard truth of it all is that both the US and (partially) the EU don’t want to make this easier because seeing as wanting “outside” people is now a political liability. You may want to adjust your expectations around that.

mrtksn 22 hours ago | parent

Turkish tourist are desired, Turks love spending money on restaurants and activities especially since the prices in Turkey have become more expensive than most of the EU. Greeks even introduced special non-Schengen on-arrival visa valid on the Greek islands especially for the Turks. Besides that, EU has "green passport" exception for the Turkish nationals, where they can travel visa-free on this kind of passport that is provided to individuals that meet certain criteria and millions of such passports were issued.

The rejection rates are also not bad and EU has a "return agreement" with Turkey, which is designed to keep the middle eastern refugees in Turkey(essentially, if you come from Turkey EU can send you back to Turkey right away ).

Crime rates for Turks show up among the lowest ones, unlike others from the region. So I don't think that EU is trying to reduce visas for Turks.

rat9988 21 hours ago | parent

You are looking at it from Turkish perspective unfortunately.

mrtksn 21 hours ago | parent

I am EU citizen, I happen to know the Turkish perspective only because spent some years in Turkey and in fact it is the Turkish perspective that that EU doesn't want them and intentionally makes things harder but the moment you look at what's actually going on you see that this is not the case, just a Turkish fantasy about the "evil West and snobby Europeans". Considering that last year 50K Turks applied for asylum in EU and another 100K overstayed their visa, IMHO EU can be considered pretty generous actually with only 15% rejection rate since Turkey is the 2nd country with most applications after China.

https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/news/visa-applications-rea...

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

jimz 20 hours ago | parent

B-visa rejection rate for Turkey in FY24, as per the US State Department, was 19.78%, btw. https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/Non-Im...

lazide 19 hours ago | parent

The US gov’t has been actively targeting CANADA, one of the countries historically closest trading partners and allies.

Maybe in the EU it’s all good, but expect a lot of turbulence in the US.

eviks 21 hours ago | parent

That doesn't explain the same poor operational quality before it became a liability

rwmj 22 hours ago | parent

You might be making the assumption that the US wants to make the process easier.

cromka 21 hours ago | parent

You use the same system for Business visas. Hard to imagine US wouldn’t want those as easy as possible.

nkoren 20 hours ago | parent

Hard to imagine that the US wouldn't be as paranoid, self-sabotaging, and bureaucratically inept as possible? </sarcasm>

conductr 18 hours ago | parent

As a US citizen, I feel it’s opposite. Hard to imagine they’d want anything related to visas to be easy.

jazzypants 18 hours ago | parent

You don't have a good enough imagination for how stupid our current leadership really is.

more_corn 17 hours ago | parent

I guarantee the visa system was created before the current administration.

xp84 16 hours ago | parent

During 8 years of Obama and 4 years of Biden, none of this was different or better. Perhaps this isn't a partisan political issue.

schlauerfox 16 hours ago | parent

From 2014 until it was, in effect, obliterated by DOGE actions this year there was the "United States Digital Service", a crack team of programmers, a sort of skunkworks who worked to improve U.S. government websites of departments that wanted the help. So it seems to be partisan to want good websites, but there are countless people involved in politics with many agendas.

snapetom 16 hours ago | parent

I don’t know if you’re US-based or not but in the US, government work has the stigma of attracting the bottom of the barrel. It is nearly impossible to get fired for performance reasons. Combine low pay and high job security, and you’re not going to attract the most innovative, motivated, or competent people.

Early in my career, I was warned that if I took a job with the state of California, I’d be stuck there for my whole career. I’d be unhirable in the private sector.

klipt 15 hours ago | parent

> high job security

Not so much after DOGE fired entire departments for dubious reasons.

I don't know why anyone would work for the federal government now - pay still sucks, and job security has been demonstrated to no longer be guaranteed.

snapetom 13 hours ago | parent

Recent events isn't going to change decades of stigma and reputation. People aren't saying, "Oh cool, they purged the low performers. I'll go work for the government!"

IT4MD 18 hours ago | parent

That would be an abysmally poor assumption currently.

dfxm12 18 hours ago | parent

I'd invoke Hanlon's razor, but in this case, it's certainly both malice and stupidity...

cossatot 16 hours ago | parent

They are so frequently intertwined

clarkmoody 17 hours ago | parent

The purpose of a system is what it does.

swat535 17 hours ago | parent

If there is any conclusion to be drawn here, it is that the United States doesn't want foreigners in their land (for tourism or otherwise).

I'm not sure I see the upside of moving to a nation knowing that its citizens actively despise my existence.

throw10920 17 hours ago | parent

Not to defend the US immigration system, but my experience is that this user-hostile behavior (modulo the port scanning lol) is endemic across US government websites - including those that nominally want to serve you, those that are at the state level instead of the federal level (such as the DMV sites), and those that are even internal for use by government employees only.

