- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Kali Linux 1.1.0 Released
by Paul Wilson 12 Feb '15

12 Feb '15

"After almost two years of public development (and another year behind the scenes), we are proud to announce our first point release of Kali Linux - version 1.1.0. This release brings with it a mix of unprecedented hardware support as well as rock-solid stability. For us, this is a real milestone as this release epitomizes the benefits of our move from BackTrack to Kali Linux over two years ago." http://www.linuxscreenshots.org/?release=Kali%20Linux%201.1.0 For all those "Security Testers" out there this could be interesting.... Regards Paul Wilson

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Firefox To Mandate Extension Signing
by Peter Reutemann 12 Feb '15

12 Feb '15

'In a recent blog post, Mozilla announced its intention to require extensions to be signed in Firefox, without any possible user override. From the post: "For developers hosting their add-ons on AMO, this means that they will have to either test on Developer Edition, Nightly, or one of the unbranded builds. The rest of the submission and review process will remain unchanged, except that extensions will be automatically signed once they pass review. For other developers, this is a larger change. For testing development versions, they’ll have the same options available as AMO add-on developers. For release versions, however, we’re introducing the required step of uploading the extension file to AMO for signing. For most cases, this step will be automatic, but in cases where the extension doesn’t pass these tests, there will be the option to request a manual code review."' -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/02/11/210247 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Show your love for Free Software
by Peter Reutemann 12 Feb '15

12 Feb '15

'Every year on 14th February, the Free Software Foundation Europe asks all Free Software users to think about the hard-working people in the Free Software community and to show them their appreciation individually on this "I love Free Software"-Day. Like last year the campaign is dedicated to the people behind Free Software because they enable us to use, study, share and improve the software which enables us to work in freedom. This time the focus especially lies on the small contributions to the big picture of the Free Software community.' -- source: http://fsfe.org/news/2015/news-20150209-01.html Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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VLC Acquiring Lots of New Features
by Peter Reutemann 11 Feb '15

11 Feb '15

"Two weekends ago an update for VLC media player was shared during a presentation in Brussels at FOSDEM. Lead developer Jean-Baptiste Kempf covered VLC's continued vibrant development, as well as features that are coming for VLC 2.2 and VLC 3.0. VLC 2.2.0 will feature automatic, GPU-accelerated video rotation support, extension improvements, resume handling, support for new codecs/formats and rewrites to some of the existing formats, VDPAU GPU zero-copy support, x265 encoder support, etc. Further out is VLC 3.0.0, which is planned to have Wayland support, GPU zero-copy support for OpenMAX IL, ARIB subtitle support, HEVC / VP9 hardware decoding on Android, a rework of the MP4 and TS demuxers, and browsing improvements. The VLC FOSDEM 2015 presentation is available in PDF form. The VLC Git shortlog can be used to follow the development of the project." -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/02/11/0515244 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Is Modern Linux Becoming Too Complex?
by Peter Reutemann 11 Feb '15

11 Feb '15

'Debian developer John Goerzen asks whether Linux has become so complex that it has lost some of its defining characteristics. "I used to be able to say Linux was clean, logical, well put-together, and organized. I can’t really say this anymore. Users and groups are not really determinitive for permissions, now that we have things like polkit running around. (Yes, by the way, I am a member of plugdev.) Error messages are unhelpful (WHY was I not authorized?) and logs are nowhere to be found. Traditionally, one could twiddle who could mount devices via /etc/fstab lines and perhaps some sudo rules. Granted, you had to know where to look, but when you did, it was simple; only two pieces to fit together. I've even spent time figuring out where to look and STILL have no idea what to do."' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/02/11/0444232 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Elementary OS: Why We Make You Type "$0"
by Peter Reutemann 11 Feb '15

11 Feb '15

'Open source software can always be acquired without charge, but can still incur significant development costs. Elementary OS wants to make people aware of this, and have changed their website to suggest donating when downloading, and make users explicitly enter "$0" if they want a free download. This is the same strategy Canonical has used when offering Ubuntu. The Elementary OS blog explains: "Developing software has a huge cost. Some companies offset that cost by charging hundreds of dollars for their software, making manufacturers pay them to license the software, or selling expensive hardware with the OS included. Others offset it by mining user data and charging companies to target ads to their users. [...] If we want to see the world of open source software grow, we should encourage users to pay for its development; otherwise it'll be underfunded or developers will have to resort to backdoor deals and advertising. And nobody wants that future." Currently the only people who have received money for working on Elementary OS have been community members through their bounty program.' -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/02/11/1753219 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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libregraphicsworld.org
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 11 Feb '15

11 Feb '15

For those who don’t know about this site, but who make frequent use of open-source graphics software (GIMP, Inkscape, Blender etc), you will find all kinds of informative news articles here. There seems to be a new item about once a week. Some recent items: * Inkscape 0.91 released <http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/inkscape-0-91-released> * Blender 2.73 as a 2D animation powerhouse (to add to all the other arrows in its quiver) <http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/blender-2-73-grease-pencil> * A follow-up to the item Peter posted a few weeks back about Paris-8 University moving from Photoshop to Krita and other Free Software <http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/the-complete-story-of-paris-8-univ…>

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Stuff seems to run Ubuntu/nginx
by Peter Reutemann 10 Feb '15

10 Feb '15

What http errors can tell you about a website ;-) Stuff seems to use Ubuntu/nginx as you can see in the attachment. Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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New Multi-Purpose Backdoor Targets Linux Servers
by Peter Reutemann 09 Feb '15

09 Feb '15

'A new multi-purpose Linux Trojan that opens a backdoor on the target machine and can make it participate in DDoS attacks has been discovered and analyzed by Dr. Web researchers, who believe that the Chinese hacker group ChinaZ might be behind it. "First, Linux.BackDoor.Xnote.1 sends information about the infected system to the server. It then goes into standby mode and awaits further instructions. If the command involves carrying out some task, the backdoor creates a separate process that establishes its own connection to the server through which it gets all the necessary configuration data and sends the results of the executed task," the researchers explained.' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/02/09/1829255 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Linux Versus Linux
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 09 Feb '15

09 Feb '15

Another long-heralded Android competitor, Tizen, gets a head-to-head comparison gallery here <http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/02/tizen-versus-android-in-pictures/>.

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Xfce Getting a New Version Soon
by Peter Reutemann 08 Feb '15

08 Feb '15

'It looks like the release of Xfce 4.12 is finally about to materialize. It has been about two and half years since the last stable release. There is now a concerted effort underway to ship a new release of this lightweight GTK+2 desktop environment out around the end of February or early March. "As we have discussed the status and progress of core components with many of you individually, we feel confident that the state of Xfce is good enough to polish some final edges and push more translations until then," wrote Simon Steinbeiß on the xfce4-dev mailing list. The official list of showstopper bugs does not look too bad either. However, looking at the long time between releases certainly makes one think if the project could have use for some extra resources.' -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/02/08/1431250 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Xenon Flashes Can Make New Raspberry Pi 2 Freeze and Reboot
by Peter Reutemann 08 Feb '15

08 Feb '15

"Unfortunately for Raspberry Pi 2 owners who are trying to photograph their devices, ... the Raspberry Pi 2 has been found to be Xenon flash sensitive. Any camera with a Xenon flash aimed at the device is causing the device to freeze for a few seconds before rebooting." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/15/02/08/0643254 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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The First Ubuntu Phone Is Here, With Underwhelming Hardware
by Peter Reutemann 08 Feb '15

08 Feb '15

'A few days ago, Fast Company reviewer Jay Cassano was enthusiastic about Ubuntu's approach to apps for its new phone OS: namely, not relying on them, and instead interfacing seamlessly with existing websites and protocols. Now, new submitter ablutions (4006541) writes with a less than glowing review at The Daily Dot of the actual hardware that the OS is launching on. A sample that conveys the gist: "Let's start with the good stuff: It sports a 4.5-inch multi-touch screen and a respectable 8-megapixel rear camera and 5-megapixel lens on the front. That's pretty much it. The list of negatives is a bit longer."' -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/02/08/0034236 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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IEEE Computer Society YouTube Channel
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 08 Feb '15

08 Feb '15

A large collection of videos here <https://www.youtube.com/user/ieeeComputerSociety/videos>. Some interesting-looking ones (none of which I’ve watched yet): Eben Upton on the (original) Raspberry π <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVU5QBg5l6g> Linus Torvalds, 2014 Computer Pioneer Award <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMmo0Nyleg4> Computing Conversations: Andrew Tanenbaum on MINIX <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZS_LFeZA7p8>. And no doubt lots more I’ve missed. :)

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Ubuntu smartphone as seen on BBC
by Ian Young 07 Feb '15

07 Feb '15

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-31148661 --snip-- An Ubuntu-powered smartphone is coming to the market a year and a half after a previous attempt to launch a model via crowdfunding failed. .... The Ubuntu handset can run apps written in either the HTML5 web programming language or its own native QML code. However, its operating system effectively hides them away. Instead of the traditional smartphone user interface - featuring grids of apps - it uses themed cards that group together different facilities. --unsnip-- Chocolate fish for first person to bring one to a meeting?

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Samba issues
by David Nicholls 04 Feb '15

04 Feb '15

Hi guys. I am having an issue with my fresh samba setup. I built a 14.04.1 LTS Ubuntu server and set up a single mount point (/media/data) and pointed 3 separate internal hard drives to it (eg it contains directories "music_drive", "tv_drive" & "movie_drive"). I turned "/media/data" into a samba share. Annoyingly permissions look fine but I cannot seem to be able to either see the share on my network from other machines or connect to it. Even using the servers IP address. Any advice? Or am I just missing something obvious. My config is below. samba.conf # # Sample configuration file for the Samba suite for Debian GNU/Linux. # # # This is the main Samba configuration file. You should read the # smb.conf(5) manual page in order to understand the options listed # here. Samba has a huge number of configurable options most of which # are not shown in this example # # Some options that are often worth tuning have been included as # commented-out examples in this file. # - When such options are commented with ";", the proposed setting # differs from the default Samba behaviour # - When commented with "#", the proposed setting is the default # behaviour of Samba but the option is considered important # enough to be mentioned here # # NOTE: Whenever you modify this file you should run the command # "testparm" to check that you have not made any basic syntactic # errors. #======================= Global Settings ======================= [global] passwd program = /usr/bin/passwd %u max log size = 1000 browseable = yes workgroup = RIMFALL passdb backend = tdbsam obey pam restrictions = yes map to guest = bad user unix password sync = yes os level = 20 server role = standalone server printing = cups load printers = no netbios aliases = ook preferred master = yes available = yes default = lspace panic action = /usr/share/samba/panic-action %d wins support = true netbios name = ook security = user server string = %h server (Samba, Ubuntu) passwd chat = *Enter\snew\s*\spassword:* %n\n *Retype\snew\s*\spassword:* %n\n *password\supdated\ssuccessfully* . pam password change = yes syslog = 0 dns proxy = no log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m usershare allow guests = yes ## Browsing/Identification ### # Change this to the workgroup/NT-domain name your Samba server will part of # server string is the equivalent of the NT Description field # Windows Internet Name Serving Support Section: # WINS Support - Tells the NMBD component of Samba to enable its WINS Server # wins support = no # WINS Server - Tells the NMBD components of Samba to be a WINS Client # Note: Samba can be either a WINS Server, or a WINS Client, but NOT both ; wins server = w.x.y.z # This will prevent nmbd to search for NetBIOS names through DNS. #### Networking #### # The specific set of interfaces / networks to bind to # This can be either the interface name or an IP address/netmask; # interface names are normally preferred ; interfaces = 127.0.0.0/8 eth0 # Only bind to the named interfaces and/or networks; you must use the # 'interfaces' option above to use this. # It is recommended that you enable this feature if your Samba machine is # not protected by a firewall or is a firewall itself. However, this # option cannot handle dynamic or non-broadcast interfaces correctly. ; bind interfaces only = yes #### Debugging/Accounting #### # This tells Samba to use a separate log file for each machine # that connects # Cap the size of the individual log files (in KiB). # If you want Samba to only log through syslog then set the following # parameter to 'yes'. # syslog only = no # We want Samba to log a minimum amount of information to syslog. Everything # should go to /var/log/samba/log.{smbd,nmbd} instead. If you want to log # through syslog you should set the following parameter to something higher. # Do something sensible when Samba crashes: mail the admin a backtrace ####### Authentication ####### # Server role. Defines in which mode Samba will operate. Possible # values are "standalone server", "member server", "classic primary # domain controller", "classic backup domain controller", "active # directory domain controller". # # Most people will want "standalone sever" or "member server". # Running as "active directory domain controller" will require first # running "samba-tool domain provision" to wipe databases and create a # new domain. # If you are using encrypted passwords, Samba will need to know what # password database type you are using. # This boolean parameter controls whether Samba attempts to sync the Unix # password with the SMB password when the encrypted SMB password in the # passdb is changed. # For Unix password sync to work on a Debian GNU/Linux system, the following # parameters must be set (thanks to Ian Kahan << kahan(a)informatik.tu-muenchen.de> for # sending the correct chat script for the passwd program in Debian Sarge). # This boolean controls whether PAM will be used for password changes # when requested by an SMB client instead of the program listed in # 'passwd program'. The default is 'no'. # This option controls how unsuccessful authentication attempts are mapped # to anonymous connections ########## Domains ########### # # The following settings only takes effect if 'server role = primary # classic domain controller', 'server role = backup domain controller' # or 'domain logons' is set # # It specifies the location of the user's # profile directory from the client point of view) The following # required a [profiles] share to be setup on the samba server (see # below) ; logon path = \\%N\profiles\%U # Another common choice is storing the profile in the user's home directory # (this is Samba's default) # logon path = \\%N\%U\profile # The following setting only takes effect if 'domain logons' is set # It specifies the location of a user's home directory (from the client # point of view) ; logon drive = H: # logon home = \\%N\%U # The following setting only takes effect if 'domain logons' is set # It specifies the script to run during logon. The script must be stored # in the [netlogon] share # NOTE: Must be store in 'DOS' file format convention ; logon script = logon.cmd # This allows Unix users to be created on the domain controller via the SAMR # RPC pipe. The example command creates a user account with a disabled Unix # password; please adapt to your needs ; add user script = /usr/sbin/adduser --quiet --disabled-password --gecos "" %u # This allows machine accounts to be created on the domain controller via the # SAMR RPC pipe. # The following assumes a "machines" group exists on the system ; add machine script = /usr/sbin/useradd -g machines -c "%u machine account" -d /var/lib/samba -s /bin/false %u # This allows Unix groups to be created on the domain controller via the SAMR # RPC pipe. ; add group script = /usr/sbin/addgroup --force-badname %g ############ Misc ############ # Using the following line enables you to customise your configuration # on a per machine basis. The %m gets replaced with the netbios name # of the machine that is connecting ; include = /home/samba/etc/smb.conf.%m # Some defaults for winbind (make sure you're not using the ranges # for something else.) ; idmap uid = 10000-20000 ; idmap gid = 10000-20000 ; template shell = /bin/bash # Setup usershare options to enable non-root users to share folders # with the net usershare command. # Maximum number of usershare. 0 (default) means that usershare is disabled. ; usershare max shares = 100 # Allow users who've been granted usershare privileges to create # public shares, not just authenticated ones #======================= Share Definitions ======================= # Un-comment the following (and tweak the other settings below to suit) # to enable the default home directory shares. This will share each # user's home directory as \\server\username ;[homes] ; comment = Home Directories ; browseable = no # By default, the home directories are exported read-only. Change the # next parameter to 'no' if you want to be able to write to them. ; read only = yes # File creation mask is set to 0700 for security reasons. If you want to # create files with group=rw permissions, set next parameter to 0775. ; create mask = 0700 # Directory creation mask is set to 0700 for security reasons. If you want to # create dirs. with group=rw permissions, set next parameter to 0775. ; directory mask = 0700 # By default, \\server\username shares can be connected to by anyone # with access to the samba server. # Un-comment the following parameter to make sure that only "username" # can connect to \\server\username # This might need tweaking when using external authentication schemes ; valid users = %S # Un-comment the following and create the netlogon directory for Domain Logons # (you need to configure Samba to act as a domain controller too.) ;[netlogon] ; comment = Network Logon Service ; path = /home/samba/netlogon ; guest ok = yes ; read only = yes # Un-comment the following and create the profiles directory to store # users profiles (see the "logon path" option above) # (you need to configure Samba to act as a domain controller too.) # The path below should be writable by all users so that their # profile directory may be created the first time they log on ;[profiles] ; comment = Users profiles ; path = /home/samba/profiles ; guest ok = no ; browseable = no ; create mask = 0600 ; directory mask = 0700 [printers] comment = All Printers available = no writable = no printable = yes path = /var/spool/samba guest ok = no create mask = 0700 browseable = no # Windows clients look for this share name as a source of downloadable # printer drivers [print$] guest ok = no writable = no path = /var/lib/samba/printers comment = Printer Drivers # Uncomment to allow remote administration of Windows print drivers. # You may need to replace 'lpadmin' with the name of the group your # admin users are members of. # Please note that you also need to set appropriate Unix permissions # to the drivers directory for these users to have write rights in it ; write list = root, @lpadmin [lspace] valid users = david, steff, tracey, smbguest, @sambashare guest account = comment = Lspace media share writeable = yes force group = sambashare path = /media/data read list = smbguest write list = david, steff, tracey

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Android tethering: fix IP address of client using Mac ID?
by Peter Reutemann 03 Feb '15

03 Feb '15

Hi there Just playing around with Android tethering / wifi hotspot on my phone. One question that I have is, how do I fix the IP address that my phone assigns to a client when acting as an access point? Is there an App that I can use to tie a client's Mac ID to certain IP address, like you can usually do with "regular" wireless access points? Thanks. Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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The Linux Foundation Offers a Self-Paced SysAdmin Course
by Peter Reutemann 02 Feb '15

02 Feb '15

"The Linux Foundation has announced the launch of its new self-paced Essentials of System Administration course (LFS201), which comes bundled with a Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator exam. The full schedule of all 2015 Linux Foundation training courses is also now available." -- source: http://ostatic.com/blog/the-linux-foundation-offers-a-self-paced-sysadmin-c… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Major Release LibreOffice 4.4 Announced
by Peter Reutemann 02 Feb '15

02 Feb '15

'The Document Foundation today announced the latest and "most beautiful" LibreOffice ever. LibreOffice 4.4 is the ninth major release for the project and brings with it lots of design and functionality improvements. Redesigned toolbars, menus, status bars, rulers and new theme selector are among the goodies for users. Michael Meeks said today that this release not only improves the visible features but also the foundations underneath.' -- source: http://ostatic.com/blog/major-release-libreoffice-4-4-announced Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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OpenSSH Will Feature Key Discovery and Rotation For Easier Switching To Ed25519
by Peter Reutemann 01 Feb '15

01 Feb '15

"OpenSSH developer Damien Miller has posted about a new feature he implemented and committed for the next upcoming 6.8 release of OpenSSH — hostkeys(a)openssh.com — an OpenSSH extension to the SSH protocol for sshd to automatically send all of its public keys to the client, and for the client to automatically replace all keys of such server within ~/.ssh/known_hosts with the fresh copies as supplied (provided the server is trusted in the first place, of course). The protocol extension is simple enough, and is aimed to make it easier to switch over from DSA to the OpenSSL-free Ed25519 public keys. It is also designed in such a way as to support the concept of spare host keys being stored offline, which could then seamlessly replace main active keys should they ever become compromised." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/15/02/01/0533208 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Dell Continues Shipping Fresh Linux Laptops
by Peter Reutemann 01 Feb '15

01 Feb '15

"In its latest move, Dell will be bringing Ubuntu 14.04 LTS to its top-of-the-line Precision M3800 workstation laptop and the latest model of the Dell XPS 13. Both systems will be running Ubuntu 14.04.1. According to Barton George, Dell's Director of Developer Programs, programmers had been asking for a better, officially-supported Ubuntu developer laptop. This came about from a combination of the efforts of Dell software engineer Jared Dominguez and enthusiastic feedback. Specs of M3800: 15.6" LCD @ 3840x2160, Intel i7 quad core CPU, NVIDIA Quadro GPU, up to 16 GB RAM. The bad news is, as Dominguez explained on his blog, this version of the M3800 doesn't support its built-in Thunderbolt 2 port out of the box. However, thanks to the hardware-enablement stack in Ubuntu, starting with upcoming Ubuntu 14.04.2, you will be able to upgrade your kernel to add some Thunderbolt support." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/01/31/180203 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Everybody’s Gone Flat
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 31 Jan '15

31 Jan '15

A tour through the new standard theme for KDE Plasma 5.2 <https://dot.kde.org/2015/01/27/plasma-52-beautiful-and-featureful>. And you thought it was just Apple and Microsoft and Google doing it: looks like anything resembling depth or gradients or shadows is completely out of fashion nowadays...

