The Curious Engineer

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Micah Lee

micahflee.com

Hi, I'm Micah. I help journalists, researchers, and activists stay safe and productive.

SecuritySociety / politics / economy

’15’20’25
Posts
113 from 20 Jan 2013 to 11 Oct 2026
Posting
monthly (11 in the last year)
Kind
personal blog
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https://micahflee.com/rss/

2026 9

  1. Just say no to OpenAI and Anthropic
  2. Flock cameras are riddled with security vulnerabilities and hard-coded credentials
  3. The Server Called Paranoia: Defend Autistici/Inventati
  4. Sandboxing coding agents
  5. Agentic coding techniques
  6. Mandatory Update: A Short Story
  7. Read Cindy Cohn's new book, Privacy's Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance
  8. "Why hack the DHS? I can think of a couple Pretti Good reasons!"
  9. Is everyone in your Signal groups named something like "E" or "🥑"? Nicknames can help!

2025 29

  1. Jeffrey Epstein Bought Books About Pedophilia, Woody Allen, and Trump
  2. How to easily dig through the Epstein files yourself
  3. I spoke about ICEBlock and Trump's app censorship on the kill switch podcast
  4. Practical Defenses Against Technofascism
  5. In war-torn Portland? Watch me speak at BSidesPDX!
  6. ICEBlock handled my vulnerability report in the worst possible way
  7. Unfortunately, the ICEBlock app is activism theater
  8. "We are currently clean on OPSEC": The Signalgate Saga
  9. Going to DEFCON? See my talk, "We are currently clean on OPSEC": The Signalgate Saga
  10. Using Signal groups for activism
  11. TeleMessage Explorer: a new open source research tool
  12. TeleMessage customers include DC Police, Andreessen Horowitz, JP Morgan, and hundreds more
  13. DDoSecrets publishes 410 GB of heap dumps, hacked from TeleMessage's archive server
  14. How the knock-off Signal app used by Trump officials got hacked in 20 minutes
  15. DOGE bro Kyle Schutt's computer infected by malware, credentials found in stealer logs
  16. Despite misleading marketing, Israeli company TeleMessage, used by Trump officials, can access plaintext chat logs
  17. The Signal Clone the Trump Admin Uses Was Hacked
  18. Here's the source code for the unofficial Signal app used by Trump officials
  19. TM SGNL, the obscure unofficial Signal app Mike Waltz uses to text with Trump officials
  20. Hunting street-level cell phone surveillance with Rayhunter
  21. An interview with Privacy Guides about Cyd, Lockdown Systems, OnionShare, and more
  22. Join a Tesla protest this Saturday as part of the global day of action
  23. The AP III militia's fraudulent charity front group
  24. Step-by-step guide to reading the leaked militia chats yourself
  25. Exploring the Paramilitary Leaks
  26. Fight fascism and Elon Musk by taking down Tesla
  27. Grok will share detailed responses from X's API, but alas, it can't access DMs and likes
  28. I just moved my website to Ghost! Get updates delivered to your inbox and support my work
  29. Not only is Substack right-wing broligarchy garbage, it's way more expensive than Ghost

2024 4

  1. Like a phoenix, Semiphemeral will rise from the ashes
  2. The Intercept laid me off
  3. OnionShare 2.6.1 released, and I wasn't even the one who did it!
  4. How to buy Hacks, Leaks, and Revelations, and how to get it for free

2023 8

  1. Hacks, Leaks, and Revelations: The Art of Analyzing Hacked and Leaked Data
  2. CASE STUDY: Extracting data from ADL's "Antisemitic Incidents and Anti-Israel Rallies" map
  3. What goes into making an OnionShare release: Part 3
  4. What goes into making an OnionShare release: Part 2
  5. Hacks, Leaks, and Revelations: Pandemic Profiteers and COVID-19 Disinformation
  6. What goes into making an OnionShare release: Part 1
  7. Elon banned me from Twitter for doing journalism. Good riddance.
  8. Capturing the Flag with GPT-4

2022 5

  1. OnionShare 2.6 has a quickstart screen, automatic censorship circumvention, and better packaging
  2. Stories about Peter Eckersley
  3. Twitter Thread: For first time in internet history Russia is fair game for cyber attacks, and this is what it looks like
  4. Twitter Thread: "Freedom Convoy" and the GiveSendGo hacks
  5. OnionShare 2.5 fixes security issues and adds censorship circumvention features