It's bad enough that in some cases I believe the designers should be threatened with legal penalties.

Our_Benefactors 16 hours ago | parent

This. The website for buying treasury products is straight out of the year 2002. The login is so bad I would never consider buying them there - the service fee charged by brokerages is absolutely worth it in this case.

ryandrake 16 hours ago | parent

Which brokerages charge fees for purchasing US Treasuries? Schwab definitely doesn't.

Really the only reason you need TreasuryDirect is for buying Series I bonds (and maybe a few other niche Treasury products), which are not available through brokerages.

aianus 14 hours ago | parent

Schwab folds their fees into their bid/ask spread, they're not doing it for free.

teiferer 16 hours ago | parent

Makes it obvious which lobby has a hand in this, doesn't it?

PaulHoule 15 hours ago | parent

Back when interest rates peaked around that period I bought a huge number of I bonds which were a great investment —- got fired by my broker because I interrupted a sales presentation with “why don’t I just buy I bonds?”

Back then I thought Treasury Direct was great.

Sohcahtoa82 15 hours ago | parent

> user-hostile behavior (modulo the port scanning lol) is endemic across US government websites

I discovered this when it was late at night and I was procrastinating going to bed and I was curious what my estimated Social Security benefit would be at retirement so I tried to log into mySSA and it said the website is closed from like 11 PM to 5 AM or something like that.

I couldn't believe it. I could understand a weekly several-hour maintenance/batch processing window, but DAILY?

PaulHoule 15 hours ago | parent

That e-filing web site for taxes has never worked for my son because he can’t complete the id.me process, it might be as simple as you are an unperson if you use an android phone or maybe because he’s just started in the workforce he does not have a long history of tax filing and credit history to match up with.

Two years in a row we’ve been able to fill out a 1040 and the NY state equivalent and make a paper submission in less time than it takes to reach an operator on hold.

These identity verification services look like a scam to me. LinkedIn incessantly hassles me to verify with CLEAR and it always fails without a clear error message, either “it just doesn’t work” or my hair has grown too much since I got my driver’s license or it is making me take my glasses off and comparing to a driver’s license photo where I am wearing glasses.

smithkl42 14 hours ago | parent

The id.me process is absolutely horrific.

IT4MD 10 hours ago | parent

I'm not sure the word horrific is up to carrying the weight of just how bad id.me is. Still, a great effort.

jofla_net 13 hours ago | parent

>These identity verification services look like a scam to me.

Even if their intent is to run an 'honest' business, the method of bouncing a user around to god knows how many domains during the process becomes effectively indistinguishable from a compromised service, and the alternative of having each site host their own id verification system screams, HACK US. I can see users becoming increasingly accustomed to getting out their cards several times during a sign-up and not having the foggiest idea of where their information went to.

xenadu02 14 hours ago | parent

Gaming of the procurement system. The websites are all written by big consulting outfits. Not to mention the disaster that is big corporate IT projects combined with government rules.

Obama had the Digital Service (that Trump shut down) which paid higher salaries. Those folks were sharp and everything they touched was actually decent.

As I noted this is not unique to government. Large corporate projects at the Fortune 500 are often the same sort of consultant-driven crap.

anticensor 11 hours ago | parent

Digital Service didn't shut down, it just temporarily got retasked to DOGE.

dragonwriter 11 hours ago | parent

It wasn't temporarily retasked, it was reorganized and permanently repurposed and renamed the US DOGE Service, and then within that reorganized service, a subordinate temporary organization was created called the US DOGE Service Temporary Organization that was scheduled to sunset not later than July 4, 2026. (All but 65 of USDS's pre-reorg employees were also fired as part of the reorg, and 21 of those remaining 65 employees did a mass resignation.)

If you visit their website, you will notice that except for historical documents, there is no full name branding at all; mostly only the logo and the occasional "USDS", when prior to the reorg (as can be seen on the Wayback machine) the original full name was prominent.

qingcharles 14 hours ago | parent

The web front ends are awful, but the back ends are even worse. The backlogs for some of these applications is insane. I was at a US embassy one time and got talking to a girl who had just had her application approved after an 18 year wait.

LorenPechtel 12 hours ago | parent

18 year wait for approval or 18 year wait for family sponsored immigrant visa? Because from some countries those do have 18 year backlogs.

qingcharles 11 hours ago | parent

I believe it was the latter, if memory serves correct.

karel-3d 22 hours ago | parent

As I wrote elsewhere; they subcontract the bot protection to F5, an external company that I see for some reason a lot on old/horrible banking websites.