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Microsoft Puts Money Into Android
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 30 Jan '15

30 Jan '15

Microsoft is reportedly going to invest in Cyanogen Inc <http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/01/microsoft-to-invest-in-cyanogen-hope…>. If you remember, the people behind the well-regarded CyanogenMod custom build of Android decided to become a commercial operation recently. There are even phone makers putting CyanogenMod straight onto their phones at the factory, in preference to official Google Android.

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GParted Live Now Supports Microsoft's New Filesystem, ReFS
by Peter Reutemann 29 Jan '15

29 Jan '15

"GParted Live is a small bootable GNU/Linux distribution that has a lot of features and that can be used in operations like creating, reorganizing, and deleting disk partitions on a variety of filesystems. A new stable update has been made available and the operating system is now at version 0.21.0." -- source: http://news.softpedia.com/news/GParted-Live-Now-Supports-MIcrosoft-s-New-Fi… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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FSF-Endorsed Libreboot X200 Laptop Comes With Intel's AMT Removed
by Peter Reutemann 29 Jan '15

29 Jan '15

'"The Free Software Foundation has announced its endorsement of the Libreboot X200, a refurbished Lenovo ThinkPad X200 sold by Gluglug. The laptop ships with 100% free software and firmware, including the FSF's endorsed Trisquel GNU/Linux and Libreboot. One of the biggest challenges overcome in achieving FSF's Respects Your Freedom certification was the complete removal of Intel's ME and AMT firmware. The AMT is a controversial proprietary backdoor technology that allows remote access to a machine even when it is powered off. Quoting from the press release: "The ME and its extension, AMT, are serious security issues on modern Intel hardware and one of the main obstacles preventing most Intel based systems from being liberated by users. On most systems, it is extremely difficult to remove, and nearly impossible to replace. Libreboot X200 is the first system where it has actually been removed, permanently," said Gluglug Founder and CEO, Francis Rowe."' -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/15/01/29/2241214 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Georgia Institute of Technology Researchers Bridge the Airgap
by Peter Reutemann 29 Jan '15

29 Jan '15

"Hacked has a piece about Georgia Institute of Technology researchers keylogging from a distance using the electromagnetic radiation of CPUs. They can reportedly do this from up to 6 meters away. In this video, using two Ubuntu laptops, they demonstrate that keystrokes are easily interpreted with the software they have developed. In their white paper they talk about the need for more research in this area so that hardware and software manufacturers will be able to develop more secure devices. For now, Farraday cages don't seem as crazy as they used to, or do they?" -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/15/01/29/141243 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Mozilla Dusts Off Old Servers, Lights Up Tor Relays
by Peter Reutemann 29 Jan '15

29 Jan '15

"According to The Register, "Mozilla has given the Tor network a capacity kick with the launch of 14 relays that will help distribute user traffic. Engineers working under the Foundation's Polaris Project inked in November pulled Mozilla's spare and decommissioned hardware out of the cupboard for dedicated use in the Tor network. It included a pair of Juniper EX4200 switches and three HP SL170zG6 (48GB ram, 2*Xeon L5640, 2*1Gbps NIC) servers, along with a dedicated existing IP transit provider (2 X 10Gbps). French Mozilla engineer Arzhel Younsi (@xionoxfr) said its network was designed to fall no lower than half of its network capacity in the event of maintenance or failure. The Polaris initiative was a effort of Mozilla, the Tor Project and the Centre for Democracy and Technology to help build more privacy controls into technology." -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/15/01/29/192215 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Ubuntu 15.04 Is The Easy Path To Better Performance For Ubuntu Users On Intel Broadwell
by Peter Reutemann 29 Jan '15

29 Jan '15

"Unless you manually upgrade your kernel and other system packages from your Ubuntu 14.10 installation, Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid Vervet is an important release for users of new Intel Broadwellsystems for ensuring your hardware reaches its maximum performance potential." -- source: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu-1504-5600u&num=1 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Serious Network Function Vulnerability Found In Glibc
by Peter Reutemann 28 Jan '15

28 Jan '15

"A very serious security problem has been found and patched in the GNU C Library (Glibc). A heap-based buffer overflow was found in __nss_hostname_digits_dots() function, which is used by the gethostbyname() and gethostbyname2() function calls. A remote attacker able to make an application call to either of these functions could use this flaw to execute arbitrary code with the permissions of the user running the program. The vulnerability is easy to trigger as gethostbyname() can be called remotely for applications that do any kind of DNS resolving within the code. Qualys, who discovered the vulnerability (nicknamed "Ghost") during a code audit, wrote a mailing list entry with more details, including in-depth analysis and exploit vectors." -- sources: http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/01/27/1925208 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

3 4

Opera Founder Is Back, WIth a Feature-Heavy, Chromium-Based Browser
by Peter Reutemann 27 Jan '15

27 Jan '15

"Almost two years ago, the Norwegian browser firm Opera ripped out the guts of its product and adopted the more standard WebKit and Chromium technologies, essentially making it more like rivals Chrome and Safari. But it wasn't just Opera's innards that changed; the browser also became more streamlined and perhaps less geeky. Many Opera fans were deeply displeased at the loss of what they saw as key differentiating functionality. So now Jon von Tetzchner, the man who founded Opera and who would probably never have allowed those drastic feature changes, is back to serve this hard core with a new browser called Vivaldi." -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/01/27/1733259 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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EFF Unveils Plan For Ending Mass Surveillance
by Peter Reutemann 27 Jan '15

27 Jan '15

'The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published a detailed, global strategy for ridding ourselves of mass surveillance. They stress that this must be an international effort — while citizens of many countries can vote against politicians who support surveillance, there are also many countries where the citizens have to resort to other methods. The central part of the EFF's plan is: encryption, encryption, encryption. They say we need to build new secure communications tools, pressure existing tech companies to make their products secure against everyone, and get ordinary internet-goers to recognize that encryption is a fundamental part of communication in the surveillance age. They also advocate fighting for transparency and against overreach on a national level. "[T]he more people worldwide understand the threat and the more they understand how to protect themselves—and just as importantly, what they should expect in the way of support from companies and governments—the more we can agitate for the changes we need online to fend off the dragnet collection of data." The EFF references a document created to apply the principles of human rights to communications surveillance, which they say are "our way of making sure that the global norm for human rights in the context of communication surveillance isn't the warped viewpoint of NSA and its four closest allies, but that of 50 years of human rights standards showing mass surveillance to be unnecessary and disproportionate."' -- source: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/15/01/27/042212 Cheers, Pete -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Linus Fixes Kernel Regression Breaking Witcher 2
by Peter Reutemann 24 Jan '15

24 Jan '15

'There has been quite a debate around the Linux version of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings and the fact that it wasn't really a port. A special kind of wrapper was used to make the Windows version of the game run on Linux systems, similar to Wine. The performance on Linux systems took a hit and users felt betrayed because they thought that they would get a native port. However, after the gamestopped launching properly at some point, the reason was actually found to be a Linux regression.Linus quickly took care of the issue on an unofficial Witcher 2 issue tracker on GitHub: "It looks like LDT_empty is buggy on 64-bit kernels. I suspect that the behavior was inconsistent before the tightening change and that it's now broken as a result. I'll write a patch. Serves me right for not digging all the way down the mess of macros." This one goes to the bin "don't break userspace". Linus also reminds of QA: "And maybe this is an excuse for somebody in the x86 maintainer team to try a few games on steam. They *are* likely good tests of odd behavior.."' -- source: http://games.slashdot.org/story/15/01/24/1528232 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Accidentally Deleting Directories
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 21 Jan '15

21 Jan '15

I suppose every seasoned Linux user has been there (I know I have): done “rm -rf” (or equivalent) to wipe out a directory, only to realize--too late--that it was the wrong one. There’s a discussion currently raging <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/17/scary_code_of_the_week_steam_cleans…> over a bug just like this in the Steam client for Linux. There is a script that contains the line rm -rf "$STEAMROOT/"* However, as a result of certain (unusual) user actions, the value of the STEAMROOT variable could end up empty, in which case the script proceeds to wipe out every file on the system that your userid has privilege over. What’s the best way to handle this? On the one hand, when setting up a new installation/preferences directory, you want to ensure there is no leftover rubbish in it. But on the other, you want to ensure that any existing directory you delete/replace is in fact an old installation/preferences directory. I’m leaning towards the solution--discussed in the GitHub issue entry--of checking for some distinctive file in the existing directory. If that doesn’t exist, then the directory is not what the script thinks it is. For example, my wipetree script <https://github.com/ldo/git-useful/blob/master/wipetree> checks that there is a .git subdirectory in the directory you want to wipe. It also helps to use “set -e”, so bash aborts the script on an error, instead of barrelling on.

2 1

Canonical Launches Internet-of-Things Version of Ubuntu Core
by Peter Reutemann 21 Jan '15

21 Jan '15

'Ubuntu Linux isn't just for desktops, servers and the cloud anymore. Mark Shuttleworth wants Ubuntu to be the operating system of choice for the Internet of Things too. The new Snappy Ubuntu Core is targeted at device developers and it's the basis for an entire new division of Canonical Inc. The promise of Snappy Ubuntu Core is also one of security, protecting the devices of the world, by keeping them updated. "With Snappy there is also a division of responsibilities for updating that can also help protect IoT devices and users. So we could deliver an update for a Heartbleed or Shellshock vulnerability, completely independently of the lawnmower control app that would come from the lawnmower company," Shuttleworth said.' -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/01/20/2347214 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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The current state of video editing for Linux
by Peter Reutemann 21 Jan '15

21 Jan '15

"I often ask myself what the current state of video editing is for free and open source software (FOSS). Here are my thoughts. I've spent many years in the visual effects (VFX) industry from the perspective of being either an artist, compositor, video editor, or systems engineer. (I've even got film creds on IMDB!) In the past, I had the pleasure of cutting on, training people on, setting up, and supporting Avid Media Composer, the cream of the crop of professional real-time video editing tools for film and TV alike—at least before things like Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere became useful enough to professionals." Tested: Pitivi, OpenShot, Lightworks, Avidemux, Cinelerra, KDEnlive, Blender The winner (spoiler): Blender -- source: http://opensource.com/life/15/1/current-state-linux-video-editing Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

3 3

dates for meetings
by Peter Reutemann 21 Jan '15

21 Jan '15

Hi everyone I've talked to the Bernhard Pfahringer, head of the computer science department, and he's willing to sponsor our meetings (WLUG and Python) again this year. Therefore, I booked the following dates for WLUG: Feb 23 Mar 23 Apr 27 May 25 Jul 27 Aug 24 Sep 28 Nov 23 NB: Some months are unavailable due to exam periods (these periods start already during study week, when the rooms get prepared and cannot be disturbed anymore). This brings me also to the next question: who's up for presenting at the first meeting in February? Any new, funky distros that anyone has taken for a spin? Any Linux-related projects tackled during the summer break? Feel free to contact me off-list and I'll add you to the meeting on meetup.com. As a reminder, our meetings get scheduled here: http://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/ Thanks and see you in February. Hope you all had a good summer break (at the least the folks in the southern hemisphere)! Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Adobe's Photoshop Ditched for Krita at French University Due to Lack of Support
by Peter Reutemann 19 Jan '15

19 Jan '15

"The ATI (Art and Technology of Image) department at University Paris 8 is switching to Krita this year. This department has the double aim to train students both to use graphic software (2D,3D,VFX and Compositing) and to code their own (Python, C#, C++). Until recently the classes used only Adobe Photoshop, but because of inadequate support from the company the department decided to replace that." -- source: https://krita.org/item/goodbye-photoshop-and-hello-krita-at-university-pari… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 1

Fwd: [NZOSS-Openchat] LCA'15
by Peter Reutemann 19 Jan '15

19 Jan '15

Apologies if you've received this already. Cheers, Peter ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Jaco Date: Mon, Jan 19, 2015 at 9:05 AM Subject: [NZOSS-Openchat] LCA'15 To: NZOSS Open Discussion List Thanks to everyone who attended, participated or helped in the Linux Conference last week. Video's should be available online now: * http://www.youtube.com/user/linuxconfau2015 * http://mirror.linux.org.au/linux.conf.au/2015/ * Local ‪NZ‬ mirror at http://mirror.slingshot.co.nz/pub/linux.conf.au/2015/ thanks to SlingshotNZ! Was good to see many familiar faces, but I was also hoping to see others. OTOH I was running around so much & attention focused on the above, I doubt I would've noticed anyway. Looking forward to working at the next one (this counts as doing my bit for the community, right?) cheers - Jaco _______________________________________________ Openchat mailing list Openchat(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz http://lists.nzoss.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/openchat -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

4 3

Tails 1.2.3 is out
by Peter Reutemann 18 Jan '15

18 Jan '15

"Tails, The Amnesic Incognito Live System, version 1.2.3, is out. This release fixes numerous security issues and all users must upgrade as soon as possible. On January 3rd, the SSL certificate of our website hosting provider, boum.org, expired. This means that if you still are running Tails 1.2.1 or older, you will not get any update notification. Please help spreading the word!" -- source: https://tails.boum.org/news/version_1.2.3/index.en.html Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Security Products Are Wasting Our Time
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 18 Jan '15

18 Jan '15

Apparently 4 out of 5 alerts reported by malware-detection products are false alarms <http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/01/survey-says-security-products-waste…>. And of course the result is predictable: In 2013, for example, when cybercriminals broke into Target’s systems and loaded malware, the company’s FireEye security system issued an alert for the activity, but the company ignored the alerts. As a result, a District Court judge in Minnesota has given the go-ahead for banks to sue the retailer.

1 0

How Many Weeks Has “The Spectator” Been Publishing?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 16 Jan '15

16 Jan '15

Any other readers of “New Scientist” on this list? In the issue of 3rd Jan, the “Feedback” column tried to work out how many weeks various magazines that are still in existence had been publishing. The oldest they could find was “The Spectator”, which first came out on 6th July 1828. Unfortunately they were using Microsoft Excel to do their calculations, with predictably nonsensical results. :) Here’s what I came up with, using the good old “date” command, together with the arithmetic facilities built into bash. Taking it step by step: date +%s prints out the number of seconds since midnight 1st January 1970 to the present time. date -d "6-Jul-1828" +%s does the same for 6th July 1828. Of course this is a very small negative number. It computes and displays fine on my 64-bit system, but might overflow on 32-bit ones. echo $(($(date +%s) - $(date -d "6-Jul-1828" +%s))) prints out the subtraction of the above two numbers, giving the number of seconds from the founding of “The Spectator” to the present time. And finally, echo $(($(($(date +%s) - $(date -d "6-Jul-1828" +%s))) / $((86400 * 7)))) divides that number of seconds by the number of seconds in a week, giving the number of weeks from the founding of “The Spectator” to the present time. Which, by my reckoning, is 9732.

1 0

Run Your Choice Of Linux/Android On A Chromebook
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 15 Jan '15

15 Jan '15

Google has posted details <http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2390180/google-will-now-allow-andr…> of how to boot up your choice of Linux distro (including Android) on a Chromebook, as an alternative to its built-in ChromeOS. This is still extremely fiddly, risk-prone and not for the faint-of-heart.

1 0

Australia Bans Crypto Research
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 15 Jan '15

15 Jan '15

A law currently being phased in in Australia <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/14/australia_tries_to_ban_crypto_resea…> would seem to mean serious jail time for those trying to discuss certain advanced crypto technologies with those outside the country: “Was the government warned that it was making a mistake? Apparently so...” Other countries have exemptions for academic researchers. But why should they be treated differently from ordinary people, anyway?