2021 9

  1. Qube Apps: a Flatpak-based app store for each qube
  2. Twitter Thread: Healthcare network led by Simone Gold and America's Frontline Doctors making millions off hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin
  3. Goodbye, passwords in OnionShare
  4. Twitter Thread: Epik's utter lack of security & terrible decisions boggle my mind
  5. Twitter Thread: 327GB of membership, donation, and petition signature records from the Tea Party Patriots
  6. Twitter Thread: Glenn Greenwald supporting the American fascist movement dressed up as "media criticism"
  7. Twitter Thread: Glenn Greenwald-related social engineering/death threats
  8. Running an OnionShare anonymous dropbox on a Raspberry Pi
  9. OnionShare 2.3 adds tabs, anonymous chat, better command line support, and quite a bit more

2020 5

  1. Easily automate deleting your old tweets, likes, and DMs with Semiphemeral
  2. Twitter Thread: Northern California Regional Intelligence Center
  3. Twitter Thread: The BlueLeaks hack of 251 law enforcement websites exposes personal data of over 700,000 cops
  4. Problematic behavior from the Whonix project
  5. Twitter Thread: Live-tweeting Zoom's E2EE whitepaper

2019 6

  1. Using Mullvad VPN in Qubes
  2. New version of OnionShare makes it easy for anyone to publish anonymous, uncensorable websites
  3. With Semiphemeral you can delete your old Twitter likes, but it's noisy
  4. Semiphemeral: Automatically delete your old tweets, except for the ones you want to keep
  5. OnionShare 2 adds anonymous dropboxes, supports new Tor addresses, and is translated into a dozen new languages
  6. Lies That WikiLeaks Tells You

2018 2

  1. Do you want to contribute to the next major version of OnionShare?
  2. OnionShare has some exciting new features

2017 1

  1. Breaking the Security Model of Subgraph OS

2016 5

  1. Qubes Tip: Making Yubikey OpenPGP smart cards slightly more usable
  2. How Qubes makes handling PDFs way safer
  3. Qubes Tip: Opening links in your preferred AppVM
  4. Backdoored Linux Mint, and the Perils of Checksums
  5. Hardening Debian for the Desktop Using Grsecurity

2015 3

  1. Some Thoughts on Faraday Bags and Operational Security
  2. Why I say Linux instead of GNU/Linux
  3. Transitioning PGP keys

2014 7

  1. Fact-checking Pando’s smears against Tor
  2. Security Advisory: Upgrade to OnionShare 0.4 Immediately
  3. The Universe Believes in Encryption
  4. Using Tor Browser Launcher in Qubes
  5. Dual-booting Qubes and Ubuntu with Encrypted Disks
  6. The Operating System That Can Protect You Even if You Get Hacked
  7. Ubuntu is finally taking privacy seriously

2013 20

  1. Two really simple things Microsoft can do to make Windows more secure against NSA
  2. How Mailpile can implement opportunistic PGP email encryption
  3. Leaving EFF and joining a fearless team of journalists
  4. Canonical shouldn’t abuse trademark law to silence critics of its privacy decisions
  5. HTML email, attachments, and flowed text in Enigmail
  6. Don’t Succumb to Security Nihilism
  7. It’s 2013. We’re all being spied on. Why do security software websites not use HTTPS?
  8. Despite Google’s statement, they still have access to your wifi passwords
  9. Use Android? You’re Probably Giving Google All Your Wifi Passwords
  10. Opportunistic Encryption to Combat Dragnet Surveillance
  11. Swatting is Not the Same as Doxing
  12. sudo apt-get install torbrowser
  13. How to Get a Tor Project T-Shirt For Less Than $65
  14. Bradley Manning's statement shows that US intelligence analysts are trained in using Tor
  15. Using Gajim Instead of Pidgin for More Secure OTR Chat
  16. Unity vs. Windows 8
  17. Mobile Location Anonymity: Proxying Twitter, IM, and Email through Tor on Android
  18. Why I'm Leaving Ubuntu for Debian
  19. No Really, the NSA Can’t Brute Force Your Crypto
  20. Beefing Up Security on Your SSH Server