DaSHacka 18 hours ago | parent

F5 is huge in enterprise and academia for firewall/VPN/load-balancer services

AnotherGoodName 17 hours ago | parent

The VISA appointment scheduling site rate limits to a ridiculous degree these days. As in refresh your page within 10seconds and get a 429 error.

That's probably because of the fact that the appointments are near impossible to get, they only allow booking a few months out and it's always completely booked. So everyone was refreshing (or if clever botting) to get an appointment slot.

supportengineer 16 hours ago | parent

>> the system just kick her out

The "waterfall model" is a toxic way of thinking that pervades corporate management. Simplistic minds can't fathom any states other than "done" or "not done". Corporations are determined to crush the human soul. That is why it's not a progressive series of forms, saving your progress all along.

smithkl42 14 hours ago | parent

More-or-less agreed about the waterfall model, but you can't blame horrific US government website performance on "corporations" or "corporate management". This is precisely the sort of thing that would get you fired in any real-world corporation that wants to survive, and it's precisely the fact that you can't get fired by the federal government that allows this sort of thing to continue.

dansimco 16 hours ago | parent

I had this problem too last year. I found, at the time, it was the website was poorly managing the session in some browsers causing the timeout countdown to not be reset on activity. I had to find a windows computer and use microsoft edge I think (maybe it was chrome). But no browser on my mac would not have that issue.

sharno 15 hours ago | parent

Whenever I'm filling a long form on an official website, I feel like I'm racing against an invisible clock because of this session time out thing that happened to me countless times.

gmueckl 15 hours ago | parent

I had to deal with the DS-160 multiple times over the year. I don't think you give justice to how bad this website really is. I have started to notice that these "timeouts" are very random. At the worst times, the session "times out" immediately after login.

These random logouts happens more frequently during certain times of the day and seems to follow a semi-predictable pattern. It is almost certainly tied to system load in some way.

Also, the site's HTML and JavaScript are bloated beyond hope for what should be a fairly simple set of web forms. And itnhas been thisnway since at least 2018 with exactly zero improvements.

qingcharles 14 hours ago | parent

One thing a developer sat in DC or SV with a 5G iPhone 16 doesn't realize too, is that if you are visiting these web sites with a phone plan that has a tiny monthly data allowance then this bloat can blow out an entire month in one sitting.

I worked with people on parole that were given free phones to use for job applications, finding their way around etc, and they would only get 3GB data a month. Some of the sites they visited were dropping 250MB of payload on the home page. You'd get some plans that would drop down to 2G, but try using that for Google Maps when you're trying to find a bus to get you across the city.

Dylan16807 1 hour ago | parent

> You'd get some plans that would drop down to 2G, but try using that for Google Maps when you're trying to find a bus to get you across the city.

Sure, I'll do my best to try it. I'll approximate the throttle by limiting chrome to 128kbps, 500ms delay, and 5% packet loss for fun.

With a fresh incognito session, google responds to "here to 4th street" in 10 seconds, and when I click to open maps it needs just under two minutes to load. Then I can click on the transit option and it needs another 10 seconds to update.

Not too bad for a cold cache. If I do it again with a hot cache it only takes 20 seconds to go through the whole process. And I expect the app to be similar to the hot cache situation. Even with 64kbps I'd expect reasonable results. Do any cell providers throttle worse than that?

I agree with your argument about bloat in general, but google in particular has a lot of good engineering resources and tries to work well on bad connections.

Also I would be in favor of some spectrum licensing rules that say you can't throttle below 1Mbps...

svnee 13 hours ago | parent

Hey, this is actually something I have a keen interest in as I'm fighting my government (as an MP) to drop those scammers where possible. Do you have any media links to send me about them selling the "good hours" on the black market?

Even if the US has a horrible visa system – as I can attest, despite only having to do it every 5 years – the EU countries could benefit from attracting talent by being more welcoming. So that is part of my mission as an MP and tech-entrepreneur. Any help and pointers is welcome.

mrtksn 12 hours ago | parent

Hi, about the Schengen visa situation in Turkey you can find articles like these that describe how the appointments are on the black market(In Turkish but I'm sure AI will do good job translating):

https://www.bbc.com/turkce/articles/cz5r2l43kn2o

https://medyascope.tv/2024/01/22/vize-sorunu-kontrolden-cikt...

On the social media the anecdotes differ but some say they were able to get the visa appointments bots, others say it was agency personel selling it to them under the table. Maybe its really the agency personel, or maybe it's people running bots to snap appointments and sell those pretending to be from the agency - can't know for sure but there are multiple services where people purchase appointments unofficially.

In general the news situation in Turkey isn't very good as with the law enforcement but as you can see even BBC took notice.