1 0

Microsoft Offers Ubuntu Image with Docker Engine in Azure Marketplace
by Peter Reutemann 15 Jan '15

15 Jan '15

"Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella (seen here) made big headlines late last year when he sang the praises of open source and Linux. Reversing what was long perceived to be a hostile stance for open source, Nadella said that he "loves Linux" and also claimed that 20 percent of Microsoft's Azure cloud is already Linux-based. Furthermore, Microsoft seems to remain committed to providing support for popular Linux distributions in its public cloud offerings. Now, the company has announced Azure Marketplace's first Docker image: Docker on Ubuntu Server by Canonical and Microsoft Open Tech." -- source: http://ostatic.com/blog/microsoft-offers-ubuntu-image-with-docker-engine-in… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 3

Fun With Fontconfig
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 15 Jan '15

15 Jan '15

Fontconfig <http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/fontconfig/> is a set of command-line utilities, as well as an API for programs to use. It allows matching of fonts by names and other characteristics, rather than having to hard-code paths to font file names, or having to embed fonts into every document. For example, you format some text in a LibreOffice document. In the GUI, you will see a popup menu of all the fonts available on your system. Having chosen a font to use and saved your document, you send a copy to a friend. But they don’t have the same font installed, so LibreOffice uses Fontconfig to find the next best available font. As another example, Web pages commonly specify fonts by names like “serif” or even “Arial” (actually the name of a Microsoft-created clone of the original “Helvetica” font). While those who really care about typography and layout will use CSS font specifications to get the exact font they want from some server, the rest of us will muddle through with the common names, and expect the Web browser to find a suitable match on the user’s local machine. The command-line utilities allow you to observe this process in action. Given a reasonably vague font name, the fc-match command will show you the exact font file that will be chosen; thus, on my system: ldo(a)theon:~> fc-match -f "%{file}\n" arial /usr/share/fonts/truetype/liberation/LiberationSans-Regular.ttf (You will likely get a different result, depending on what fonts you have installed.) Sometimes the file names are not so explanatory: ldo(a)theon:~> fc-match -f "%{file}\n" palatino /usr/share/fonts/type1/gsfonts/p052003l.pfb in which case, the fc-query command will give you more info about what exactly is in that font file: ldo(a)theon:~> fc-query -f "%{family}\n" /usr/share/fonts/type1/gsfonts/p052003l.pfb URW Palladio L Or, you could have combined both steps into one: ldo(a)theon:~> fc-match -f "%{family} %{file}\n" palatino URW Palladio L /usr/share/fonts/type1/gsfonts/p052003l.pfb The list of what information item names you can put in those “%{...}” format specifiers is not mentioned in any of the man pages, but you can look in /usr/include/fontconfig/fontconfig.h, which is part of the libfontconfig1-dev package. Be warned, though: not all the items listed there will work with all fonts.

1 0

SystemD Gains New Networking Features
by Peter Reutemann 15 Jan '15

15 Jan '15

"A lot of development work is happening on systemd with just the recent couple of weeks seeing over 200 commits. With the most recent work that has landed, the networkd component has been improved with new features. Among the additions are IP forwarding and masquerading support (patch). This is the minimal support needed and these settings get turned on by default for container network interfaces. Also added was minimal firewall manipulation helpers for systemd's networkd. The firewall manipulation helpers (patch) are used for establishing NAT rules. This support in systemd is provided by libiptc, the library used for communicating with the Linux kernel's Netfilter and changing iptables firewall rulesets. Those wishing to follow systemd development on a daily basis and see what is actually happening under the hood, can keep tabs via the systemd Git viewer." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/01/14/2030259 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Samsung Launches Tizen Phone In India
by Peter Reutemann 15 Jan '15

15 Jan '15

"After plenty of speculation and an abort launch in Russia last year, Samsung has finally managed to release its first phone powered by the Tizen operating system. The Samsung Z1 is coming to India initially, where it is available to buy for 5,700 INR — that’s around $92 — from today. The Z1 is an affordable device, both in price and specs. It packs a four-inch WVGA PLS screen, and is powered by a 1.2 GHz dual-core processor and 768 MB RAM. There’s a 3.1-megapixel camera on the rear, and a limited VGA camera on the front. The phone runs version 2.3 of the Tizen operating system, and comes with 4GB of on-device storage which can be expanded by up to 64GB via a micro SD card. It supports dual SIMs, as is commonplace with devices in India." -- source: http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/15/01/14/2023220 Cheers, peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Make a Handheld Linux Terminal with a Raspberry Pi
by Peter Reutemann 14 Jan '15

14 Jan '15

"Robinson's build uses a Raspberry Pi A+, a USB hub, battery, touchscreen, charger, backlit keyboard, and a few other random parts. The whole thing is housed inside of two, 2.5-inch plastic hard drive enclosures that are connected with a piano hinge. You'll need some extra tools like a drill, a soldering iron, and some wire cutters, but otherwise Robinson's guide is pretty straight-forward. " -- source: http://lifehacker.com/make-a-handheld-linux-terminal-with-a-raspberry-pi-16… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

What Does Using A Supercomputer Look Like?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 14 Jan '15

14 Jan '15

This article <http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/feature/1649635/sgi-advances-linux-hpc> is from a few years ago now, but it stuck in my mind about how running Linux on a proper supercomputer is little different from how it works on your own PC. Standard commands like “lspci” and “more /proc/cpuinfo” work exactly the same, except their output does go on a bit longer when your machine has 4096 cores, and peripheral attachments to match. And all done with a stock-standard Linux kernel: Goh was keen to mention that whatever SGI does to the Linux kernel, it does after making sure that any changes it makes will be accepted by the Linux kernel maintainers. Apparently getting the number of cores limit increased to 4,096 was something that he and his colleagues had to personally convince Linux founder Linus Torvalds to accept. According to Goh, convincing Torvalds was "tougher than designing the hardware".

1 0

Wireless Keylogger Masquerades as USB Phone Charger
by Peter Reutemann 13 Jan '15

13 Jan '15

"Hardware hacker and security researcher Samy Kamkar has released a slick new device that masquerades as a typical USB wall charger but in fact houses a keylogger capable of recording keystrokes from nearby wireless keyboards. The device is known as KeySweeper, and Kamkar has released the source code and instructions for building one of your own. The components are inexpensive and easily available, and include an Arduino microcontroller, the charger itself, and a handful of other bits. When it's plugged into a wall socket, the KeySweeper will connect to a nearby Microsoft wireless keyboard and passively sniff, decrypt and record all of the keystrokes and send them back to the operator over the Web." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/15/01/13/183226 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Ask Slashdot: Linux Database GUI Application Development?
by Peter Reutemann 13 Jan '15

13 Jan '15

"I have been developing some applications to use in small businesses using Windows and SQL Server. I would like to move on and start doing the same thing in Linux. I have looked at several Frameworks/Databases/Development environments and I really don't know what is the best/simplest/fastest to learn approach. I use VS and C# mostly, although I could easily go back to C++. I found Qt and GTK+ are the most common frameworks, but they seem to lack controls that deal with datasets and stuff (sorry, spoiled by the .net form controls), but I also know that I could use Mono in order to make the jump. I would have no problem on moving to MySQL, as I have done quite a lot of work on that side, and I would like to stick with the traditional client server application, as I find it easier to maintain, and a whole lot more robust when it comes to user interaction (web apps for POS applications don't seem to be the right way to go in my view). Any suggestions/comments/recommendations?" -- source: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/15/01/13/1525235 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

The 4 Best New Linux Distributions to Watch in 2015
by Peter Reutemann 12 Jan '15

12 Jan '15

"There was a time when new Linux distributions popped up on what seemed like a daily basis. They came and went so fast, you might have completely missed their short lives. That’s not so much the case these days. Linux distributions arrive a bit less frequently and, when they do finally arrive, tend to have a bit more staying power. Why is that? My guess would be that the stable of standard distributions has become so strong, it’s hard for competition to stand up to the likes of Ubuntu, Arch, Mint, Fedora, SUSE, and Debian. That doesn’t mean, however, that new distributions don’t try to take down the mighty standard bearers. In fact, there are a few distributions that could give those kings and queens of Linux a run for their money this year. Which ones, you ask? Let’s take a look at what I believe will be the distributions to watch in 2015." 1. Evolve OS 2. SparkyLinux GameOver Edition 3. Korora 4. Ozon OS -- source: http://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/801303 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Eight Security Vulnerabilities Patched by OpenSSL Project
by Peter Reutemann 12 Jan '15

12 Jan '15

"The risks they pose range from denial-of-service attacks, changing the fingerprint certificate, client authorization without verification message for a DH (Diffie-Hellman) certificate, client accepting the use of a temporary RSA or a handshake that leads to removing the forward secrecy from the ciphersuite." -- source: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Eight-Security-Vulnerabilities-Patched-By-Op… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Ubuntu GNOME 15.04 Finally Gets GNOME 3.14
by Peter Reutemann 12 Jan '15

12 Jan '15

"Ubuntu GNOME 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) is just one of the many official Ubuntu flavors and its developers have been working to implement the latest version of GNOME 3.14. One of the problems faced by the Ubuntu GNOME developers is the fact that their project is not in sync with GNOME, which puts a little bit of pressure on them. For example, they have been criticized for not having the latest GNOME desktop in Ubuntu 14.10, even if that particular piece of software was released after the feature freeze." -- source: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Ubuntu-GNOME-15-04-Finally-Gets-GNOME-3-14-4… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Would You Rent Out Your Unused Drive Space?
by Peter Reutemann 12 Jan '15

12 Jan '15

"There is a new idea out there, proposed by Shawn Wilkinson, Tome Boshevski & Josh Brandof, that if you have unused disk space on your HD that you should rent it out. It is a great idea and the concept may have a whole range of implementations. The 3 guys describe their endeavor as: "Storj is a peer-to-peer cloud storage network implementing end-to-end encryption would allow users to transfer and share data without reliance on a third party data provider. The removal of central controls would eliminate most traditional data failures and outages, as well as significantly increasing security, privacy, and data control. A peer-to-peer network and basic encryption serve as a solution for most problems, but we must offer proper incentivisation for users to properly participate in this network." -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/15/01/11/181208 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 1

Crowdfunded Linux Voice Magazine Releases Second Issue CC-BY-SA
by Peter Reutemann 11 Jan '15

11 Jan '15

"As covered previously on Slashdot, Linux Voice crowdfunded its way to success in late 2013, showing how a small team can make things happen with a different business model (giving profits and content back to the community). Now, a few months after the magazine made issue 1 freely available, they've released issue 2 under the Creative Commons for everyone to share and modify. If you've ever fancied making your own Raspberry Pi-powered arcade machine, there's a full guide in the second issue." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/01/11/0311258 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Sloppy File Permissions Make Red Star OS Vulnerable
by Peter Reutemann 11 Jan '15

11 Jan '15

"Red Star OS Desktop 3.0, the official Linux distro of North Korea, which recently found its way onto torrents and various download sites in form of an ISO image, is interesting for a number of reasons, including its attempt to look like commercial operating systems (currently OS X, earlier versions mimicked the Windows GUI). Hackers are also poking Red Star for security vulnerabilities. An pseudonymous researcher noted in a post to the Open Source Software Security (oss-sec) mailing list, that the OS has one significant security hole: Red Star 3.0 ships with a world-writeable udev rule file /etc/udev/rules.d/85-hplj10xx.rules (originally designed for HP LaserJet 1000 series printers) which can be modified to include RUN+= arguments executing arbitrary commands as root by Udev. In the post he also mentions how the older Red Star 2.0 shipped with another schoolboy mistake: /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit was world-writeable." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/01/11/032207 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Rust Programming Language Reaches 1.0 Alpha
by Peter Reutemann 11 Jan '15

11 Jan '15

"Rust, a new a systems programming language with a focus on safety, performance and concurrency, has released the 1.0 alpha version of the language. This means that the language and core libraries are feature-complete for the 1.0 release. In practical terms, this means that the rate of change experienced by early adopters will slow down dramatically and major breaking changes should be very rare (during the alpha cycle some major changes may still occur if considered necessary). The language will stabilize further when the beta stage is reached (planned for six weeks from now)." -- source: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/15/01/11/0254252 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

USB 3.1 & Type C Connectors
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 11 Jan '15

11 Jan '15

At the recent CES exhibition in Las Vegas, there was being shown a lot of new hardware taking advantage of the new USB specs <http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/01/usb-3-1-and-type-c-the-only-stuff-at…>. There are 4 quite separate parts to these specs: * the USB 3.1 spec, supporting theoretical data rates up to 10Gb/s * the USB Power Delivery spec, which can supply up to 100W to connected devices * the new “Type C” connector, which has 4 separate physical data channels on it, including one for backward compatibility with USB 2.0 * USB Alternate Mode, which can use some or all of the Type C channels to communicate non-USB data (e.g. DisplayPort). In principle, it is neat to be able to replace all the different kinds of ports on a machine with ports all of a single kind. However, the article suggests that Alternate Mode could be a problem: it seems inevitable that different ports on a machine will be restricted to different uses for the Alternate Mode function. Which means, instead of the current situation where a monitor connector is different from a USB connector so you cannot plug a cable for one into the other, you will have the situation where all the connectors and cables _are_ the same, but if you plug the wrong device into the wrong port, it just won’t work. I remember in an e-mail exchange with Stuart Cheshire a few years ago (he was the mastermind behind the Zeroconf initiative, which Apple implemented as “Rendezvous”—later renamed “Bonjour”—and Linux users know as the “Avahi” packages), he said that there should indeed be just a single type of port on a computer, all speaking the same protocol. And that protocol should be TCP/IP. After all, why shouldn’t you run full TCP/IP between your keyboard, mouse and PC? The silicon it takes to implement the network stack shouldn’t amount to much of a cost these days. Of course, it should be IPv6, not IPv4...

2 2

NZ Postcodes Database
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 10 Jan '15

10 Jan '15

If you didn’t know about it, this guy Nick Le Mouton has put together a pretty extensive list of postcode information for New Zealand, available here <https://www.noodles.net.nz/2007/09/14/new-zealand-postcode-database-v2/>. There are details on 43457 streets in 1260 suburbs with latitude/longitude positions, and separate tables of rural delivery addresses and P O boxes/private bag locations.

1 0

Got an Asus router? Someone on your network can probably hack it
by Peter Reutemann 09 Jan '15

09 Jan '15

'If you're running an Asus wireless router, chances are good that someone inside your network can take full administrative control of it thanks to a currently unpatched vulnerability in virtually all versions of the firmware, a security researcher said. While the vulnerability isn't as serious as those that allowhackers on the Internet at large to compromise the devices, it's nonetheless concerning. People with administrative control can reroute everyone connected to malicious websites and possibly install alternate or even malicious firmware updates. "I trust people that join my network to some degree, but I don't want them to be able to reconfigure the router," Joshua Drake, research director at Accuvant and the person whobrought the vulnerability to light Thursday, told Ars. "I can't prevent them without this getting fixed (short of the workaround)."' -- source: http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/01/got-an-asus-router-someone-on-your-… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

meetings
by Peter Reutemann 08 Jan '15

08 Jan '15

Hi everyone We're currently in the process of sorting out the dates for the monthly meetings this year. Ian S. suggested to not bother moving the meeting forward by a week if it falls on a Monday that is a public holiday, as we've done in the past. Why this change? The advantage would be that there is no confusion over *when* the meeting happens, it's always the 4th Monday. However, the downside could be that people are away or have no public transport to get to the meeting. What are your thoughts? Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

4 13

Intel’s “Compute Stick” Computer In An HDMI Dongle
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 08 Jan '15

08 Jan '15

<http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/01/intels-compute-stick-is-a-full-windo…> Available with either Windows 8.1, 2GiB RAM and 32GiB of flash storage, or Linux, 1GiB RAM and 8GiB flash. Is there some kind of deal with Microsoft to never offer identical hardware configurations with your choice of Windows or Linux?

1 0

Extra Leap Second To Be Added To Clocks On June 30
by Peter Reutemann 08 Jan '15

08 Jan '15

"On June 30 this year, the day will last a tad longer — one second longer, to be precise — as a leap second is to be added to clocks worldwide. The time UTC will go from 23:59:59 to 23:59:60 in order to cope with Earth's rotation slowing down a bit. So, what do you intend to do during that extra second added to that day? Well, you may want to fix your systems. The last time a leap second was added, in 2012, a number of websites, Java and even Linux experienced some troubles. Leap seconds can be disruptive to precision systems used for navigation and communication. Is there a better way of dealing with the need for leap seconds?" -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/01/06/1821234 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

4 8

ODFPY Now Supports Python 3
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 07 Jan '15

07 Jan '15

ODFPY is a very handy set of tools for manipulating Open Document Format files. Besides its own command-line tools, it also offers a Python class library that you can call from your own programs. I have been using this in my own billing system for many years to generate invoices for clients. This used to kept in a SVN repo on a somewhat slow server at <https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/software/odfpy/home>. But now they have moved to GitHub at <https://github.com/eea/odfpy>, and I see the current library works with Python 3 as well. This pleases me no end, as I have been moving many of my older projects across from Python 2.

