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A comment on Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a port-scan of my network?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a por... by dannyw on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @11:19AM (#44962738)
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.

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Re:Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a por... by 77pt77 on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @11:44AM (#44962970)
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.

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