Generally speaking, these visa agencies are very unfriendly and unreachable. They seem to just collect the money, provide no personalized help at all. My GF had some questions about her US visa application, we were not able to reach VFS Global. The phone numbers provided don't work, it's not even like taking long to speak with a human, the phone just gives you calling error.

She previously used the same company for her Schengen visa for a company event in Paris, of course unreachable again and no appointments available. Because she works at a French corporation, she was able to ask a high ranking French person in the company who has a contact with the French embassy and they arranged the appointment shortly.

dent9 13 hours ago | parent

> In the process she was also directed to a non-.gov website for something during the process, I thought she was getting scammed but no.

No clue if this specific instance if scam but such scams have indeed been done before

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdr56vl410go

> According to Ablakwa, a locally recruited staff member and "collaborators" were allegedly involved in a "fraudulent" scheme whereby they extracted money from visa and passport applicants.

> It is alleged that the scheme consisted of creating an unauthorised link on the embassy's website to redirect visa and passport applicants to a private firm where they were "charged extra for multiple services" without the knowledge of the foreign ministry.

> Ablakwa added that the staff member "kept the entire proceeds" in their private account, and that the scheme had been going on for five years.

> Applicants seeking visas were charged unapproved fees ranging from almost $30 (£22) to $60 by the private firm.

ChrisRR 20 hours ago | parent

I'm not too familiar with network side stuff. What would a port scan be able to detect that would indicate that you're a scammer?

Thorrez 19 hours ago | parent

Just a guess, but maybe a typical bot has a webserver, ssh server, some other servers running on the same machine, whereas a typical Visa applicant doesn't.

immibis 17 hours ago | parent

Or a browser automation server (Marionette/CDP). I seem to remember watching a presentation where it was mentioned you could detect them this way, <s>but I don't remember where or what it was called.</s> this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nZD6ee2Xo8 (WHY2025: Stealth Web Scraping Techniques for OSINT)

1oooqooq 19 hours ago | parent

it's riddled with scams, and thinking any of this will detect any of the things you mention is very foolish, native and show a total lack of understanding of the scams. of you think using a proxy is essential for visa scam, i would even know where to begin to correct you.

it's one hundred per cent clueless privacy invasion. they are probably also opening ports via other means and using that for side channel ID like Facebook does.

just like any other documentation scam, the only weak point is on the "last mile" that's why you will always have a human interviewer.

the visa process is abusive and unpractical because people will work around any hurdle and their kpi will never be affected no matter how crappy they manage to make to whole process. or how many doge kids implement useless privacy invasion tech just because.

M95D 1 day ago | parent

I'm using uMatrix and it blocks by default all connections outside the requested site and parent domains. For example, if I request https://mail.yahoo.com, connections to yimg.com are blocked. I need to manually allow each CDN for each website, so this attack/profiling won't work.

Using uMatrix was very annoying at first, most websites are broken without their CDNs, but after a few months or so, the whitelist grew and it contains 90% of websites I visit.

On my system https://ceac.state.gov/genniv/ tries to connect to captcha.com, google-analytics, googletagmanager, 127.0.0.1 and "burp" (a local hostname that doesn't exist in my network). Interestigly, the browser console doesn't list connection attempts to localhost or burp. If I allow 127.0.0.1 and "tcpdump -i lo", I see connections to port 8888, which isn't open.

samsonradu 1 day ago | parent

How does it manage to hide the requests to 127.0.0.1 from the network tab?

M95D 1 day ago | parent

I have no ideea. Possibly that's a limitation of Chrome+Firefox developer tools (I get the feeling it's the same code)?

But I found what "burp" is: https://portswigger.net/burp/communitydownload

culturestate 1 day ago | parent

It seems like they only make the localhost requests on your first visit. If you open devtools in incognito mode (or just clear the cookies) before accessing https://ceac.state.gov/genniv/ you should see those 127.0.0.1 attempts as ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED in the network tab.

Somewhat more worryingly, Little Snitch doesn't report them at all, though that might just be because they were already blocked at the browser.

inferiorhuman 22 hours ago | parent

This is what I see.

https://i.imgur.com/lvjg2YQ.png

hoherd 21 hours ago | parent

> 400_random_url_with_numbers_403

That looks so much like test code that was shipped to prod.

Searches for that string on GH does return results.

worthless-trash 1 day ago | parent

The requests are not made, because some operating systems prevent this.

If you're on OSX, the permission to "discover on the local network" prevents it from happening ( System Settings -> Privacy & Security -> Local Network -> yourbrowser )

Could also be 'network' permissions on firefox ( Go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Permissions ) which is on a per site level, but iirc that could be set site-wide at some point.

The other browsers likely have similar configs, but this is what I have found.

snowwrestler 17 hours ago | parent

Looks like this is new to MacOS 15 Sequoia, as I don’t see a Local Network option in Sonoma.

noja 1 day ago | parent

How does uMatrix handle the Facebook tracking pixel, or the replacement which is the Conversions API Gateway?