2 3

Tips For Securing Your Secure Shell
by Peter Reutemann 07 Jan '15

07 Jan '15

"As you may have heard, the NSA has had some success in cracking Secure Shell (SSH) connections. To respond to these risks, a guide written by Stribika tries to help you make your shell as robust as possible. The two main concepts are to make the crypto harder and make stealing keys impossible. So prepare a cup of coffee and read the tutorial carefully to see what could be improved in your configuration. Stribika gives also some extra security tips: don't install what you don't need (as any code line can introduce a bug), use the kind of open source code that has actually been reviewed, keep your software up to date, and use exploit mitigation technologies." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/15/01/07/161227 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 1

Browsing in privacy mode? Super Cookies can track you anyway
by Peter Reutemann 07 Jan '15

07 Jan '15

"For years, Chrome, Firefox, and virtually all other browsers have offered a setting that doesn't save or refer to website cookies, browsing history, or temporary files. Privacy-conscious people rely on it to help cloak their identities and prevent websites from tracking their previous steps. Now, a software consultant has devised a simple way websites can in many cases bypass these privacy modes unless users take special care." -- source: http://goo.gl/jnkuaA Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

I Just Want The Root Filesystem!
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 06 Jan '15

06 Jan '15

Sometimes you want to perform some operation on the volume mounted at /, but not in any volume mounted under it. Some commands (e.g. “find” and “rsync”) provide options to avoid recursing into lower filesystems, but others (e.g. “du”) don’t make it so easy. A simple technique for getting around this is to use a bind mount. For example, after mount --bind / /mnt the /mnt directory shows you a view of the same filesystem as /, except you will notice that directories like /mnt/proc and (assuming your user files are on a separate volume) /mnt/home are empty. Or, to be more precise, those directories are now showing their original contents, unobscured by any other filesystem mounted on top of them. An example use of this is, the root partition on a machine might be filling up, and I want to know why. To narrow down which directories are using the space, I try to do du -ks /*/ but this wants to scan /home/ as well, which on this machine is a separate volume and therefore just adds greatly to the time taken without telling me anything relevant. But with the bind mount, I can do du -ks /mnt/*/ and it will only check the root volume. Another use of this is, as I mentioned above, you can see what is originally in the directories being used for mounting other filesystems. For example, one machine might normally have a network volume from another server mounted on a directory into which it regularly saves files. For some reason the network link might go down, and during that interval it blithely continues saving files into the local directory where the network volume was mounted, rather than the network volume itself. After the network mount is restored, you will probably want to check what files were accidentally saved locally, and move them onto the network volume where they belong. A bind mount lets you do this without disrupting access to the network volume. Then when you are finished with the bind mount, you can get rid of it in the usual way: umount /mnt

1 0

Life With Debian Unstable
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 06 Jan '15

06 Jan '15

Doing an “apt-get dist-upgrade -s” on a Debian Unstable system is currently telling me it wants to remove most of KDE. This even though I tried an apt-get update on two different repo mirrors. I think I’ll leave it, and check again in a few days...

1 0

Browsing The Linux Kernel Sources Online
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 06 Jan '15

06 Jan '15

You may remember at one of my presentations I was trying to bring up a website that allowed browsing and linking to the Linux kernel sources online, complete with cross references and search. However, that original site seems to have long gone. The good news is, another site <http://lxr.free-electrons.com/> is offering exactly the same thing, and I think they’re using the same software (developed by people at Oslo University in Norway) as well.

1 0

AMD Catalyst Linux Driver Catching Up To and Beating Windows
by Peter Reutemann 03 Jan '15

03 Jan '15

'Along with the open-source AMD Linux driver having a great 2014, the AMD Catalyst proprietary driver for Linux has also improved a lot. Beyond the open-source Radeon Gallium3D driver closing in on Catalyst, the latest Phoronix end-of-year tests show the AMD Catalyst Linux driver is beating Catalyst on Windows for some OpenGL benchmarks. The proprietary driver tests were done with the new Catalyst "OMEGA" driver. Is AMD beginning to lead real Linux driver innovations or is OpenGL on Windows just struggling?' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/01/03/1426208 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Red Hat Engineer Improves Math Performance of Glibc
by Peter Reutemann 03 Jan '15

03 Jan '15

"Siddhesh Poyarekar from Red Hat has taken a professional look into mathematical functions found in Glibc (the GNU C library). He has been able to provide an 8-times performance improvement to slowest path of pow() function. Other transcendentals got similar improvements since the fixes were mostly in the generic multiple precision code. These improvements already went into glibc-2.18 upstream. Siddhesh believes that a lot of the low hanging fruit has now been picked, but that this is definitely not the end of the road for improvements in the multiple precision performance. There are other more complicated improvements, like the limitation of worst case precision for exp() andlog() functions, based on the results of the paper Worst Cases for Correct Rounding of the Elementary Functions in Double Precision (PDF). One needs to prove that those results apply to the Glibc multiple precision bits." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/01/02/2025232 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Bots Scanning GitHub To Steal Amazon EC2 Keys
by Peter Reutemann 03 Jan '15

03 Jan '15

'As one developer found out, posting your Amazon keys to GitHub on accident can be a costly mistake if they are not revoked immediately. "When I woke up the next morning, I had four emails from Amazon AWS and a missed phone call from Amazon AWS. Something about 140 servers running on my AWS account. What? How? I only had S3 keys on my GitHub and they where gone within 5 minutes! Turns out through the S3 API you can actually spin up EC2 instances, and my key had been spotted by a bot that continually searches GitHub for API keys. Amazon AWS customer support informed me this happens a lot recently; hackers have created an algorithm that searches GitHub 24 hours per day for API keys. Once it finds one it spins up max instances of EC2 servers to farm itself bitcoins."' -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/15/01/02/2342228 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

The Case Against "Non-Commercial" Restrictions
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 21 Dec '14

21 Dec '14

The Creative Commons <http://creativecommons.org/> family of copyright licences has become very popular for artworks, documentation and all kinds of creative works generally. But there are different kinds of Creative Commons (CC) licences, with additional qualifications, namely “BY” (attribution required, i.e. give credit to the creators), “SA” (sharealike or “copyleft”, i.e. if you redistribute, do it on the same terms it was given to you), “NC” (non-commercial use only) and “ND” (no derivatives--i.e. modified versions--allowed), and certain combinations thereof. These qualifications divide the CC licences into two categories: Free and non-Free. The non-Free CC licences are those including NC or ND or both, while the Free ones are the rest: * CC0 -- effectively public domain * CC-BY -- distribution with attribution required * CC-BY-SA -- sharealike distribution with attribution If you want to promote sharing and contribute to Free Culture, stick to these three licences. In particular, here <http://freedomdefined.org/Licenses/NC> is a detailed discussion of the NC restriction, and why it is such a bad idea. Most people who stick an NC licence on their work think in terms of preventing big commercial outfits from “ripping them off”. However, this licensing restriction may not achieve what you think it does, particularly since it is often unclear what constitutes “commercial” use anyway.

1 0

Does Anybody Like GNU Info?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 21 Dec '14

21 Dec '14

Anybody who has looked at Linux documentation on the command line would know about man pages, and quite likely about GNU info as well. The GNU project invented the “info” system as a (supposedly) superior replacement for man pages, but for some reason it never became that popular. I personally find it quite annoying to use, and it’s clear I’m not the only one. The GNU info system requires documentation to be written in Texinfo format, from which it can be generated in other formats displayable with the info command as well as other means. Now at least one GNU project, namely Emacs <http://lwn.net/Articles/625072/>, is contemplating moving away from maintaining its documentation in Texinfo format. The suggestion is to use AsciiDoc instead. This is one of a raft of newer, simpler markup formats that are designed so that even the source can be read and understood by ordinary humans, since the appearance of many of the markup sequences already gives some indication of their function in the layout. You may also have heard of Markdown (GitHub uses a flavour of this) and reStructedText (understood by Docutils/Sphinx, the standard toolset for Python documentation)--these are variations on the same idea. The LWN article has an error in it, though: the AsciiDoc package itself is not constrained to only generating HTML, it can output (shudder) DocBook SGML as well. And then there is another piece of software called Pandoc, which can convert between a whole range of different formats, including AsciiDoc.

1 0

Critical Git Security Vulnerability Announced
by Peter Reutemann 19 Dec '14

19 Dec '14

'Github has announced a security vulnerability and has encourage users to update their Git clients as soon as possible. The blog post reads in part: "A critical Git security vulnerability has been announced today, affecting all versions of the official Git client and all related software that interacts with Git repositories, including GitHub for Windows and GitHub for Mac. Because this is a client-side only vulnerability, github.com and GitHub Enterprise are not directly affected. The vulnerability concerns Git and Git-compatible clients that access Git repositories in a case-insensitive or case-normalizing filesystem. An attacker can craft a malicious Git tree that will cause Git to overwrite its own .git/config file when cloning or checking out a repository, leading to arbitrary command execution in the client machine. Git clients running on OS X (HFS+) or any version of Microsoft Windows (NTFS, FAT) are exploitable through this vulnerability. Linux clients are not affected if they run in a case-sensitive filesystem....Updated versions of GitHub for Windows and GitHub for Mac are available for immediate download, and both contain the security fix on the Desktop application itself and on the bundled version of the Git command-line client."' -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/12/18/2346238 Cheers, Petere -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Grinch Vulnerability Could Put a Hole In Your Linux Stocking
by Peter Reutemann 18 Dec '14

18 Dec '14

"In a blog post Tuesday, security service provider Alert Logic warned of a Linux vulnerability, named grinch after the well-known Dr. Seuss character, that could provide attackers with unfettered root access. The fundamental flaw resides in the Linux authorization system, which can inadvertently allow privilege escalation, granting a user full administrative access. Alert Logic warned that Grinch could be as severe as the Shellshock flaw that roiled the Internet in September." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/12/18/2022245 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Manufacturer's Backdoor Found On Popular Chinese Android Smartphone
by Peter Reutemann 17 Dec '14

17 Dec '14

"A popular Android smartphone sold primarily in China and Taiwan but also available worldwide, contains a backdoor from the manufacturer that is being used to push pop-up advertisements and install apps without users' consent. The Coolpad devices, however, are ripe for much more malicious abuse, researchers at Palo Alto Networks said today, especially after the discovery of a vulnerability in the backend management interface that exposed the backdoor's control system. Ryan Olson, intelligence director at Palo Alto, said the CoolReaper backdoor not only connects to a number of command and control servers, but is also capable of downloading, installing and activating any Android application without the user's permission. It also sends phony over-the-air updates to devices that instead install applications without notifying the user. The backdoor can also be used to dial phone numbers, send SMS and MMS messages, and upload device and usage information to Coolpad." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/12/17/1815250 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Python Moving To Git
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 16 Dec '14

16 Dec '14

About 5½ years ago, the decision was made <http://lwn.net/Articles/326201/> to use Mercurial as the preferred version-control system (VCS) for Python development. It was already clear at the time that there was a strong preference among developers for Git instead of Mercurial. And since that time, the dominance of Git has only grown. It appears that Mercurial is still the official VCS for at least the CPython core, but the Python project already has a GitHub area <https://github.com/python> which includes a “Semi-official read-only mirror of the CPython Mercurial repository”. I would suspect that a lot of their contributors are already doing their work in Git, and communicating with the upstream Mercurial repo using an addon like git-remote-hg, which makes it look just like a native Git repo. Now there is a plan to migrate at least some supporting repositories <http://lwn.net/Articles/624101/> <http://lwn.net/Articles/623905/> officially to Git, and also use GitHub to host these instead of at python.org. These stats from the PEP are quite interesting: The Open Hub (Previously Ohloh) statistics ... show that currently 37% of the repositories Open Hub is indexing is using git which is second only to SVN (which has 48%) while Mercurial has just 2% of the indexed repositories (beating only bazaar which has 1%). In addit[i]on to the Open Hub statistics a look at the top 100 projects on PyPI (ordered by total download counts) shows us that within the Python space itself there is a majority of projects using git: === ========= ========== ====== === ==== Git Mercurial Subversion Bazaar CVS None === ========= ========== ====== === ==== 62 22 7 4 1 1 === ========= ========== ====== === ==== Interesting that Subversion (aka SVN, an older, centralized, much less flexible version-control system) manages to handily beat Mercurial in non-Python-specific projects...

1 0

Raspberry Pi In Space
by Peter Reutemann 14 Dec '14

14 Dec '14

"When British astronaut Tim Peake heads off to the International Space Station in November 2015 he will be accompanied on his 6-month mission by two augmented Rapsberry Pis, aka Astro Pis. The Astro Pi board is a Raspberry Pi HAT and provides gyroscope, accelerometer and magnetometer and sensors for temperature, barometric pressure and humidity. It also has a real time clock, LED display and some push buttons — it sounds like the sort of addon that we could do with down here on earth as well! It will also be equipped with both camera module and an infra-red camera. UK school pupils are being challenged to write Rapberry Pi apps or experiments to run in space. During his mission Tim Peake will deploy the Astro Pis, upload the winning code whilst in orbit, set them running, collect the data generated and then download it to be distributed to the winning teams." -- source: http://build.slashdot.org/story/14/12/14/1827252 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Linux Mint 17.1 review—less change is good change
by Peter Reutemann 10 Dec '14

10 Dec '14

"This marks the first time Linux Mint has not used the newest version of Ubuntu for a release. But if you paid attention to the curious approach of Linux Mint 17.0, you'll know that was the plan all along. These days, Mint will not be changing its Ubuntu base again until the next LTS release—Ubuntu 16.04—arrives in 2016. And at first glance, it might seem like a bad thing. After all, Mint is missing out on whatever new stuff is in Ubuntu 14.10 (in this case it's not much, but 15.04 will have plenty of changes)." -- source: http://goo.gl/zaWPTV Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

$35 Quad-core Hacker SBC Offers Raspberry Pi-like Size and I/O
by Peter Reutemann 10 Dec '14

10 Dec '14

"Hardkernel has again set its sites on the Raspberry Pi with a new $35 Odroid-C1 hacker board that matches the RPI's board size and offers a mostly similar 40-pin expansion connector. Unlike the previous $30 Odroid-W that used the same Broadcom BCM2835 SoC as the Pi and was soon cancelled due to lack of BCM2835 SoC availability, the Odroid-C1 is based on a quad-core 1.5GHz Cortex-A5 based Amlogic S805 SoC, which integrates the Mali-400 GPU found on Allwinner's popular SoCs. Touted advantages over the similarly priced Raspberry Pi Model B+ include a substantially more powerful processor, double the RAM, an extra USB2.0 port that adds Device/OTG, and GbE rather than 10/100 Ethernet." -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/12/10/1334251 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Ubuntu Gets Container-Friendly "Snappy" Core
by Peter Reutemann 10 Dec '14

10 Dec '14

'Canonical just announced Ubuntu Core, which uses containers instead of packages. It's the biggest Ubuntu shakeup for 20 years, says Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth, and is based on a tiny core, which will run Docker and other container technology better, quicker and with greater security than other Linux distros. Delivered as alpha code today, it's going to become a supported product, designed to compete with both CoreOS and Red Hat Atomic, the two leading container-friendly Linux approaches. Shuttleworth says it came about because Canonical found it had solved the "cloud" problems (delivering and updating apps and keeping security) by accident — in its work on a mobile version of Ubuntu.' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/12/09/2225210 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Unity 8 Will Bring 'Pure' Linux Experience To Mobile Devices
by Peter Reutemann 09 Dec '14

09 Dec '14

'If you have tried the live images of Ubuntu Next you may worry that Canonical is trying to do a Windows 8 with Ubuntu. That's not true. There is no need to worry though: A great deal of work is happening at a deeper level that may not have yet surfaced. It will surface eventually, however. Will Cooke of Canonical clarifies: "We are trying to make it clear that Unity 8 desktop will look like the traditional desktop and will behave like a normal desktop. We are very aware that our users expect a normal desktop there." Unity 8 will offer the traditional desktop interface when it detects a desktop. The same OS will switch to a touch-based interface on touch-based devices such as tablets and smartphones.' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/12/09/1516240 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 1

Just-Announced X.Org Security Flaws Affect Code Dating Back To 1987
by Peter Reutemann 09 Dec '14

09 Dec '14

'Some of the worst X.Org security issues were just publicized in an X.Org security advisory. The vulnerabilities deal with protocol handling issues and led to 12 CVEs published and code dating back to 1987 is affected within X11. Fixes for the X Server are temporarily available via this Git repository.' -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/12/09/1747212 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Fedora 21 Released
by Peter Reutemann 09 Dec '14

09 Dec '14

'The Fedora Project has announced the release of Fedora 21. "As part of the Fedora.next initiative, Fedora 21 comes in three flavors: Cloud, Server, and Workstation. Cloud is now a top-level deliverable for Fedora 21, and includes images for use in private cloud environments like OpenStack, as well as AMIs for use on Amazon, and a new "Atomic" image streamlined for running Docker containers. The Fedora Server flavor is a common base platform that is meant to run featured application stacks, which are produced, tested, and distributed by the Server Working Group. The Fedora Workstation is a new take on desktop development from the Fedora community. Our goal is to pick the best components, and integrate and polish them. This work results in a more polished and targeted system than you've previously seen from the Fedora desktop." Here are screenshots for Fedora 21: GNOME, KDE, Xfce, LXDE, and MATE.' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/12/09/2059252 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Google Releases Android Studio 1.0, the First Stable Version of Its IDE
by Peter Reutemann 09 Dec '14

09 Dec '14

"After two years of development, Google today released Android Studio 1.0, the first stable version of its Integrated Development Environment (IDE) aimed solely at Android developers. You can download the tool right now for Windows, Mac, and Linux from the Android Developer site. Google first announced Android Studio, built on the popular IntelliJ IDEA Java IDE, at its I/O Developer conference in May 2013. The company's pitch was very simple: this is the official Android IDE." -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/12/08/2129255 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 2

POODLE Flaw Returns, This Time Hitting TLS Protocol
by Peter Reutemann 09 Dec '14

09 Dec '14

"If you patched your sites against a serious SSL flaw discovered in October you will have to check them again. Researchers have discovered that the POODLE vulnerability also affects implementations of the newer TLS protocol. The POODLE (Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption) vulnerability allows attackers who manage to intercept traffic between a user's browser and an HTTPS website to decrypt sensitive information, like the user's authentication cookies." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/12/09/0423210 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Blockly Versus Scratch
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 09 Dec '14

09 Dec '14

You may have heard of MIT Scratch <http://scratch.mit.edu/>, a visual programming language oriented to teaching children programming. Initially I was put off by the non-Free licence (you couldn’t redistribute modified code), but that seems to have gone now, and the source is available <https://github.com/LLK/Scratch_1.4> under completely Free licences, the core being GPLv2, plugins under an MIT licence, and support materials/samples under CC-BY-SA. Google has its own alternative along the same lines, but Web-based, called Blockly <https://code.google.com/p/blockly/>. And Barack Obama has successfully used it to become the first US president to write a computer program <http://www.engadget.com/2014/12/08/barack-obama-just-became-the-first-us-pr…>.

