November 2017 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Intel Planning To End Legacy BIOS Support By 2020, Report Says
by Peter Reutemann 20 Nov '17

20 Nov '17

'Intel is planning to end "legacy BIOS" support in their new platforms by 2020 in requiring UEFI Class 3 or higher. Making rounds this weekend is a slide deck from the recent UEFI Plugfest. Brian Richardson of Intel talked about the "last mile" barriers to removing legacy BIOS support from systems. By 2020, they will be supporting no less than UEFI Class 3, which means only UEFI support and no more legacy BIOS or CSM compatibility support mode. But that's not going to force on UEFI Secure Boot unconditionally: Secure Boot enabled is considered UEFI Class 3+. Intel hasn't removed legacy BIOS / CSM support yet due to many customers' software packages still relying upon legacy BIOS, among other reasons. Removing the legacy BIOS support will mitigate some security risks, needs less validation by vendors, allows for supporting more modern technologies, etc.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/17/11/20/1251249 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Another Tor Browser Feature Makes It Into Firefox: First-Party Isolation
by Peter Reutemann 20 Nov '17

20 Nov '17

'Unbeknown to most users, Mozilla added a privacy-enhancing feature to the Firefox browser over the summer that can help users block online advertisers from tracking them across the Internet. The feature is named First-Party Isolation (FPI) and was silently added to the Firefox browser in August, with the release of Firefox 55. FPI works by separating cookies on a per-domain basis. This is important because most online advertisers drop a cookie on the user's computer for each site the user visits and the advertisers loads an ad. With FPI enabled, the ad tracker won't be able to see all the cookies it dropped on that user's PC, but only the cookie created for the domain the user is currently viewing. This will force the ad tracker to create a new user profile for each site the user visits and the advertiser won't be able to aggregate these cookies and the user's browsing history into one big fat profile. This feature was first implemented in the Tor Browser, a privacy-focused fork of the Firefox browser managed by the Tor Project, where it is known as Cross-Origin Identifier Unlinkability. FPI was added to Firefox as part of the Tor Uplift project, an initiative to bolster the Firefox codebase with some of the Tor Browser's unique privacy-focused features. The feature is not enabled by default. Information on how to enable it is in the linked article.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/11/20/1713235 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Bluetooth Hack Affects 20 Million Amazon Echo, Google Home Devices
by Peter Reutemann 17 Nov '17

17 Nov '17

'In September, security researchers discovered eight vulnerabilities -- codenamed collectively as BlueBorne -- in the Bluetooth implementations used by over 5.3 billion devices. We have now learned that an estimated 20 million Amazon Echo and Google Home devices are also vulnerable to attacks leveraging the BlueBorne vulnerabilities. The Hacker News reports: Amazon Echo is affected by the following two vulnerabilities: a remote code execution vulnerability in the Linux kernel (CVE-2017-1000251); and an information disclosure flaw in the SDP server (CVE-2017-1000250). Since different Echo's variants use different operating systems, other Echo devices are affected by either the vulnerabilities found in Linux or Android. Whereas, Google Home devices are affected by one vulnerability: information disclosure vulnerability in Android's Bluetooth stack (CVE-2017-0785). This Android flaw can also be exploited to cause a denial-of-service (DoS) condition. Since Bluetooth cannot be disabled on either of the voice-activated personal assistants, attackers within the range of the affected device can easily launch an attack. The security firm [Armis, who disclosed the issue] notified both Amazon and Google about its findings, and both companies have released patches and issued automatic updates for the Amazon Echo and Google Home that fixes the BlueBorne attacks. ' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/17/11/17/0037251 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Online Banking Security
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 17 Nov '17

17 Nov '17

Here <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/03/uk_bank_security_audit/> are the results of an audit on UK banks to check their adherence to various established security practices: * HTTP Strict Transport Security <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Strict_Transport_Security> * Security Headers <https://securityheaders.io/> * Content Security Policy <https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/CSP> * avoidance of weak and obsolete encryption (e.g. RC4) The result: a real mixed bag. Has anyone done a similar thing for our banks?

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Belgium: Skype Is Officially A Telco, Must Comply With Interception Warrants
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 17 Nov '17

17 Nov '17

Skype has failed in its appeal against a 2016 fine in Belgium for failing to help authorities tap calls in a criminal investigation, with the court saying it must comply with the country's telecommunications laws. <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/16/skypes_belgian_appeal_fails/>

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Re: [wlug] Scam -- A Service To Scam The Scammers
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 16 Nov '17

16 Nov '17

When you get a scam e-mail, how about forwarding it to the Re:Scam service <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20171113/02094138603/great-use-artificial…>. This activates an AI that will engage in long, fruitless conversations with the scammers--basically waste their time. And it’s run by Netsafe, here in New Zealand.

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Will Propaganda Eat Itself?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 15 Nov '17

15 Nov '17

Just the latest <https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/11/russian-military-cites-game-screensh…> in an ever-growing line of incidents where various Governments and Press agencies mistakenly cite video-game footage as “proof” of nefarious activities by their opponents, and end up with egg on their faces as a result. Part of the trouble seems to be that such images tend to rank very highly in Google searches. But that shouldn’t be much of an obstacle for *proper* researchers, right? ;)

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oldest usable Android version -- any opinions?
by Ian Young 15 Nov '17

15 Nov '17

Apologies for straying off topic. I need to get an Android phone to replace an ancient Sony-E, but hanker somewhat for the days of removable batteries, and like a stylus. This points afaict to an older Samsung Note model but then comes the problem of obsolete versions of Android. Can anyone suggest what is the oldest Android that can still be used on the web of today? Or perhaps there is a current phone with removable battery? ~ Ian Y

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OnePlus Phones Come Preinstalled With a Factory App That Can Root Devices
by Peter Reutemann 14 Nov '17

14 Nov '17

'Some OnePlus devices, if not all, come preinstalled with an application named EngineerMode that can be used to root the device and may be converted into a fully-fledged backdoor by clever attackers. The app was discovered by a mobile security researcher who goes online by the pseudonym of Elliot Alderson -- the name of the main character in the Mr. Robot TV series. Speaking to Bleeping Computer, the researcher said he started investigating OnePlus devices after a story he saw online last month detailing a hidden stream of telemetry data sent by OnePlus devices to the company's servers.' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/11/14/140250 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Fedora 27 Released
by Peter Reutemann 14 Nov '17

14 Nov '17

'The Fedora Project has announced the general availability of Fedora 27 Workstation and Fedora 27 Atomic editions. Fedora 27 brings with it "thousands of improvements" from both the Fedora Community and various upstream software projects, the team said on Tuesday. From a post on Fedora Magazine: The Workstation edition of Fedora 27 features GNOME 3.26. In the new release, both the Display and Network configuration panels have been updated, along with the overall Settings panel appearance improvement. The system search now shows more results at once, including the system actions. GNOME 3.26 also features color emoji support, folder sharing in Boxes, and numerous improvements in the Builder IDE tool. The new release also features LibreOffice ' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/11/14/1552228 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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