This is a container that FB gives you to host that lives under your domain (it can be your main domain) that slurps up user data and sends it to Facebook from the server side. You embed some JS in your website, and they hoover up the data.

M95D 1 day ago | parent

It doesn't handle it. Anyway, there's no way to know what a website does on the server site. Even a completely static website could be sending the server logs somewhere.

There are options to not load JS, images, XMLHttpRequests, frames, cookies, for each site, but it doesn't list individual files.

noja 22 hours ago | parent

Then why use it? They're number one.

M95D 18 minutes ago | parent

No other extension is giving me control like uMatrix does, even considering it's limits.

quietfox 1 day ago | parent

It seems to try to check if you are using the Burp Suite on their web application.

thaumasiotes 1 day ago | parent

> On my system https://ceac.state.gov/genniv/ tries to connect to captcha.com, google-analytics, googletagmanager, 127.0.0.1 and "burp" (a local hostname that doesn't exist in my network).

That will be this burp: https://portswigger.net/burp/documentation/desktop/tools/pro...

Sounds like they don't want you to analyze their site.

user070223 1 day ago | parent

uMatrix is archived and I think uBlockOrigin is now advised to use(which incorporate uMatrix by enabling advanced settings)

For those who want to try blocking more stuff you can enable hard mode and bind relax blocking mode keyboard shortcut

I'd recommend also enabling filter lists(I advice yokoffing/filterlists and your region/language)

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-hard-m...

Semaphor 23 hours ago | parent

I reluctantly switched to only uBo because of uM bugs. But the UI/UX is just a huge step backwards to enable mobile usability.

OJFord 23 hours ago | parent

uBO advanced settings still isn't as flexible as uMatrix was though, fwiw. (I did give in and switch in the end though.)

M95D 22 hours ago | parent

But uBlockOrigin UI is so much worse...

Besides, uMatrix works fine. It's that kind of program that doesn't need any updates.

rapnie 17 hours ago | parent

I would really like an intuitive UI for people who don't want to do 'a project' to get their config tight.

account42 22 hours ago | parent

Until uBO has an even remotely usable interface for this use case people (including myself) will continue to use uMaxtrix or forks of it instead.

freedomben 14 hours ago | parent

Amen. I would (and did!) switch browsers to continue using uMatrix rather than go without (and uBO is not a replacement)

aembleton 22 hours ago | parent

With uBO I can't block cookies by domain.

sylware 22 hours ago | parent

Whitelisting seems to be the way to go. With IPv6 and OS generated IPs (up to what the ISP domestic router allows) could be very efficient.

trod1234 1 day ago | parent

Capturing forensic artifacts of the local network allows a building a bridge strategy for identifying fraudulent networks without requiring knowledge of the path taken from destination to recipient. Other local devices do this and send the network map during a phone home, allowing comparison to a source of truth that is tied almost directly to the person, or group of people.

There is also a lot of fingerprintable material within such a port scan from clock skew, TCP ISN, and a few other areas.

You can sieve this quite easily with this available, thanks to Roku's, Phone's, and other things doing this while just sitting locally in a shared collision domain (a digital soldier quartered in every home).

The metadata node graph of devices locally acts as a unique fingerprint once in RFC1918 space, technically not unique but close enough.

slyall 1 day ago | parent

Be careful your security tool isn't producing false positives.

I remember years back when people would run these firewalls and we'd get complaints from home users about normal traffic.

Thinks like complaints our mail servers was scanning them on port 25 when they sent email.

gethly 23 hours ago | parent

Just a little side note - in this context, it makes sense if the website tries to connect to a local port because you might be running a card reader(ie. terminal). This is how it works with some(all?) EU countries that have a chip in their ID cards, or even vehicle registration cards, which you can use to access sensitive information or perform certain administrative tasks on government websites.

Although, from personal experience, it used to require java and it worked only on internet explorer and since it has been retired and replaced with chromium, i am not sure what is the way to make it work nowadays, as i have not been able to figure out to use it when i needed the last time.

cjrp 19 hours ago | parent

I've had it before where it asked me to use an iPhone/Android app which can read the passport's NFC chip. I guess that's the modern replacement for IE/Java.

layer8 18 hours ago | parent

It requires installing a local service that bridges between the browser and the smartcard driver (what Java applets did in earlier years). The web app then communicates with the service via requests on localhost. The card-specific driver and bridge service are often bundled together for installation.

dns_snek 23 hours ago | parent

The "port scan" just seems to be a local connection to 127.0.0.1:8888. I don't know what purpose it serves on this page, but our government websites often use this technique to communicate with native software for digitally signing documents.