1 0

Linux 3.18 Released, Lockup Bug Still Present
by Peter Reutemann 08 Dec '14

08 Dec '14

"As anticipated, Linus Torvalds officially released Linux 3.18. The new version is now out there, though that nasty lockup issue has still yet to be resolved. Dave Jones is nearing the end of dissecting the issue, but since it also affects Linux 3.17 and not too many people seem to get hit by the lockups, Linus Torvalds decided to go ahead and do the 3.18 release on schedule. Linus was also concerned that dragging out the 3.18 release would then complicate the Linux 3.19 merge window due to the holidays later this month. Now the Linux 3.19 kernel merge window is open for two weeks of exciting changes." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/12/08/2020251 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Powerful, highly stealthy Linux trojan may have infected victims for years
by Peter Reutemann 08 Dec '14

08 Dec '14

"Researchers have uncovered an extremely stealthy trojan for Linux systems that attackers have been using to siphon sensitive data from governments and pharmaceutical companies around the world." -- source: http://goo.gl/JG2Jh3 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Fwd: [NZOSS-Openchat] LCA 2015 Keynote Session - Q&A with Linus Torvalds
by Peter Reutemann 08 Dec '14

08 Dec '14

Excuse the cross posting, but here is an amazing incentive to get to LCA 2015 in Auckland this year. - Way, way back in 2003, at LCA in Perth, there was a Q&A session with Linus Torvalds, Bdale Garbee and Andrew Tridgell. It’s time for a follow-up so at LCA 2015 in Auckland it’s going to happen! The Q&A session is scheduled for 09:00 am Friday, 16 January 2015 and will be moderated by Bdale Garbee with the assistance of Andrew Tridgell. Helsinki-born Linus, who simply calls himself a Software Engineer, was the principle force behind developing the Linux kernel. It all started from an initial usenet posting in August of 1991 and made what has proved to be a historic debut with the release of version 1.0 on March 14 1994. In June 2003 Linus started working for Open Source Development Labs. After merging with the Free Standards Group it became the Linux Foundation where Linus continues to work as the project’s coordinator and is Chief Architect of the Linux kernel. In 2005, after criticism for for his use and alleged advocacy of BitKeeper, proprietary software for version-control in the Linux kernel, Linus wrote a free-software replacement for BitKeeper called GIT which is now the most widely-adopted version-control system for software development. Linus is an accomplished diver and in 2011, frustrated with the lack of decent divelog software on Linux, he developed Subsurface (http://subsurface-divelog.org/) an Open Source divelog program that runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. We know that there are a number of beautiful diving spots not too far from Auckland... The LCA 2015 Auckland team would like to thank the Linux Foundation for their assistance in making this possible. -------------------------------------------- Steven Ellis - Technical Director OpenMedia Limited - The Home of myPVR email - steven(a)openmedia.co.nz _______________________________________________ Openchat mailing list Openchat(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz http://lists.nzoss.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/openchat -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

moving the mailing list - recap
by Peter Reutemann 02 Dec '14

02 Dec '14

Hi everyone >From what I can gather, the main reason for moving the mailing list (aggressive spam filtering), no longer seems to be an issue. Therefore, I think that we can end the discussion and leave things just as they are. Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 1

mailing list difficulties
by Ian Young 29 Nov '14

29 Nov '14

Greets, On the last occasion I tried to send a message to the list, it was impounded as there was a suspect word or somesuch in the subject line. Robo was wrong, utterly nonsensical. I think there was some reference in the rejection blurb to (possibly non-existent?) moderation. The message never appeared afaik. Never got around to following it up, but it was a nuisance. Subsequently I stopped bothering to post. And as I press Send now, I find myself wondering whether this message will ever appear. ~ IsY

3 2

Computer History
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 29 Nov '14

29 Nov '14

Anybody interested in talks by and about computer pioneers should look at this YouTube channel <http://www.youtube.com/user/ComputerHistory>, run by the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. All kinds of fun stuff, from the experience of building a working version of Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine No 2 (designed in the 1830s), to the 30th anniversary of the Cray-1 supercomputer, to an interview with Ward Cunningham, inventor of the wiki. And if you want to see how far computer graphics has come, try this one: <http://www.youtube.com/user/VintageCG/>. Some old classics there. But boy, have we come a long way since characters made out of spheres and cylinders...

1 0

Shall We Talk About Moving This List To Another Server?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 28 Nov '14

28 Nov '14

As I recall, the suggestion made last night was to put this list on Google Groups.

11 15

Bitcoin uses the Bitcoin Core open source software
by Ian Stewart 28 Nov '14

28 Nov '14

Hi wlug folks, FYI: The latest release of Bitcoin is currently version 0.9.3 which was released 27 September 2014. You can download a suitable binary version of the Bitcoin Core from: https://www.bitcoin.org/en/download It is open source code and you can obtain it from: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin cheers, Ian. PS: This e-mail is a test to see if the spam filtering software blocks it being distributed to the wlug email list. From my experience about a year ago, I found that mails that contained the word "bitcoin" would be blocked.

1 1

DragonFly BSD 4.0 Released
by Peter Reutemann 26 Nov '14

26 Nov '14

"From the release page: Version 4 of DragonFly brings Haswell graphics support, 3D acceleration, and improved performance in extremely high-traffic networks. DragonFly now supports up to 256 CPUs, Haswell graphics (i915), concurrent pf operation, and a variety of other devices." -- source: http://bsd.slashdot.org/story/14/11/26/184238 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

AGM tomorrow
by Peter Reutemann 24 Nov '14

24 Nov '14

Hi everyone This year's AGM will take place tomorrow on November 24th, usual place at uni, MS4.G.02. Agenda: - President's Report - Treasurer's Report - Election of 2015 Committee - Consumption of pizza http://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/214504372/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 3

Crowdfunding project promises a “laptop that respects essential freedoms”
by Peter Reutemann 22 Nov '14

22 Nov '14

'What price can you put on freedom? If you’re talking about software freedom, a new San Francisco-based computer company prices it at $1,949 and up. Purism has turned to the crowdfunding site Crowd Supply to fund and launch its first-ever product—a laptop that's as open source friendly as it is technically feasible. Advertised as a "Free and Open Source laptop that respects your essential freedoms," Purism’s Librem 15 laptop, now in prototype and ready for manufacture, is designed to run entirely with open source software, requiring no proprietary drivers. The only proprietary code on the laptop resides in its Intel firmware. ... It will ship with Purism’s own distribution of GNU/Linux based on Trisquel—an Ubuntu derivative that only includes free software. Purism will ship the Librem with Tor installed and turned on by default.' -- source: http://goo.gl/8COuog Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Using a password manager on Android? It may be wide open to sniffing attacks
by Peter Reutemann 22 Nov '14

22 Nov '14

'In early 2013, researchers exposed some unsettling risks stemming from Android-based password managers. In a paper titled "Hey, You, Get Off of My Clipboard," they documented how passwords managed by 21 of the most popular such apps could be accessed by any other app on an Android device, even those with extremely low-level privileges. They suggested several measures to help fix the problem. Almost two years later, the threat remains viable in at least some, if not all, of the apps originally analyzed. An app recently made available on Google Play, for instance, has no trouble divining the passwords managed by LastPass, one of the leading managers on the market, as well as the lesser-known KeePassDroid. With additional work, it's likely that the proof-of-concept ClipCaster app would work seamlessly against many other managers, too, said Xiao Bao Clark, the Australia-based programmer who developed it. While ClipCaster does nothing more than display the plaintext of passwords that LastPass and KeePassDroid funnel through Android handsets, a malicious app with only network privileges could send the credentials to an attacker without the user having any idea what was happening.' -- source: http://goo.gl/CsjkC8 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

AGM next week
by Peter Reutemann 21 Nov '14

21 Nov '14

Hi everyone This year's AGM will take place next week on November 24th, usual place at uni, MS4.G.02. Agenda: - President's Report - Treasurer's Report - Election of 2015 Committee - Consumption of pizza http://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/214504372/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 1

A Brilliant Mind: SUSE's Kernel Guru Speaks
by Peter Reutemann 20 Nov '14

20 Nov '14

"The man who in every sense sits at the nerve centre of SUSE Linux has no airs about him. At 38, Vojtch Pavlík is disarmingly frank and often seems a bit embarrassed to talk about his achievements, which are many and varied. He is every bit a nerd, but can be candid, though precise. As director of SUSE Labs, it would be no exaggeration to call him the company's kernel guru. Both recent innovations that have come from SUSE — patching a live kernel, technology called kGraft, and creating a means for booting openSUSE on machines locked down with secure boot, have been his babies." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/11/20/203259 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

LFCS: How to use GNU ‘sed’ Command to Create, Edit, and Manipulate files in Linux – Part 1
by Peter Reutemann 20 Nov '14

20 Nov '14

"The Linux Foundation announced the LFCS (Linux Foundation Certified Sysadmin) certification, a new program that aims at helping individuals all over the world to get certified in basic to intermediate system administration tasks for Linux systems. This includes supporting running systems and services, along with first-hand troubleshooting and analysis, and smart decision-making to escalate issues to engineering teams. Part 1: How to use GNU ‘sed’ Command to Create, Edit, and Manipulate files in Linux" -- source: http://www.tecmint.com/sed-command-to-create-edit-and-manipulate-files-in-l… Parts 2-9 are listed in that article as well. Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Jolla Crowdfunds Its First Tablet
by Peter Reutemann 19 Nov '14

19 Nov '14

'Jolla is another rising star in the tech world, having recently expanded its smartphone sales into more countries across the globe. Jolla's Sailfish OS is based on the Linux kernel, and considered by many to be a direct successor to Nokia and Intel's MeeGo and the N9 mobile phone. Its software is based on the open-sourced components of MeeGo. Now, the company is ready to start production of its first tablet. They're crowdfunding it, and they blew past their $380,000 goal in about two hours. The tablet has a 7.9-inch screen with a resolution of 2048 x 1536. It's powered by a 1.8GHz 64-bit quad-core Intel processor, comes with a 32GB of storage, an SD card slot, 2GB of RAM and a 5MP rear camera. Judging by its size, we can see this will rival the iPad Mini the new Nokia N1. While there aren't too many Sailfish-specific apps available, as with the phone, Jolla's tablet will be compatible with Android apps.' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/11/19/1343250 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Launching 2015: a New Certificate Authority To Encrypt the Entire Web
by Peter Reutemann 18 Nov '14

18 Nov '14

"Today EFF, Mozilla, Cisco, and Akamai announced a forthcoming project called Let's Encrypt. Let's Encrypt will be a certificate authority that issues free certificates to any website, using automated protocols (demo video here). Launching in summer 2015, we believe this will be the missing piece that deprecates the woefully insecure HTTP protocol in favor of HTTPS." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/11/18/1830229 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Crowdfunded Linux Voice Magazine Releases First Issue CC-BY-SA
by Peter Reutemann 18 Nov '14

18 Nov '14

"Linux Voice, the crowdfunded GNU/Linux magazine that Slashdot has covered previously, had two goals at its launch: to give 50% of its profits back to the community after one year, and release each issue's contents under the Creative Commons after nine months. Well, it's been nine months since issue 1, so the whole thing is now online and free to share. Readers and supporters have also made audio versions of articles, for listening to on the commute to work." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/11/18/1636234 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Turning a Rasberry Pi into a Tor Gateway with Sphirewall
by Michael Lawson 17 Nov '14

17 Nov '14

Earlier this month Sphirewall released support for Tor as a transparent gateway, we thought it would be neat to get it running on the Pi and show it of a little bit. Half shameless plug, half interesting use case for Sphirewall and a Pi. http://sphirewall.net/blog.html?post_id=2 (Also 100% kiwi ;)) -- Michael Lawson

1 0

Docker - (was: Re: WLUG meeting next Monday)
by Peter Reutemann 17 Nov '14

17 Nov '14

Ian pointed out that my reply to a meeting announcement might confuse people... So, just to clarify, there is no meeting next week, but on the 24th (AGM). Cheers, Peter On Thu, Nov 6, 2014 at 2:31 PM, Peter Reutemann <fracpete(a)waikato.ac.nz> wrote: >> We have a meeting coming up next Monday: >> >> "Virtualization has been become commonplace nowadays, with lots of >> different implementations. Docker provides an as-thin-as-possible >> approach, making use of the kernel's functionality of resource >> isolation, eliminating the need for installing an operating system for >> the guest system. >> Andrew Parnasov will give an introduction to Docker, how to set it up, >> how to use and what it can be used for." >> >> http://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/197652482/ > > Just have come across this here: > > "Google Container Engine (Alpha) > > Run Docker containers on Google Cloud Platform, powered by Kubernetes. > Container Engine takes care of provisioning and maintaining the > underlying virtual machine cluster, scaling your application, and > operational logistics like logging, monitoring, and health > management." > > -- source: https://cloud.google.com/container-engine/ > > Cheers, Peter > -- > Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ > http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174 -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 1

Fedora Looks To Make /usr World-Readable
by Peter Reutemann 17 Nov '14

17 Nov '14

"Fedora developers are looking at requiring all files that be placed in /usr world-readable. Developers are seeking a mandate that all Fedora packages must not install any non-world-readable files within /usr. Right now some Fedora packages do not honor this and restrict permissions to certain files/directories. Stakeholders are after making the user directory world-readable since containerized copies of Fedora can have the directory bind-mounted into the container, support for virtualization use-cases, and for better systemd handling. " -- source: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTgzOTE Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Longtime Debian Developer Tollef Fog Heen Resigns From Systemd Maintainer Team
by Peter Reutemann 17 Nov '14

17 Nov '14

'Debian developer Tollef Fog Heen submitted his resignation to the Debian Systemd package maintainers team mailing list today (Sun. Nov. 16th, 2014). In his brief post, he praises the team, but claims that he cannot continue to contribute due to the "load of continued attacks...becoming just too much." Presumably, he is referring to the heated and, at times, even vitriolic criticism of Debian's adoption of Systemd as the default init system for its upcoming Jessie release from commenters inside and outside of the Debian community. Currently, it is not known if Tollef will cease contributing to Debian altogether. A message from his twitter feed indicates that he may blog about his departure in the near future.' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/11/16/2142244 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

81% of Tor Users Can Be De-anonymized By Analysing Router Information
by Peter Reutemann 15 Nov '14

15 Nov '14

"A former researcher at Columbia University's Network Security Lab has conducted research since 2008 indicating that traffic flow software included in network routers, notably Cisco's 'Netflow' package, can be exploited to deanonymize 81.4% of Tor clients. Professor Sambuddho Chakravarty, currently researching Network Anonymity and Privacy at the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, uses a technique which injects a repeating traffic pattern into the TCP connection associated with an exit node, and then compares subsequent aberrations in network timing with the traffic flow records generated by Netflow (or equivalent packages from other router manufacturers) to individuate the 'victim' client. In laboratory conditions the success rate of this traffic analysis attack is 100%, with network noise and variations reducing efficiency to 81% in a live Tor environment. Chakravarty says: 'it is not even essential to be a global adversary to launch such traffic analysis attacks. A powerful, yet non- global adversary could use traffic analysis methods [] to determine the various relays participating in a Tor circuit and directly monitor the traffic entering the entry node of the victim connection.'" -- source: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/14/11/14/1851245 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

FreeBSD 10.1 Released
by Peter Reutemann 15 Nov '14

15 Nov '14

"Version 10.1 of the venerable FreeBSD operating system has been released. The new version of FreeBSD offers support for booting from UEFI, automated generation of OpenSSH keys, ZFS performance improvements, updated (and more secure) versions of OpenSSH and OpenSSL and hypervisor enhancements. FreeBSD 10.1 is an extended support release and will be supported through until January 1, 2017." -- source: http://bsd.slashdot.org/story/14/11/14/2159223 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Ubuntu Linux Will Work To Slowly Demphasize 32-bit
by Peter Reutemann 13 Nov '14

13 Nov '14

"Canonical isn't yet prepared to drop 32-bit Ubuntu ISOs outright, but over time -- and particularly at or just after Ubuntu 16.04 -- they will work to demphasize the existence of the 32-bit releases and work to push more users to 64-bit Ubuntu as a main focus. " -- source: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTgzODE Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Linux Security Distros Compared: Tails vs. Kali vs. Qubes
by Peter Reutemann 13 Nov '14

13 Nov '14

"If you're interested in security, you've probably already heard of security-focused Linux distros like Tails, Kali, and Qubes. They're really useful for browsing anonymously, penetration testing, and tightening down your system so it's secure from would-be hackers. Here are the strengths and weaknesses of all three. - Tails Provides Security Through Anonymity - Kali Is All About Offensive Security - Qubes Offers Security Through Isolation" -- source: http://goo.gl/vomgra Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Groupon backs down from GNOME over trademark, will change product name
by Peter Reutemann 11 Nov '14

11 Nov '14

'UPDATE: Groupon has decided to use a name other than "Gnome" for its tablet platform for merchants. "After additional conversations with the open source community and the Gnome Foundation, we have decided to abandon our pending trademark applications for 'Gnome,'" the company said. "We will choose a new name for our product going forward."' -- source: http://goo.gl/p5IXl7 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Pitivi Video Editor Surpasses 50% Crowdfunding Goal, Releases Version 0.94
by Peter Reutemann 10 Nov '14

10 Nov '14

'With the latest developments, Pitivi is proving to truly be a promising libre video editor for GNU distributions as well as a serious contender for bringing libre video production up to par with its proprietary counterparts. Since launching a beautifully well-organized crowdfunding campaign (as covered here previously), the team has raised over half of their 35,000 € goal to pay for full-time development and has entered "beta" status for version 1.0. They've released two versions, 0.94 (release notes) being the most recent, which have brought full MPEG-TS/AVCHD support, porting to Python 3, lots of UX improvements, and—of course—lots and lots of bug fixes. The next release (0.95) will run on top of Non Linear Engine, a refined and incredibly more robust backend Pitivi developers have produced to replace GNonLin and bring Pitivi closer to the rock-solid stability needed for the final 1.0 release.' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/11/10/2045244 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Joey Hess Resigns From Debian
by Peter Reutemann 08 Nov '14

08 Nov '14

'Long-time Debian developer Joey Hess has posted a resignation letter to the Debian mailing list. Hess was a big part of the development of the Debian installer, debhelper, Alien, and other systems. He says, "It's become abundantly clear that this is no longer the project I originally joined in 1996. We've made some good things, and I wish everyone well, but I'm out. ... If I have one regret from my 18 years in Debian, it's that when the Debian constitution was originally proposed, despite seeing it as dubious, I neglected to speak out against it. It's clear to me now that it's a toxic document, that has slowly but surely led Debian in very unhealthy directions."' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/11/08/1448234 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Canonical officially unveils its OpenStack distro
by Peter Reutemann 08 Nov '14

08 Nov '14

'Any doubts you might have had about Canonical, best known for its Ubuntu Linux distribution, refocusing it energy on cloud-based Linux rather than desktop or mobile Linux were put to rest at the OpenStack Summit. [...] With Canonical Distribution for Ubuntu OpenStack, which is now in public beta, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth said: "This is a complete autopilot for your private cloud."' -- source: http://www.zdnet.com/canonical-officially-unveils-its-openstack-distro-7000… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 1

Major Performance Improvement Discovered For Intel's GPU Linux Driver
by Peter Reutemann 07 Nov '14

07 Nov '14

"LunarG, on contract with Valve Software, discovered a critical shortcoming with the open-source Intel Linux graphics driver that was handicapping the performance. A special bit wasn't being set by the Linux driver but was by the Windows driver, which when enabled is increasing the Linux performance in many games by now ~20%+, which should allow for a much more competitive showing between Intel OpenGL performance on Windows vs. Linux. However, the patch setting this bit isn't public yet as apparently it's breaking video acceleration in certain cases." -- source: http://games.slashdot.org/story/14/11/07/1237236 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

OpenSUSE 13.2 Released
by Peter Reutemann 06 Nov '14

06 Nov '14

"The latest version of the openSUSE distribution, 13.2, has been officially released. Key features include integrated support for filesystem snapshots, enabled by a switch to btrfs as the default file system, a new network manager (Wicked), as well as the usual version updates. This release includes seven supported desktop environments (KDE 4.14, GNOME 3.14, Xfce, LXDE, Enlightenment 19, Mate and Awesome) and even preview packages of Plasma 5.1, all presented with a unified openSUSE theme. Download LiveUSB and DVD images now from software.opensuse.org/132." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/11/06/1837227 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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WLUG meeting next Monday
by Peter Reutemann 06 Nov '14

06 Nov '14

Hi everyone We have a meeting coming up next Monday: "Virtualization has been become commonplace nowadays, with lots of different implementations. Docker provides an as-thin-as-possible approach, making use of the kernel's functionality of resource isolation, eliminating the need for installing an operating system for the guest system. Andrew Parnasov will give an introduction to Docker, how to set it up, how to use and what it can be used for." http://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/197652482/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Fedora 21 Beta Released
by Peter Reutemann 04 Nov '14

04 Nov '14

"The Fedora Project has been critical to the development Red Hat Enterprise Linux — RHEL version 7 was largely based off Fedora version 19. Fedora is continuing to evolve with the announcement of Fedora 21 Beta, now available from the Fedora Project website. To make the release ready for Beta testing required addressing 50 beta blocker bugs. If the Fedora Project developers are able to keep up with the final release blocker bugs, then Fedora 21 is expected to be released on December 9th. As a result, support for Fedora 19 is expected to end around the beginning of 2015. Released back in July 2013, Fedora 19 will have been supported for over 540 days by 2015. Previously, the longest a Fedora release was supported was Fedora Core 5 at 469 days. Users of Fedora 19 will be encouraged to upgrade to Fedora 20 or 21 to continue to get critical updates." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/11/04/201215 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Trisquel 7 Released
by Peter Reutemann 04 Nov '14

04 Nov '14

"Trisquel 7.0 Belenos has been released. Trisquel is a "free as in freedom" GNU/Linux distribution endorsed by the FSF. This latest release includes Linux-libre 3.13, GNOME 3.12, Abrowser 33 (based on Firefox), the Electrum Bitcoin client and many more new features and upgrades. Trisquel 7.0 will be supported until 2019. " -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/11/04/0517220 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Breaching Air-Gap Security With Radio
by Peter Reutemann 31 Oct '14

31 Oct '14

Not quite Linux, but interesting (scary?) nonetheless... "Security researcher Mordechai Guri with the guidance of Prof. Yuval Elovici from the cyber security labs at Ben-Gurion University in Israel presented at MALCON 2014 a breakthrough method ("AirHopper") for leaking data from an isolated computer to a mobile phone without the presence of a network. In highly secure facilities the assumption today is that data can not leak outside of an isolated internal network. It is called air-gap security. AirHopper demonstrates how the computer display can be used for sending data from the air-gapped computer to a near by smartphone. The published paper and a demonstration video are at the link." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/10/31/141207 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Vulnerabilities Found (and Sought) In More Command-Line Tools
by Peter Reutemann 30 Oct '14

30 Oct '14

"The critical Shellshock vulnerabilities found last month in the Bash Unix shell have motivated security researchers to search for similar flaws in old, but widely used, command-line utilities. Two remote command execution vulnerabilities were patched this week in the popular wget download agent and tnftp client for Unix-like systems [also mentioned here]. This comes after a remote code execution vulnerability was found last week in a library used by strings, objdump, readelf and other command-line tools." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/10/30/2130248 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Linux computer program brings a smile where it's least expected
by Peter Reutemann 30 Oct '14

30 Oct '14

"Reglue is an organization that has been placing Linux computers in the homes of financially disadvantaged kids since 2005. The program started in central Texas and we'd love to see it grow [...]. Using Linux as the operating system has not been a matter of religion or partisanship. Not even a matter of personal choice. It's a matter of pragmatic necessity. To give you a better picture of why, here's the story of Ricky. In short: We installed a computer for a financially-disadvantaged kid. We taught that kid how to use the computer. That kid was supremely happy with his new Linux computer. We left. The end." -- source: http://opensource.com/life/14/10/reglue-program-linux-computers-kids Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Dangerous Vulnerability Fixed In Wget
by Peter Reutemann 29 Oct '14

29 Oct '14

'A critical flaw has been found and patched in the open source Wget file retrieval utility that is widely used on UNIX systems. The vulnerability is publicly identified as CVE-2014-4877. "It was found that wget was susceptible to a symlink attack which could create arbitrary files, directories or symbolic links and set their permissions when retrieving a directory recursively through FTP," developer Vasyl Kaigorodov writes in Red Hat Bugzilla. A malicious FTP server can stomp over your entire filesystem, tweets HD Moore, chief research officer at Rapid 7, who is the original reporter of the bug.' -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/10/29/1333216 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Fwd: [NZOSS-Openchat] Your Drupal website has a backdoor
by Peter Reutemann 29 Oct '14

29 Oct '14

Apologies if you received this already. Cheers, Peter ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Bevan Rudge Date: Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 8:37 AM Subject: [NZOSS-Openchat] Your Drupal website has a backdoor If you administer a Drupal website or know anyone who does, please make sure they see this: Drupal Core - Highly Critical - Public Service announcement - PSA-2014-003 https://www.drupal.org/PSA-2014-003 The short version is; if a Drupal website was not patched within 7 hours of the announcement of Dupal-core-SA-2014-005 (aka Drupageddon) on 16 October (NZ time), it probably has backdoors, and data should be assumed to be compromised. The only safe and certain recovery is to get a new server and restore from backups from before that date. In many ways this is worse than Heartbleed because it is so easy much easier to exploit, and the attacker can get any data they ask for (with Heartbleed, I believe an attacker didn't know what data they were looking at) and control all of Drupal. Most attacks seem to be installing backdoors for sending spam or future amplification of other attacks. But there are many different types of exploits, so assume anything and everything. Cheers, Bevan/ http://Drupal.geek.nz http://Twitter.com/BevanR Sent from Auckland, New Zealand _______________________________________________ Openchat mailing list Openchat(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz http://lists.nzoss.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/openchat -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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OpenBSD Drops Support For Loadable Kernel Modules
by Peter Reutemann 28 Oct '14

28 Oct '14

"The OpenBSD developers have decided to remove support for loadable kernel modules from the BSD distribution's next release. Several commits earlier this month stripped out the loadable kernel modules support. Phoronix's Michael Larabel has not yet found an official reason for the decision to drop support. He wagers that it is due to security or code quality/openness ideals." -- source: http://bsd.slashdot.org/story/14/10/28/1852214 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Firefox OS Coming To Raspberry Pi
by Peter Reutemann 28 Oct '14

28 Oct '14

"Mozilla plans to build a version of its Firefox OS for use in the Raspberry Pi. Plans are afoot to build a version capable of (1) being run on the Pi hardware and (2) eventually achieving parity with Raspbian and (3) enable easy development for robotics." -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/10/27/2348204 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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New Oculus SDK Adds Experimental Linux Support and Unity Free For Rift Headset
by Peter Reutemann 25 Oct '14

25 Oct '14

"Oculus, creator of the Rift VR headset, has released a new version of their SDK which brings with it long sought-after support for Linux, which the company says is "experimental." Linux support was previously unavailable since the launch of the company's second development kit, the DK2. The latest SDK update also adds support for Unity Free, the non-commercial version of the popular game authoring engine. Previously, Unity developers needed the Pro version—costing $1,500 or $75/month—to create experiences for the Oculus Rift." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/10/25/1725224 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Italian Supreme Court Bans the 'Microsoft Tax'
by Peter Reutemann 25 Oct '14

25 Oct '14

'In a post at the Free Software Foundation, lawyer Marco Ciurcina reports that the Italian Supreme Court has ruled the practice of forcing users to pay for a Windows license when they buy a new PC is illegal. Manufacturers in Italy are now legally obligated to refund that money if a buyer wants to put GNU/Linux or another free OS on the computer. Ciurcina says, "The focus of the Court's reasoning is that the sale of a PC with software preinstalled is not like the sale of a car with its components (the 4 wheels, the engine, etc.) that therefore are sold jointly. Buying a computer with preinstalled software, the user is required to conclude two different contracts: the first, when he buys the computer; the second, when he turns on the computer for the first time and he is required to accept or not the license terms of the preinstalled software. Therefore, if the user does not accept the software license, he has the right to keep the computer and install free software without having to pay the 'Microsoft tax.'"' -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/10/25/1443210 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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5 Deadly Linux Commands You Should Never Run
by Peter Reutemann 23 Oct '14

23 Oct '14

"As a Linux user, you probably have searched online for articles and tutorials that show you how to use the terminal to run some commands. While most of these commands are harmless and could help you become more productive, there are some commands that are deadly and could wipe out your whole machine." -- source: http://goo.gl/fmIOxY I love the obscurity of the fork bomb! Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Turn a Raspberry Pi Into a Super Cheap, Packet-Sniffing Power Strip
by Peter Reutemann 23 Oct '14

23 Oct '14

"If you have a Raspberry Pi and one of those surge protectors that also protects your network cables from voltage fluctuations, you have most of the tools you need to build a cheap network observation device, as long as you're not afraid to use a soldering iron. When you're finished, you'll have the perfect addition to your pen-testing toolkit. " -- source: http://lifehacker.com/5952327 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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How Red Hat is Transforming from a Server-Client to Cloud-Mobile Leader
by Peter Reutemann 23 Oct '14

23 Oct '14

'Red Hat has become a role model for other companies by writing a success story based on open source software and Linux, without a single proprietary component in the soup. The company continues to evolve and transform itself with the changing times to remain a leader, and not simply relevant, unlike many other software giants that are struggling in the market. Everyone is moving towards cloud and mobile; the consumer space has totally switched gears to cloud and mobile, and enterprises aren't far behind. Thomas E. Hogan, CEO of Kony Inc., said a few weeks ago, “With the number of mobile applications downloaded from app stores expected to increase by a 31.7 percent CAGR by 2017, enterprises are realizing that a mobile strategy is no longer a nice-to-have, but a must have."' -- source: http://www.linux.com/news/enterprise/case-studies/792591 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Ubuntu 14.10 Released With Ambitious Name, But Small Changes
by Peter Reutemann 23 Oct '14

23 Oct '14

'Ubuntu 14.10, dubbed Utopic Unicorn, has been released today (here are screenshots). PC World says that at first glance "isn't the most exciting update," with not so much as a new default wallpaper — but happily so: it's a stable update in a stable series, and most users will have no pressing need to update to the newest version. In the Ubuntu Next unstable series, though, there are big changes afoot: Along with Mir comes the next version of Ubuntu’s Unity desktop, Unity 8. Mir and the latest version of Unity are already used on Ubuntu Phone, so this is key for Ubuntu's goal of convergent computing — Ubuntu Phone and Ubuntu desktop will use the same display server and desktop shell. Ubuntu Phone is now stable and Ubuntu phones are arriving this year, so a lot of work has gone into this stuff recently. The road ahead looks bumpy however. Ubuntu needs to get graphics drivers supporting Mir properly. The task becomes more complicated when you consider that other Linux distributions — like Fedora — are switching to the Wayland display server instead of Mir. When Ubuntu Desktop Next becomes the standard desktop environment, the changes will be massive indeed. But for today, Utopic Unicorn is all about subtle improvements and slow, steady iteration.' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/10/23/1946243 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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wlug meeting tomorrow
by Peter Reutemann 23 Oct '14

23 Oct '14

Hi there We've got a WLUG meeting tomorrow - due to Labor Day a week earlier that usual. 'Greg B.: A talk with an overview of the so-called "Crypto2.0" open source projects that are attempting to be overlays for the bitcoin network. Why does bitcoin need overlays and possible future directions in cryptofinance in general? A brief round-up of the emerging Crypto2.0 projects out there, Counterparty, Mastercoin, Bitshares, Ripple, Stellar, Next and CoinSpark. Then a more in-depth discussion of Open-Transactions (openTXS). Peter R.: Running OwnCloud on a Raspberry Pi.' http://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/212122742/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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BitTorrent Performance Test: Sync Is Faster Than Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox
by Peter Reutemann 22 Oct '14

22 Oct '14

"Now that its file synchronization tool has received a few updates, BitTorrent is going on the offensive against cloud-based storage services by showing off just how fast BitTorrent Sync can be. More specifically, the company conducted a test that shows Sync destroys Google Drive, Microsoft's OneDrive, and Dropbox. The company transferred a 1.36 GB MP4 video clip between two Apple MacBook Pros using two Apple Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adapters, the Time.gov site as a real-time clock, and the Internet connection at its headquarters (1 Gbps up/down). The timer started when the file transfer was initiated and then stopped once the file was fully synced and downloaded onto the receiving machine. Sync performed 8x faster than Google Drive, 11x faster than OneDrive, and 16x faster than Dropbox." -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/10/22/2012258 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Raspberry Pi Founder Demos Touchscreen Display For DIY Kits
by Peter Reutemann 22 Oct '14

22 Oct '14

'Over 4 million Raspberry Pis have been sold so far, and now founder Eben Upton has shown off a touchscreen display panel that's designed to work with it. It's a 7" panel, roughly tablet sized, but slightly thicker. "With the incoming touchscreen panel The Pi Foundation is clearly hoping to keep stoking the creative fires that have helped drive sales of the Pi by slotting another piece of DIY hardware into the mix." Upton also discussed the Model A+ Raspberry Pi board — an updated version they'll be announcing soon.' -- source: http://build.slashdot.org/story/14/10/22/1532200 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Take Control With Open Source Hardware
by Peter Reutemann 22 Oct '14

22 Oct '14

"Free and open source software are no good without open hardware. If we can't install our software on a piece of hardware, it's not good for anything. Truly open hardware is fully-programmable and replicable: OSHWA, Raspberry Pi, OLinuXino, Arduino, BeagleBoard, RepRap 3D Printer, Open Prosthetics, OpenROV Submarine, Open Source Cell Phones" -- source: http://www.linux.com/news/hardware/peripherals/792185 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Delivering Malicious Android Apps Hidden In Image Files
by Peter Reutemann 22 Oct '14

22 Oct '14

"Researchers have found a way to deliver a malicious app to Android users by hiding it into what seems to be an encrypted image file, which is then delivered via a legitimate, seemingly innocuous wrapper app. Fortinet malware researcher Axelle Apvrille and reverse engineer Ange Albertini created a custom tool they dubbed AngeCryption, which allows them to encrypt the payload Android application package (APK) and make it look like an image (PNG, JPG) file . They also had to create another APK that carries the "booby-trapped" image file and which can decrypt it to unveil the malicious APK file and install it. A malicious app thusly encrypted is nearly invisible to reverse engineers, and possibly even to AV solutions and Google's Android Bouncer." -- source: http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/14/10/21/1325236 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Ubuntu 16.04 Might Be The Distribution's Last 32-Bit Release
by Peter Reutemann 21 Oct '14

21 Oct '14

"Ubuntu contributor Bryan Quigley is considering a proposal to make Ubuntu 16.04 LTS the last release of Ubuntu with 32-bit installation images. Come April 2016, Intel 32-bit users might be on their last, overdue leg for upgrading their distribution. Quigley is considering a proposal to kill off the 32-bit install (ISO) images after that point while support for 32-bit applications on 64-bit Ubuntu would still be supported. The proposal would only involve Intel/AMD x86 with 32-bit ARM being unaffected given that 32-bit ARM is still very common to devices. " -- source: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTgxOTQ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 3

Yubikey, Lastpass and Brewpi.
by chris 21 Oct '14

21 Oct '14

Hi all, I've posted my notes from last Monday's meeting here. It's the slide show plus a few links. https://github.com/WLUG/meetings Cheers, Chris

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Features GNOME Developers Want In The Linux Kernel
by Peter Reutemann 21 Oct '14

21 Oct '14

'Made into a concise list is a number of features that GNOME developers want to see landed within the Linux kernel, in hopes of kernel developers eventually tackling these wish list features that could help not only GNOME but other desktops too. Bastien Nocera wrote to the kernel mailing list explaining, "GNOME has had discussions with kernel developers in the past, and, fortunately, in some cases we were able to make headway. There are however a number of items that we still don't have solutions for, items that kernel developers might not realise we'd like to rely on, or don't know that we'd make use of if merged." Among the features sought after in the kernel include a hibernation mode not using SWAP space, native hybrid suspend support in the kernel, a connected stand-by suspend mode, screen backlight guidelines, time changes for files/folders within a sub-directory, LinuxApps containers support (OverlayFS and KDBUS), memory compression being enabled by default for capable hardware, and various other changes. ' -- source: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTgxOTI Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Microsoft “Loves Linux” as it Makes Azure Bigger, Better
by Peter Reutemann 21 Oct '14