Are you seeing connection attempts to other IPs?

junon 23 hours ago | parent

Might also be card readers, debug servers, etc.

Could also be incompetence :D until I fixed it, deploying from my local machine rather than CD resulted in one of the baked in URLs being localhost rather than the public host on the project I'm working on now. Their local development server might just be at port 8888. Wouldn't surprise me.

dns_snek 21 hours ago | parent

I looked at the website again and noticed that the request paths looked odd, one of them being `/400_random_url_with_numbers_403`. I googled that and it looks like it's part of a client-side bot detection script that's testing something, the explanation isn't very informative.

https://my.f5.com/manage/s/article/K000138794

> These requests are caused by the bot profile to test the different browser capabilities.

> 'http://127.0.0.1:xxxx' request is a call to the localhost/client machine, which is normal when trying to protect assets like end-server using ant-bot defense. It does not have any impact regarding application page load.

tifkap 22 hours ago | parent

This is most likely an attempt to connect to a webserver on your own device to collect data and/or do tracking.

Remember back in June when Facebook/meta got caught tracking users trough a webserver on Android phone thought Messenger and Instagram? Same thing.

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44169115 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44175940

darkwater 19 hours ago | parent

How are you so sure?

dannyw 16 hours ago | parent

Why do you say that’s most likely?

This is a common pattern for connecting to smart cards / hardware security devices. Probably a service or hardware that’s run on official CBP machines that should be disabled for prod, but forgot.

77pt77 16 hours ago | parent

This is by far the most likely reason.

I personally use pages that authenticate via a smartcard using this exact scheme.

There is a Java "plugin" that is nothing but a mini webserver that listens on a specific port and performs authentication.

tmdetect 23 hours ago | parent

Very interesting. Having looked at NoScript it seems like you can disable LAN as a default value under the allow tab.

tmdetect 22 hours ago | parent

Looking further

* uBlock Origin and Lite have it as an option under Filter List > Privacy > Block Outsider Intrusion into LAN

* Brave prevents it, tested with Aggressively block Trackers and Ads.

codedokode 19 hours ago | parent

Why do you need a heavyweight extension to block sites from scanning your local network? Ridiculous.

Also I wonder if this protection is available only with old extension manifest version or new network request hooks API also supports it.

karel-3d 22 hours ago | parent

It's coming from a F5 script, which is a company that sells anti-bot protection amid other things. (It's coming from obfuscated script at /TSPD, which is a F5 thing.)

https://www.f5.com/

karel-3d 22 hours ago | parent

TS seems to be short for TrafficShield (a product of some company F5 acquired in early 2000s) and PD seems to be Proactive Defense (?)

jpeggtulsa 4 hours ago | parent

Isn't F5 the company that makes nginx?

vkardco 20 hours ago | parent

this is awesome

lordofgibbons 20 hours ago | parent

How and why do browsers allow this? Why wouldn't the browser ask for permission in the same way that it does for Microphone access?

It's insane to allow any random website to port scan my LAN. If this wasn't a "feature", I would have considered this a high severity vulnerability

JJJollyjim 20 hours ago | parent

Chrome doesn't allow it - local network services have to opt-in to being fetchable from public sites (https://github.com/WICG/private-network-access), although they're replacing it with a user-permission-based approach (https://github.com/WICG/local-network-access).

(There is some language online suggesting PNA has not actually shipped, but I experienced it myself in stable Chrome several years ago, so I am unsure of the current state).

Firefox doesn't implement either approach -- I assume this is indicative of their lack of development resources.

adithyassekhar 17 hours ago | parent

> Firefox doesn't implement either approach -- I assume this is indicative of their lack of development resources.

Since ublock had this as a feature for a long time, I'm sure they are aware of it. Unlike other non funded oss projects, Firefox can't and shouldn't shield themselves with this lack of development resource excuse. They have millions.

johncolanduoni 16 hours ago | parent

A trillion dollar company (that loves huge vanity projects) gave up on maintaining a browser because it was too much work and just ship a Chrome fork now. I won’t defend Mozilla’s allocation of their resources, but even if they put it all into the “right” Firefox features the web platform is too complex and too much of a moving target for a company with mere centi-million revenues.

adithyassekhar 14 hours ago | parent

To be honest they weren't trying to build a better browser. Atleast not anymore, earlier edge was nice. They just wanted more data for ads / money. Going the chrome way was more profitable for them.

I thought Mozilla was different.

sitkack 7 hours ago | parent

They are also firing as many senior folks as possible. You should revisit what ever argument you are trying to make.

johncolanduoni 4 hours ago | parent

Microsoft? Were they firing as many senior folks as possible in 2018 when they announced they would give up on EdgeHTML and Chakra? Or in early 2020 when it actually came together? That’s not my recollection of the FAANG-ish job market at the time these decisions were made.

If you meant Mozilla, they’re a total indefensible trashfire for sure. But I’m not convinced they could have succeeded with their resources.

b3lvedere 20 hours ago | parent

"Since looking into it, I noticed that uBlock Origin already has the default list "Block Outsider Intrusion into LAN" but it wasn't enabled."

Never knew that this existed. Thank you!

dd_xplore 20 hours ago | parent

Is that available in lite version too? Now that the origin js being phased out

nicce 19 hours ago | parent

You can't change browser? Or is there something bigger happening?

surajrmal 17 hours ago | parent

Not everyone wants to change browsers.

LarMachinarum 17 hours ago | parent

then again, if the makers of one big browser (and via there also the derived browsers) start force-shoving spyware upon you (by restricting blockers), it comes down to a decision of how you set your priorities. Personally, It's a clear cut red line, but you do you.

daveidol 19 hours ago | parent

It’s only being phased out on Chrome, by Google.

ddlsmurf 18 hours ago | parent

Yes, to make us safer, now you enable developer mode and disable signature checking to install it locally, thanks Google

maleldil 17 hours ago | parent

Soon, you won't be able to install it locally because the API it relies on will no longer be available. Use Firefox.

Bnjoroge 16 hours ago | parent

Or Microsoft Edge

Ntrails 14 hours ago | parent

I thought Edge also did not support true ad blocking?

maleldil 13 hours ago | parent

Microsoft will eventually (TBD) remove Manifest v2 support from Edge, too[1].

> Manifest V2 extensions will no longer function in Microsoft Edge, even with the use of enterprise policies.

[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/extensions/...

fc417fc802 12 hours ago | parent

Isn't that because Edge has been a wrapper around Chromium for a while now? Presumably support will follow upstream.

bilalq 18 hours ago | parent

Just checked, and it seems like it is. Not enabled by default for some reason.

LarMachinarum 17 hours ago | parent

… or you can instead phase out those browsers who try to force blocker restrictions i.e. spyware on you (e.g. chrome and such), and use one of the browsers where you can use the full-featured (not "lite") uBlock Origin instead, e.g. Firefox.

Filligree 16 hours ago | parent

Firefox might be an okay browser, but that would imply supporting Mozilla.

I've been meaning to switch to Vivaldi. Just as soon as the onboarding dialog stops crashing.

Rastonbury 13 hours ago | parent

I wonder how bad does Mozilla have to be that you have to continue using Chrome without ublock?

tos1 1 hour ago | parent

I'm curious: What's your reasons for not wanting to support Mozilla?

buyucu 16 hours ago | parent

It is not being phased out for Firefox.

nerflad 18 hours ago | parent

Checking out the initial request on github for this feature I wonder why is this necessary? What access to the local network does the browser provide, or need to provide, and why isn't this something developers are more concerned about? I had a feeling this was possible as I see lots of mdns requests when I connect to certain things running sockets.

https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/4318

lol768 18 hours ago | parent

It's being looked at.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1481298

theyinwhy 13 hours ago | parent

7 year old ticket updated and prioritized because of https://localmess.github.io/

sitkack 7 hours ago | parent

This is how it always is with Firefox, you hit some bug and then find that it was entered YEARS ago, while they burn focus on things like Pocket.

dannyw 16 hours ago | parent

There are certainly use cases, but whether they’re warranted is a good question.

One popular router maker offers a ‘magic URL’ (domain name) that scans your network for the gateway management page, and redirects. It’s not necessary, but it certainly helps novice users. Having worked in IT support,

I’ve also purchased hardware devices that have a web management UI; which connects directly instead of proxying through a cloud.

Ultimately this is probably one thing that should be behind a permission request (like webcam access), but it’s not a feature without value.

balamatom 17 hours ago | parent

Massively improved my security posture with this. Thanks all!

buyucu 16 hours ago | parent

Likewise I didn't know it existed, but it was enabled on my laptop and mobile browsers.

adastra22 16 hours ago | parent

I’m flabbergasted that this is even allowed. Who thought it was a good idea to allow any web page you visit to access your local network?

johncolanduoni 16 hours ago | parent

Internal apps on non-private IP addresses occasionally use this. There is a standard called Private Network Access[1] that requires these requests to have preflights like CORS requests. Only Chrome has implemented it so far.

[1]: https://wicg.github.io/private-network-access/

adastra22 15 hours ago | parent

Why though? What is the use case that demands this? It'd better be a real pressing need because the security risks are immense and obvious. This is a backdoor to every network firewall.

psd1 12 hours ago | parent

I'm hazy on the details, but:

Home Assistant has a well-known public name that opens your local instance. On first access, you need to give it the name or ip of your instance, which is saved in browser storage. This supports deep links into your config from forum posts.