21 Oct '14

"In San Francisco on Monday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said something that was more than a little surprising: Microsoft loves Linux. The operating system once described as a "cancer" by Nadella's predecessor, Steve Ballmer, is now being embraced with open arms (if not extended), at least when it comes to Redmond's Azure cloud platform. Nadella told us that some 20 percent of VMs on Azure use the open source operating system." -- source: http://www.linux.com/news/enterprise/cloud-computing/792539 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Rejuvenate your Fedora desktop with Moka
by Peter Reutemann 21 Oct '14

21 Oct '14

"GNOME is cool and beautiful, and the default Adwaita theme has matured greatly since it was introduced in GNOME 3.0. In fact, the Adwaita theme in Fedora 21 is now looking better than ever. However, I have used it for a long time, and I kinda feel like using a different theme — After all, who doesn’t like to have a change once in a while? So, I decided to put new life into my desktop, and my search ended with the great moka project." -- source: http://fedoramagazine.org/rejuvenate-your-fedora-desktop-with-moka/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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wlug meeting next Monday
by Peter Reutemann 20 Oct '14

20 Oct '14

Hi there We've got a WLUG meeting coming up next Monday - due to Labor Day a week earlier that usual. 'Greg B.: A talk with an overview of the so-called "Crypto2.0" open source projects that are attempting to be overlays for the bitcoin network. Why does bitcoin need overlays and possible future directions in cryptofinance in general? A brief round-up of the emerging Crypto2.0 projects out there, Counterparty, Mastercoin, Bitshares, Ripple, Stellar, Next and CoinSpark. Then a more in-depth discussion of Open-Transactions (openTXS). Peter R.: Running OwnCloud on a Raspberry Pi.' http://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/212122742/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 1

Debian's Systemd Adoption Inspires Threat of Fork
by Peter Reutemann 20 Oct '14

20 Oct '14

'It appears that systemd is still a hot topic in the Debian community. As seen earlier today, there is a new movement shaping up against the adoption of systemd for the upcoming stable release [of Debian], Jessie. They claim that "systemd betrays the UNIX philosophy"; it makes things more complex, thus breaking the "do one thing and do it well" principle.' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/10/20/1944226 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Ubuntu Turns 10
by Peter Reutemann 20 Oct '14

20 Oct '14

"Scott James Remnant, now Technical Lead on ChromeOS, was a Debian developer before that. That's how he became involved from the beginning (becoming Developer Manager, and then serving on the Technical Board) on the little derivative distribution that Mark Shuttleworth decided to make of Debian Unstable, and for which the name Ubuntu was eventually chosen. On this date in 2004, Ubuntu 4.10 -- aka Warty Warthog, or just Warty -- was released, and Remnant has shared a detailed, nostalgic look back at the early days of the project that has (whatever else you think of it ) become one of the most influential in the world of open source and Free software. I was excited that Canonical sent out disks that I could pass around to friends and family that looked acceptably polished to them in a way that Sharpie-marked Knoppix CD-ROMs didn't, and that the polish extended to the installer, the desktop, and the included constellation of software, too." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/10/20/1356248 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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GNOME Developer Comes Up With New Animated Image Format
by Peter Reutemann 20 Oct '14

20 Oct '14

"Jasper St. Pierre who we're usually talking about on Phoronix due to his GNOME contributions related to Wayland support, shared today he's come up with a new animated image format to compete with GIF. While GIF is technologically out-of-date with its compression support and other features, alternative animated image file formats like APNG and MNG haven't taken off. However, Jasper ended up devising a new image format called XNG. XNG doesn't impose any restrictions, can support more complex functionality, and will work existing HTML5 browsers of today. " -- source: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTgxNjc Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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New open hardware: Raspberry Pi B+
by Peter Reutemann 20 Oct '14

20 Oct '14

"The main differences between the B+ and the Raspberry Pi model B are the new model has: - four USB ports (versus two in the model B) - a microSD card (versus a full size SD card in model B) - a video jack integrated with the audio jack (versus two separate jacks in the model B) - GPIO pins extended to 40 pins (versus 26 pins in the model B) - lower power consumption - four mounting holes What has not changed: - The price, it is $35 USD - The amount of RAM, it has 512 Mb" -- source: http://opensource.com/life/14/10/reviewing-new-raspberry-pi-b-board All in all, sounds like very reasonable changes - especially the 4 USB ports. Though would have preferred 1GB of RAM. :-) Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 1

Tiny Wireless Device Offers Tor Anonymity
by Peter Reutemann 20 Oct '14

20 Oct '14

"The Anonabox router project, currently being funded through a Kickstarter campaign, has surpassed its original $7,000 crowdfunding goal by more than 10 times in just one day. The open source router device connects via Wi-Fi or an Ethernet cable making it harder for your IP address to be seen. While there have been other Tor-enabled routers in the past, they aren't small enough to fit in a shirt pocket like the Anonabox and they haven't offered data encryption on top of the routing network. The device, which is being pitched as a way for consumers to securely surf the web and share content (or allow businesses to do the same), is also being directed at journalists who may want to share stories in places where they might otherwise be censored." -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/14/10/14/0035226 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 1

After Negative User Response, ChromeOS To Re-Introduce Support For Ext{2, 3, 4}
by Peter Reutemann 19 Oct '14

19 Oct '14

'Only three days after the public learned that the ChromeOS project was going to disable ext2fs support for external drives (causing Linux users to voice many protests on websites like Slashdot and the issue tracker), the ChromeOS team now plans to support it again. To quote Ben Goodger's comment: "Thanks for all of your feedback on this bug. We've heard you loud and clear. We plan to re-enable ext2/3/4 support in Files.app immediately. It will come back, just like it was before, and we're working to get it into the next stable channel release."' -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/10/16/1228232 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Test the new Firefox Hello WebRTC feature in Firefox Beta
by Peter Reutemann 19 Oct '14

19 Oct '14

"Firefox Hello provides more value to Firefox users by making it easier to communicate with your friends and family who might not have the same video chat service, software or hardware as you. It’s free to make voice and video calls and there’s no need to download software, plugins or even create an account." -- source: http://goo.gl/HoR1aS Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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How To Install Chromium And Enable Pepper Flash Plugin
by Peter Reutemann 19 Oct '14

19 Oct '14

Lately, I've been a bit annoyed by my Chromium browser no longer working with flash, seemed to disable the flash plugin automatically (running Linux Mint 17). Usual workaround was to paste the URL in Firefox. But, alas, there is a fix for that: Pepper Flash Player. Check out the link below for instructions (applies to Ubuntu 14.04, Linux Mint 17, Pinguy OS 14.04 And Elementary OS 0.3): http://goo.gl/CNJ8Bt Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Tor Browser 4.0 and Tails 1.2 Update Released
by Peter Reutemann 18 Oct '14

18 Oct '14

"Tor - Privacy oriented encrypted anonymizing service, has announced the launch of its next version of Tor Browser Bundle, Tor version 4.0, which disables SSL3 to prevent POODLE attack and uses new transports that are intended to defeat the Great Firewall of China and other extremely restrictive firewalls." -- source: http://thehackernews.com/2014/10/privacy-tools-tor-browser-40-and-tails.html Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Drupal Fixes Highly Critical SQL Injection Flaw
by Peter Reutemann 15 Oct '14

15 Oct '14

'Drupal has patched a critical SQL injection vulnerability in version 7.x of the content management system that can allow arbitrary code execution. The flaw lies in an API that is specifically designed to help prevent against SQL injection attacks. "Drupal 7 includes a database abstraction API to ensure that queries executed against the database are sanitized to prevent SQL injection attacks," the Drupal advisory says. "A vulnerability in this API allows an attacker to send specially crafted requests resulting in arbitrary SQL execution. Depending on the content of the requests this can lead to privilege escalation, arbitrary PHP execution, or other attacks."' -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/10/15/2048218 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Microsoft Partners With Docker
by Peter Reutemann 15 Oct '14

15 Oct '14

"Docker is teaming up with Microsoft to bring its open container technology to the next release of Windows Server. Docker Engine will work with the next release of Windows Server and images will be available in Docker Hub, which will also integrate directly into Microsoft Azure. The partnership moves Docker beyond Linux for the first time with new multi-container application capabilities for cloud and enterprise developers." -- source: http://slashdot.org/story/14/10/15/1656244 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Google Finds Vulnerability In SSL 3.0 Web Encryption
by Peter Reutemann 15 Oct '14

15 Oct '14

"SSL 3.0 is nearly 15 years old, but support for it remains widespread. Most importantly, nearly all browsers support it and, in order to work around bugs in HTTPS servers, browsers will retry failed connections with older protocol versions, including SSL 3.0. Because a network attacker can cause connection failures, they can trigger the use of SSL 3.0 and then exploit this issue. Disabling SSL 3.0 support, or CBC-mode ciphers with SSL 3.0, is sufficient to mitigate this issue, but presents significant compatibility problems, even today. Therefore our recommended response (PDF) is to support TLS_FALLBACK_SCSV. This is a mechanism that solves the problems caused by retrying failed connections and thus prevents attackers from inducing browsers to use SSL 3.0. It also prevents downgrades from TLS 1.2 to 1.1 or 1.0 and so may help prevent future attacks." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/10/15/000239 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Analysis of Linux Backdoor Used In Freenode Hack
by Peter Reutemann 14 Oct '14

14 Oct '14

For those that use IRC... "A detailed analysis has been done of the Linux backdoor used in the freenode hack. It employed port knocking and encryption to provide security against others using it. This seems a little more sophisticated than your average black-hat hacker." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/10/14/2142214 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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VeraCrypt Is the New TrueCrypt -- and It's Better
by Peter Reutemann 13 Oct '14

13 Oct '14

'If you're looking for an alternative to TrueCrypt, you could do worse than VeraCrypt, which adds iterations and corrects weaknesses in TrueCrypt's API, drivers and parameter checking. According to the article, "In technical terms, when a system partition is encrypted, TrueCrypt uses PBKDF2-RIPEMD160 with 1,000 iterations. For standard containers and other (i.e. non system) partitions, TrueCrypt uses at most 2,000 iterations. What Idrassi did was beef up the transformation process. VeraCrypt uses 327,661 iterations of the PBKDF2-RIPEMD160 algorithm for system partitions, and for standard containers and other partitions it uses 655,331 iterations of RIPEMD160 and 500,000 iterations of SHA-2 and Whirlpool, he said. While this makes VeraCrypt slightly slower at opening encrypted partitions, it makes the software a minimum of 10 and a maximum of about 300 times harder to brute force."' -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/10/13/2234251 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Lunar Linux 1.7.0
by Peter Reutemann 13 Oct '14

13 Oct '14

'Stefan Wold has announced the release of Lunar Linux 1.7.0, a source-based distribution with a complete application management system: "You better believe it, the day you all have been waiting for has finally arrived. The Lunar team proudly announces the final release of Lunar Linux 1.7.0, code name 'Sinus Successus'. Like the phoenix rising from the ashes Lunar Linux is back with a vengeance; a lot of overhauling has been done all over the core tools, packages, installer and the ISO builder. Even though our journey to reach this milestone has been a long one we hope that the changes and quality improvements we've made was worth the wait. So what are you waiting for? Go grab a copy of Lunar Linux while it is hot! New features in 1.7.0: out with sysvinit and in with systemd; Linux kernel 3.16.3, GCC 4.9.1 and glibc 2.19; added support for the Btrfs file system; GRUB 2 or LILO, pick your poison; improved installer; now with initrd support; a bunch of updated modules."' -- source: http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=08641 If you like compiling stuff, this should be an interesting distro. I wonder, how it compares to Gentoo? Anybody feel like giving it a spin and maybe share some insights at the next meeting? Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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AGM: Monday 24th November 2014
by Peter Reutemann 13 Oct '14

13 Oct '14

Hi everyone The year is coming to an end and it is once again time for an AGM. This year's AGM will take place on November 24th, usual place at uni, MS4.G.02. Agenda: - Possible nomination of additional secretary by committee - President's Report - Treasurer's Report - Election of 2015 Committee - Consumption of pizza Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Linux Foundation Launches Open Source Dronecode Project
by Peter Reutemann 13 Oct '14

13 Oct '14

"The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux and collaborative development, today announced the founding of the Dronecode Project. The Project will bring together existing open source drone projects and assets under a nonprofit structure governed by The Linux Foundation. The result will be a common, shared open source platform for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Founding members include 3D Robotics, Baidu, Box, DroneDeploy, Intel, jDrones, Laser Navigation, Qualcomm, SkyWard, Squadrone System, Walkera and Yuneec. Dronecode includes the APM UAV software platform and associated code, which until now has been hosted by 3D Robotics, a world leader in advanced UAV autopilot and autonomous vehicle control. The company was co-founded by Chris Anderson, formerly editor-in-chief of Wired" -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/14/10/13/1152208 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Netflix Now Works On Ubuntu, No Hacks Required
by Peter Reutemann 12 Oct '14

12 Oct '14

"The company has, quietly, and without fanfare, flipped the switch required to allow Google Chrome users on Ubuntu (and other modern Linux distributions) to watch movies and TV shows in the browser. If you’ve been following this long, protracted saga — which has been about as enjoyable as a binge-watch of the US Inbetweeners remake — then this news won’t be too out of the blue. Last month Netflix engineer Paul Adolph pledged to remove the user-agent filter, the final hurdle in preventing Ubuntu users from streaming content, once a newer version of the security library (nss3) was rolled out to users. That roll out took place in late September. " -- source: http://goo.gl/ekPj73 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Spotify is Powered by Linux and Open Source
by Peter Reutemann 12 Oct '14

12 Oct '14

'Spotify can aptly be called the "Netflix for music." The company started off in 2008 and by 2014 it boasts more than 40 million users with 10 million paid subscribers. The Swedish company is yet another example of how Linux and open source enable businesses to serve millions of customers using state-of-the-art, shared technologies.' -- source: http://www.linux.com/news/enterprise/case-studies/790458 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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ChromeOS Will No Longer Support Ext2/3/4 On External Drives/SD Cards
by Peter Reutemann 12 Oct '14

12 Oct '14

"Chrome OS is based on the Linux kernel and designed by Google to work with web applications and installed applications. Chromebook is one of the best selling laptops on Amazon. However, devs decided to drop support for ext2/3/4 on external drivers and SD card. It seems that ChromiumOS developers can't implement a script or feature to relabel EXT volumes in the left nav that is insertable and has RW privileges using Files.app. Given that this is the main filesystem in Linux, and is thereby automatically well supported by anything that leverages Linux, this choice makes absolutely no sense. Google may want to drop support for external storage and push the cloud storage on everyone. Overall Linux users and community members are not happy at all." -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/10/12/1321207 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Fwd: [NZOSS-Openchat] [Crosspost] LCA2015 Earlybird registrations are now open!
by Peter Reutemann 08 Oct '14

08 Oct '14

FYI ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Mark Foster Date: Wed, Oct 8, 2014 at 9:57 PM Subject: [NZOSS-Openchat] [Crosspost] LCA2015 Earlybird registrations are now open! (With apologies for the crosspost - but this is big news! :-)) PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE LCA2015 Earlybird registrations are now open! The moment that you have been waiting for has finally arrived! It is with many hugs of sincere gratitude to the team that we can announce that Earlybird Registration for LCA2015 is now open. Now is the time to chose - are you a Professional, a Hobbyist or a Student attending LCA2015? Will you be one of our fantastic army of volunteers? Go to lca2015.linux.org.au <http://lca2015.org.au> to register and buy your Earlybird ticket. You can also register as a volunteer right now, and begin to get involved with our wonderful conference. All of the information that you need is there - what you receive for your ticket price, accommodation options, THE Penguin Dinner, as well as Partners Program and creche options for those of you who are bringing your family with you. There have been months of anticipation, and several sleepless nights, but we are now at a truly exciting stage of the conference organising process - registration! We look forward to seeing you all in January 2015 in Auckland. The LCA2015 team END -- Mark Foster For the LCA2015 Org Team _______________________________________________ Openchat mailing list Openchat(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz http://lists.nzoss.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/openchat -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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next meeting
by Peter Reutemann 08 Oct '14

08 Oct '14

Hi everyone So far, we haven't got anything lined up for our next meeting in October. Anyone feeling like presenting something? For instance Ubuntu 14.10 has its release 23/10 - just before our meeting. Maybe giving the release candidate a spin and share your experience? Or cool Raspberry Pi projects? Thanks! Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Google Deliberately Weakens Open Source Android As It Hopes To Dominate With Android One
by Peter Reutemann 05 Oct '14

05 Oct '14

"When you are the underdog in the smartphone world, you look for every advantage possible to get market share. That was the case when Google was looking to establish Android as an alternative to Symbian OS and Windows Mobile. It’s free, here’s the code, knock yourself out, was the implication from Mountain View. Now that market share is clearly with Google (IDC estimates it at 85% for Q2 2014) the question is no longer how to get the OS established as the mass market mobile platform of choice, but about maximizing the revenue generating possibilities for Google. So how does Google deal with the legacy of the first ‘free as in speech’ strategy, namely the Android Open Source Project? Its answer is Android One, and it hopes that the new for 2014 off-the-shelf package will stem the flow of handset manufacturers in China and India rolling their own flavors of Android from the Android Open Source Project (AOSP)." -- source: http://onforb.es/1nOiR0k Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Assorted Fun Linux Command Line Hacks
by Peter Reutemann 05 Oct '14

05 Oct '14

"Today's fun command line festivities are inspired by Command Line Magic (https://twitter.com/climagic) who hangs out on Twitter sharing excellent Linux command line incantations for all occasions. Today's assortment includes shell rainbows, Is the Internet on Fire?, Star Wars Traceroute, and creating annoying sounds from the console." -- source: http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/790121 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Other Projects Participating In This Winter's Women Outreach Program
by Peter Reutemann 02 Oct '14

02 Oct '14

"The other projects participating in this December to March cycle are Debian, Evergreen, FFmpeg, Foreman, GNOME, the Linux kernel, Mesos / Aurora / Pants, the Open-Source Robotics Foundation, OpenStack, OpenStreetMap, oVirt, Perl, Wikimedia, and the Xen Project. The contributions don't need to be necessarily code related but could be those wishing to help with marketing, documentation, or other tasks needed to keep a healthy open-source project. Participating women are paid $5,500 USD for their three months of work. " -- source: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTgwMjg Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Shellshock Vulnerability Spreads to NAS Devices
by Peter Reutemann 02 Oct '14

02 Oct '14

"Shellshock, the vulnerability in the Bourne Again Shell (Bash), is taking a new twist and is now being actively exploited in network-attached storage (NAS) devices, according to a new report from FireEye." - source: http://bit.ly/1pJCII3 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Hacking USB Firmware
by Peter Reutemann 02 Oct '14

02 Oct '14

'Now the NSA isn't the only one who can hack your USB firmware: "In a talk at the Derbycon hacker conference in Louisville, Kentucky last week, researchers Adam Caudill and Brandon Wilson showed that they've reverse engineered the same USB firmware as Nohl's SR Labs, reproducing some of Nohl's BadUSB tricks. And unlike Nohl, the hacker pair has also published the code for those attacks on Github, raising the stakes for USB makers to either fix the problem or leave hundreds of millions of users vulnerable." Personally, I always thought it was insane that USB drives don't come with physical write-protect switches to keep them from being infected by malware.' -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/10/02/2154204 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Arducorder, Next Open Source Science Tricorder-like Device, Nears Completion
by Peter Reutemann 02 Oct '14

02 Oct '14

"The Arducorder Mini, an Arduino-compatible pocket-sized handheld sensing tool and the next in line of open source science tricorder-like devices designed by Dr. Peter Jansen, is nearing completion. Where the previous models have included about a dozen sensors spanning atmospheric, electromagnetic, and spatial readings, an exciting video of the new prototype shows this model includes sensors for spectroscopy, low-resolution thermal imaging, and radiation sensing. The development is open with the project build logs and most recent source schematics, board layouts, and firmware available on github. This project is an entry in the Hack a Day Prize for a trip to space." -- source: http://build.slashdot.org/story/14/09/30/2227221 Packs an amazing amount of sensors in such a small form factor! Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Security bug in Xen may have exposed Amazon, other cloud services
by Peter Reutemann 01 Oct '14

01 Oct '14

"The Xen Project has published a security advisory that could affect millions of virtualized servers running in Amazon’s cloud and other public hosting services. A flaw in the Xen hypervisor could allow a malicious fully virtualized server to read data about other virtualized systems running on the same physical hardware or the hypervisor hosting the virtual machine. The malicious system could also potentially crash the server hosting the virtual machines. A patch, which was privately disclosed last week under embargo, has been issued to correct the issue." -- source: http://bit.ly/1sNg89a Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Secure Your Linux Desktop and SSH Login Using Two Factor Google Authenticator
by Peter Reutemann 01 Oct '14

01 Oct '14

"Two factor authentication is increasingly becoming a strongly recommended way of protecting user accounts in web applications from attackers by requiring a second method of authentication in addition to the standard username and password pair. Although two factor authentication can encompass a wide range of techniques like biometrics or smart cards, the most commonly deployed technique in web applications is the one time password. If you have used applications like Gmail, you are probably familiar with the one time password generated by the Google Authenticator app that's available on iOS or Android devices. The algorithm used for the one time password in the Google Authenticator app is known as the Time-based One-Time Password (TOTP) algorithm. The TOTP algorithm is a standard algorithm approved by the IETF in (RFC 6238) totp-rfc. It is a little known fact that you can use the TOTP algorithm to secure your user accounts in Linux systems. This article will walk you through the steps necessary. While the exact commands will be for Fedora 20, the TOTP algorithm can be deployed to any Linux distro with a little modification." -- source: http://bit.ly/10lMmvM Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Linux Foundation Announces Major Network Functions Virtualization Project
by Peter Reutemann 30 Sep '14

30 Sep '14

"The Linux Foundation this morning announced the latest addition to its family of major hosted open source initiatives: the Open Platform for NFV Project (OPNFV). Its mission is to develop and maintain a carrier-grade, integrated, open source reference platform for the telecom industry. Importantly, the thirty-eight founding members include not only cloud and service infrastructure vendors, but telecom service providers, developers and end users as well. The announcement of OPNFV highlights three of the most significant trends in IT: virtualization (the NFV part of the name refers to network function virtualization), moving software and services to the cloud, and collaboratively developing complex open source platforms in order to accelerate deployment of new business models while enabling interoperability across a wide range of products and services. The project is also significant for reflecting a growing recognition that open source projects need to incorporate open standards planning into their work programs from the beginning, rather than as an afterthought." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/09/30/1820245 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Adobe Photoshop Is Coming To Linux, Through Chromebooks
by Peter Reutemann 30 Sep '14

30 Sep '14

"Adobe is bringing the king of all photo editing software, Photoshop, to Linux-based Chrome OS. Chrome OS-powered devices, such as Chromebooks and Chromeboxes, already have a decent line-up of 'applications' that can work offline and eliminate the need of a traditional desktop computer. So far it sounds like great news. The bad news is that the offering is in its beta stage and is available only to the customers of the Creative Cloud Education program residing in the U.S. I have a full subscription of Creative Cloud for Photographers, and LightRoom, but even I can't join the program at the moment." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/09/30/1430240 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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LibreSSL: More Than 30 Days Later
by Peter Reutemann 30 Sep '14

30 Sep '14

"Ted Unangst has posted an update on LibreSSL development. "Joel and I have been working on a replacement API for OpenSSL, appropriately entitled ressl. Reimagined SSL is how I think of it. Our goals are consistency and simplicity. In particular, we answer the question 'What would the user like to do?' and not 'What does the TLS protocol allow the user to do?'. You can make a secure connection to a server. You can host a secure server. You can read and write some data over that connection." -- source: http://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/789692 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Improved Patch Tackles New Shellshock Bash Bug Attack Vectors
by Peter Reutemann 30 Sep '14

30 Sep '14

"System administrators who spent last week making sure their computers are patched against Shellshock, a critical vulnerability in the Bash Unix command-line interpreter, will have to install a new patch that addresses additional attack vectors." -- source: http://www.linux.com/news/enterprise/systems-management/789720 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Ubuntu Phones to Arrive By Year's End
by Peter Reutemann 29 Sep '14

29 Sep '14

"Ubuntu Touch for phones is now at manufacturing status, a major milestone for many people who wondered if Ubuntu phones would ever become market realities. Several months ago, rumors swirled that the first Ubuntu phones were delayed and wouldn’t appear until 2015, if at all, but this week news broke that we're likely to see phones by year's end." -- source: http://ostatic.com/blog/ubuntu-phones-to-arrive-by-years-end Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Hijacking Open Source
by Peter Reutemann 29 Sep '14

29 Sep '14

'Somewhere along the line, we’ve lost the spirit of what open source is supposed to be. Cloud computing, the rise of social networks, and data mining personal information on a massive scale has led to an explosion of interest in server side open source, but personal open source still languishes in comparison. Linux.com is running a story entitled Back to the Source: Why FOSS is More Important Than Ever questioning if freedom is still at the heart of open source, and wondering if this is what winning actually looks like. “Open Source” is more popular than ever, but it’s not because we live in an enlightened age of freedom, it’s because the term has been hijacked. ' -- source: http://ostatic.com/blog/hijacking-open-source Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Fwd: [NZLUG] ALERT: Remote code-exec in bash (CVE-2014-6271)
by Peter Reutemann 26 Sep '14

26 Sep '14

Typo... ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Volker Kuhlmann <hidden(a)paradise.net.nz> Date: Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 10:23 AM Subject: Re: [NZLUG] ALERT: Remote code-exec in bash (CVE-2014-6271) To: NZ Linux Users Group <nzlug(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz> On Thu 25 Sep 2014 08:33:37 NZST +1200, Clark Mills wrote: > [ from /. thread ] > > This is the test to see if you are vulnerable: > > env x='() {:;}; echo vulnerable' bash -c "echo this is a test" Thanks for that. http://beta.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5750159&cid=47985625 However, your code here seems to have a serious copy/paste/etc error in it: > bash > env x='() {:;}; echo vulnerable' bash -c "echo this is a test" bash: x: line 0: syntax error near unexpected token `{:' bash: x: line 0: `x () {:;}; echo vulnerable' bash: error importing function definition for `x' this is a test > env x='() { :;}; echo vulnerable' bash -c "echo this is a test" vulnerable this is a test GNU bash, version 4.2.42(1)-release (x86_64-suse-linux-gnu) Volker -- Volker Kuhlmann is list0570 with the domain in header. http://volker.top.geek.nz/ Please do not CC list postings to me. _______________________________________________ NZLUG mailing list NZLUG(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz http://lists.nzoss.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/nzlug -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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First Shellshock Botnet Attacking Akamai, US DoD Networks
by Peter Reutemann 26 Sep '14

26 Sep '14

'The Bash "Shellshock" bug is being used to spread malware to create a botnet, that's active and attacking Akamai and Department of Defense networks. "The 'wopbot' botnet is active and scanning the internet for vulnerable systems, including at the United States Department of Defence, chief executive of Italian security consultancy Tiger Security, Emanuele Gentili, told iTnews. 'We have found a botnet that runs on Linux servers, named “wopbot", that uses the Bash Shellshock bug to auto-infect other servers,' Gentili said."' -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/09/25/236256 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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GNOME 3.14 Released
by Peter Reutemann 25 Sep '14

25 Sep '14

"GNOME 3.14 was released today and it includes some interesting changes such as re-worked default theme, multi-touch gestures for both the system and applications, and new animations. Information including details on all the new features, can be found here." -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/09/24/2155241 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Kali NetHunter turns Android device into hacker Swiss Army knife
by Peter Reutemann 25 Sep '14

25 Sep '14

"One of the tools we've leaned on heavily in some of our lab testing of software privacy and security is Kali Linux. The Debian-based operating system comes packaged with a collection of penetration testing and network monitoring tools curated and developed by the security training company Offensive Security. Today, the Kali developer team and Offensive Security released a new Kali project that runs on a Google Nexus device. Called NetHunter, the distribution provides much of the power of Kali with the addition of a browser-driven set of tools that can be used to launch attacks on wireless networks or on unattended computers via a USB connection." -- source: http://bit.ly/1veUgAz Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Fwd: [NZLUG] ALERT: Remote code-exec in bash (CVE-2014-6271)
by Peter Reutemann 24 Sep '14

24 Sep '14

FYI ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Clark Mills <c.mills(a)auckland.ac.nz> Date: Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 8:33 AM Subject: Re: [NZLUG] ALERT: Remote code-exec in bash (CVE-2014-6271) To: NZ Linux Users Group <nzlug(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz> [ from /. thread ] This is the test to see if you are vulnerable: env x='() {:;}; echo vulnerable' bash -c "echo this is a test" On 25/09/14 08:16, Jaco wrote: > > bash is borked. > > http://www.csoonline.com/article/2687265/application-security/remote-exploi… > > This bad. > This is very, VERY bad. > > Please go patch! _______________________________________________ NZLUG mailing list NZLUG(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz http://lists.nzoss.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/nzlug -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Linux Saturday Workshop
by Bruce Kingsbury 24 Sep '14

24 Sep '14

I'll be running another Saturday Linux Workshop this weekend; Saturday September 27th, 2014 10:00 am – 2:00 pm *Te Whare O Te Ata* 60a Sare Cres Hamilton, 3214 07 2820577 This is a GNU/Linux-focused workshop where people can bring their PCs, Laptops, Pi's, Android devices etc for trouble-shooting and to learn or try out new skills. All visitors welcome - light lunch provided - gold coin donation appreciated

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Debian Switching Back To GNOME As the Default Desktop
by Peter Reutemann 24 Sep '14

24 Sep '14

"Debian will switch back to using GNOME as the default desktop environment for the upcoming Debian 8.0 Jessie release, due out in 2015. The decision is based on accessibility and systemd integration, along with a host of other reasons. Debian switched away from GNOME back in 2012." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/09/23/2312251 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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DuckDuckGo Now Blocked In China
by Peter Reutemann 23 Sep '14

23 Sep '14

"Privacy-oriented search engine DuckDuckGo is now blocked in China. On Sunday DuckDuckGo founder and CEO Gabriel Weinberg confirmed to Tech in Asia that the team has noticed the blockage in China on Twitter. DuckDuckGo had been working fine in mainland China since its inception, aside from the occasional 'connection reset' experienced when accessing many overseas websites from within the country. But now the search engine is totally blocked in China. ... [T]he GreatFire index of blocked sites suggest that DuckDuckGo got whacked on September 4. DuckDuckGo joins Google in being censored and blocked in the nation. Google, after years of being throttled by China's Great Firewall since the web giant turned off its mainland China servers in 2010, was finallyblocked totally in June this year." -- source: http://search.slashdot.org/story/14/09/23/0052206 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Outlining Thin Linux
by Peter Reutemann 23 Sep '14

23 Sep '14

'Deep End's Paul Venezia follows up his call for splitting Linux distros in two by arguing that the new shape of the Linux server is thin, light, and fine-tuned to a single purpose. "Those of us who build and maintain large-scale Linux infrastructures would be happy to see a highly specific, highly stable mainstream distro that had no desktop package or dependency support whatsoever, so was not beholden to architectural changes made due to desktop package requirements. When you're rolling out a few hundred Linux VMs locally, in the cloud, or both, you won't manually log into them, much less need any type of graphical support. Frankly, you could lose the framebuffer too; it wouldn't matter unless you were running certain tests," Venezia writes. "It's only a matter of time before a Linux distribution that caters solely to these considerations becomes mainstream and is offered alongside more traditional distributions."' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/09/22/2245217 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Fork of Systemd Leads To Lightweight Uselessd
by Peter Reutemann 21 Sep '14

21 Sep '14

"A boycott of systemd and other backlash around systemd's feature-creep has led to the creation of Uselessd, a new init daemon. Uselessd is a fork of systemd 208 that strips away functionality considered irrelevant to an init system like the systemd journal and udev. Uselessd also adds in functionality not accepted in upstream systemd like support for alternative C libraries (namely uClibc and musl) and it's even being ported to BSD." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/09/21/1427240 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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KDE's UI To Bend Toward Simplicity
by Peter Reutemann 20 Sep '14

20 Sep '14

"KDE Software is often criticized for being too complicated for an average user to use. Try setting up Kmail and you would know what I mean. The KDE developers are aware of it and now they are working on making KDE UI simpler. KDE usability team lead Thomas Pfeiffer Thomas prefers a layered feature exposure so that users can enjoy certain advanced features at a later stage after they get accustomed to the basic functionality of the application. He quotes the earlier (pre-Plasma era) vision of KDE 4 – "Anything that makes Linux interesting for technical users (shells, compilation, drivers, minute user settings) will be available; not as the default way of doing things, but at the user's discretion." -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/09/20/0725232 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Android Apps Now Unofficially Able To Run On Any Major Desktop OS
by Peter Reutemann 20 Sep '14

20 Sep '14

'A developer who goes by the handle Vladikoff has tweaked Google's App Runtime for Chrome (ARC) to allow any Android app to run on any major desktop operating system, not just the handful announced last week which were also limited to Chrome OS. His tweaked version of ARC is re-packaged as ARChon. The install isn't very straightforward, and you have to be in developer mode on Chrome. But there's a support forum on reddit. The extension will work on any OS running the desktop version of Chrome 37 and up as long as the user also installs chromeos-apk, which converts raw Android app packages (APKs) to a Chrome extension. Ars Technica reports that apps run this way are buggy, fast, and crash often but expresses optimism for when Google officially "opens the floodgates on the Play Store, putting 1.3 million Android apps onto nearly every platform."' -- source: http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/14/09/20/0250209 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Native Netflix Support Is Coming To Linux
by Peter Reutemann 20 Sep '14

20 Sep '14

'Native support for Netflix is coming to Linux, thanks to their move from Silverlight to HTML5, Mozilla and Google Chrome. Paul Adolph from Netflix proposed a solution to Ubuntu developers: "Netflix will play with Chrome stable in 14.02 if NSS version 3.16.2 or greater is installed. If this version is generally installed across 14.02, Netflix would be able to make a change so users would no longer have to hack their User-Agent to play." The newer version of NSS is set to go out with the next security update.' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/09/19/1350202 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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TrueCrypt Gets a New Life, New Name
by Peter Reutemann 20 Sep '14

20 Sep '14

"Amid ongoing security concerns, the popular open source encryption program TrueCrypt may have found new life under a new name. Under the terms of the TrueCrypt license — which was a homemade open source license written by the authors themselves rather than a standard one — a forking of the code is allowed if references to TrueCrypt are removed from the code and the resulting application is not called TrueCrypt. Thus, CipherShed will be released under a standard open source license, with long-term ambitions to become a completely new product." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/09/19/1620240 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Digia Spins Off Qt As Subsidiary
by Peter Reutemann 16 Sep '14

16 Sep '14

"Following through on an announcement from August, Digia has spun off a subsidiary called The Qt Company to unify Qt's commercial and open source efforts, and debuted a low-cost plan for mobile developers. The Linux-oriented Qt cross-platform development framework has had a tumultuous career, having been passed around Scandinavia over the years from Trolltech to Nokia and then from Nokia to Digia. Yet, Qt keeps rolling along in both commercial and open source community versions, continually adding support for new platforms and technologies, and gaining extensive support from mobile developers. Now Qt is its own company, or at least a wholly owned subsidiary under Digia. Finland-based Digia has largely been involved with the commercial versions of Qt since it acquired the platform from Nokia in 2012, but it has also sponsored the community Qt Project as a relatively separate project. Now, both efforts are being unified under one roof at The Qt Company and the new QT.io website, says Digia. Meanwhile, Digia will focus on its larger enterprise software business." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/09/16/2146243 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Industry-Based ToDo Alliance Wants To Guide FOSS Development
by Peter Reutemann 16 Sep '14

16 Sep '14

'The New York Times broke a story [Monday] (paywalled if you look at more than 10 stories a month) about ToDo, "an open group of companies who run open source programs" who are seeking to "committed to working together in order to overcome" the challenges of using FOSS, "including ensuring high-quality and frequent releases, engaging with developer communities, and using and contributing back to other projects effectively." The more militant among us will read that as "It's not enough getting a free ride off of developers building great software, we want to shove our roadmap down their throats and get them to work harder for us — without having to pay for it, of course." That might be a bit harsh, but none of the companies on the page are exactly well known for cooperating with the projects they use, with Google being one of the worst offenders by forking both Linux and WebKit.' -- source: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/14/09/16/1244207 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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