My mum also had a shitty D-Link wifi mesh device, which was packaged as an appliance. I cannot speak lowly enough about that garbage device, but then, I am not really the target market. iirc it had something similar; a public dns name for local appliance mgmt.

johncolanduoni 4 hours ago | parent

It’s more that it wasn’t prevented back when the web was first coming together, because security wasn’t on almost anyone’s minds at all. There wasn’t a hole added at some point; it’s just that browsers didn’t specifically block domains that resolve to public IPs from accessing domains that resolve to private IPs.

Realistically, it’s a backdoor to every network firewall that has existed for the entire era in which browsers were used in “secured” internal networks also connected to the internet. Everyone has either designed with it in mind, or gotten lucky that nobody tried to use it on them for like 30 years. I think it’s good to put away this footgun, but there’s no useful blame to assign here.

e40 20 hours ago | parent

That extension has "Access your data for all websites" ... I really don't get how anyone can give that permission to anyone that isn't well known (a company with a lot on the line) or a person famous for their work (the uBO dev) who has stated he will never sell to anyone or do bad things.

"Hacks and Hops" doesn't even have a valid home page. The extension links to https://g666gle.me/ which does not exist. The domain name itself does not want to make me give access to all my data for all websites to them.

As nice as this extension seems, I would ever in a million years install it.

jeffbee 18 hours ago | parent

Unfortunately this level of incoherence is almost universal on HN and similar forums. You'd have to be completely out of your mind to install this extension, but people for some reason believe they can install privacy. They got whipped into fearing nebulous online actors so much that they'll download FSB rootkits dressed as VPNs. The minimal set of actions a rational person would take after realizing they've been tricked into installing this extension is setting their entire PC on fire and then running it over with their car, while moving all of their bank accounts to new accounts, in person, and changing all of their passwords using a brand new device.

jmclnx 19 hours ago | parent

If would be interesting to see what happens on OpenBSD. With pledge(2) and unveil(2) in Firefox, I wonder what it would see. I expect it would see nothing.

I will give it a try and see what happens and if I see anything I will add it here.

jmclnx 17 hours ago | parent

I saw nothing of note on OpenBSD. I added the plugin and it prompted me an attempt was made to scan the network, it said it blocked the scan

SO, I guess that is going to be used on all my firefox runs.

uticus 13 hours ago | parent

Pushing the burden of network permissions management outside the browser, to the OS? Heresy!

To be serious, this has introduced me to sandboxing on BSD via pledge [0] and comparisons against Linux seccomp [1] - thank you!

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17289654

[1] https://kristaps.bsd.lv/devsecflops/ (submission by same poster at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44264021)

jhoechtl 19 hours ago | parent

Checking if you are sharing torrents, run a tor node, mine coins?

77pt77 16 hours ago | parent

It's most likely smartcard authentication code.

trollbridge 19 hours ago | parent

For another example, studentaid.gov doesn’t work in private browsing.

jeffbee 18 hours ago | parent

Isn't it sort of contradictory to try to use private browsing with a service that requires your identity?

kccqzy 16 hours ago | parent

Not contradictory at all. These days private browsing for most people just means (1) don't save the browsing history and (2) log me out of all websites temporarily.

jeffbee 15 hours ago | parent

But as the other post notes, it goes further (than, for example, Chrome Incognito) in ways that can break sites. Incognito means exactly what you said, while Safari Private Browsing means more.

Sohcahtoa82 14 hours ago | parent

Not necessarily.

I might create a login for a porn site so that I can have some favorite videos bookmarked and it can figure out the type of material I like. That doesn't mean I want my history saved locally.

davsti4 18 hours ago | parent

I just tried opening it in a private window and the page loaded and rendered. What part doesn't work?

jimt1234 15 hours ago | parent

I can one better (worse): A state-run website that my sister frequents for her job requires Internet Explorer. Seriously. I installed a Chrome extension that modifies her user-agent header to IE, and it works fine. Easy work-around, but totally lame.

AtNightWeCode 17 hours ago | parent

Most likely some "antivirus" bs. Probably harmless. Fun fact. Most browsers allow by default GET access to web resources on localhost and LAN. Been used for exploits since last century.

blablabla123 13 hours ago | parent

Have you double-checked whether the IP isn't shared among multiple website domains? That's quite a classic with IP based filtering with hosters like GCP...

tzury 13 hours ago | parent

Data my friend, data. Ports scanning? Well, tell us about the hosts and the port numbers. Add some logs if you got.

If you did not go into the details, chances are that when you will, this will turned out to be a false positive case.

If you did, where are the evidence?

gepeto42 5 hours ago | parent

They’d likely block you if they detected something like RDP open, cause that would likely indicate you’re hiding your real IP address.