April 2018 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Drupal Warns of New Remote-Code Bug, the Second in Four Weeks
by Peter Reutemann 26 Apr '18

26 Apr '18

'For the second time in a month, websites that use the Drupal content management system are confronted with a stark choice: install a critical update or risk having your servers infected with ransomware or other nasties. From a report: Maintainers of the open-source CMS built on the PHP programming language released an update patching critical remote-code vulnerability on Wednesday. The bug, formally indexed as CVE-2018-7602, exists within multiple subsystems of Drupal 7.x and 8.x. Drupal maintainers didn't provide details on how the vulnerability can be exploited other than to say attacks work remotely. The maintainers rated the vulnerability "critical" and urged websites to patch it as soon as possible.' -- source: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/18/04/25/1956214 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/

1 0

Was Our Census Data Secure?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 25 Apr '18

25 Apr '18

According to this article <http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12038826>, when we were filling out our census data online last month, it was actually going through the servers of a company called Incapsula, which was scanning the unencrypted data for malware. Since the company is based in the US, this naturally raises concerns about US Government access to the data of NZ residents and citizens. On the one hand, the article says “this is not a data breach”, but on the other hand Adding to the researchers' concerns, Stats NZ's digital key that is required to decrypt the data sent over TLS secured connections is now distributed across Incapsula's global network, Teague and Culnane said. "Our non-exhaustive search found that servers in Australia, the US, as well as New Zealand, all had the Stats NZ key," they added. Digital TLS keys are supposed to be protected and should only be kept on the servers that they relate to, the researchers said. If keys are leaked, attackers could use them to impersonate Stats NZ servers. and further down they use the phrase “clear security flaw”. Stats NZ insists the company is trusted and “Goverment-approved”. Given it’s also protecting the GCSB, I guess that is already very literally true.

1 0

Can Online Elections Ever Be Secure?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 25 Apr '18

25 Apr '18

Commentary <https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/04/securing_electi_1.html> from Bruce Schneier: We can securely bank online, but can't securely vote online. If we could do away with anonymity -- if everyone could check that their vote was counted correctly -- then it would be easy to secure the vote. ... We can't, so we need to accept that our voting systems are insecure. We need an election system that is resilient to the threats. And for many parts of the system, that means paper.

1 0

meeting next week
by Peter Reutemann 25 Apr '18

25 Apr '18

Hi guys We have a WLUG meeting next Monday: "With the Cambridge Analytics scandal around (ab)using data obtained through Facebook, how about we have a look at (self-hosted) alternatives to the social network giant? Details on scandal: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/03/facebooks-cambridge-analytica-s… Social media alternatives (eg diaspora, gnu social): https://alternativeto.net/software/facebook/" -- details: https://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/246737141/ 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/

2 4

What Private Browsing Mode Really Means
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 25 Apr '18

25 Apr '18

Seems like a lot of people <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/24/private_web_browsing_study/> have the wrong idea about what is really “private” in private browsing mode. Many of them believe that * Activity while logged into an account (e.g. Google) will not be saved in that account’s history * Bookmarks made in private mode are not visible in standard mode * It prevents websites from tracking their location * It affords better protection against malware * It obscures their IP address. None of which is true. To its credit, when you open a private window in Firefox, it clearly states the things that are hidden and the things that are not.

1 0

Ubuntu 18.04?
by Peter Reutemann 24 Apr '18

24 Apr '18

Hi everyone Since April would be the usual month for an Ubuntu release, I was surprised that I hadn't heard anything so far. The following article mentions a release date of 26/4: https://fossbytes.com/ubuntu-18-04-bionic-beaver-release-date-features/ And according to the Ubuntu wiki, this still seems to be happening: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BionicBeaver/ReleaseTaskSignup 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/

1 0

Google Accused of Showing 'Total Contempt' for Android Users' Privacy
by Peter Reutemann 23 Apr '18

23 Apr '18

'On the heels of a terse privacy debate, Google may have found another thing to worry about: its attempt to rethink the traditional texting system. From a report: Joe Westby is Amnesty International's Technology and Human Rights researcher. Recently, in response to Google's launch of a new messaging service called "Chat", Westby argued that Google, "shows total contempt for Android users' privacy." "With its baffling decision to launch a messaging service without end-to-end encryption, Google has shown utter contempt for the privacy of Android users and handed a precious gift to cybercriminals and government spies alike, allowing them easy access to the content of Android users' communications. Following the revelations by CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption has become recognized as an essential safeguard for protecting people's privacy when using messaging apps. With this new Chat service, Google shows a staggering failure to respect the human rights of its customers," Westby contended. Westby continued, saying: "In the wake of the recent Facebook data scandal, Google's decision is not only dangerous but also out of step with current attitudes to data privacy."' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/04/23/1946251 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/

1 0

“Drupalgeddon2” touches off arms race to mass-exploit powerful Web servers
by Peter Reutemann 22 Apr '18

22 Apr '18

'Attackers are mass-exploiting a recently fixed vulnerability in the Drupal content management system that allows them to take complete control of powerful website servers, researchers from multiple security companies are warning. At least three different attack groups are exploiting "Drupalgeddon2," the name given to an extremely critical vulnerability Drupal maintainers patched in late March, researchers with Netlab 360 said Friday. Formally indexed as CVE- 2018-7600, Drupalgeddon2 makes it easy for anyone on the Internet to take complete control of vulnerable servers simply by accessing a URL and injecting publicly available exploit code. Exploits allow attackers to run code of their choice without having to have an account of any type on a vulnerable website. The remote-code vulnerability harkens back to a 2014 Drupal vulnerability that also made it easy to commandeer vulnerable servers. Drupalgeddon2 "is under active attack, and every Drupal site behind our network is being probed constantly from multiple IP addresses," Daniel Cid, CTO and founder of security firm Sucuri, told Ars. "Anyone that has not patched is hacked already at this point. Since the first public exploit was released, we are seeing this arms race between the criminals as they all try to hack as many sites as they can." China-based Netlab 360, meanwhile, said at least three competing attack groups are exploiting the vulnerability. The most active group, Netlab 360 researchers said in a blog post published Friday, is using it to install multiple malicious payloads, including cryptocurrency miners and software for performing distributed denial-of-service attacks on other domains. The group, dubbed Muhstik after a keyword that pops up in its code, relies on 11 separate command-and-control domains and IP addresses, presumably for redundancy in the event one gets taken down.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/04/drupalgeddon2-touche… 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/

1 0

Millions of Chrome Users Have Installed Malware Posing as Ad Blockers
by Peter Reutemann 19 Apr '18

19 Apr '18

'Andrey Meshkov, the cofounder of ad-blocker AdGuard, recently got curious about the number of knock-off ad blocking extensions available for Google's popular browser Chrome. These extensions were deliberately styled to look like legitimate, well-known ad blockers, but Meshkov wondered why they existed at all, so he downloaded one and took a look at the code. "Basically I downloaded it and checked what requests the extension was making," Meshkov told me over the phone. "Some strange requests caught my attention." Meshkov discovered that the AdRemover extension for Chrome -- which had over 10 million users -- had code hidden inside an image that was loaded from the remote command server, giving the extension creator the ability to change its functions without updating. This alone is against Google's policy, and after Meshkov wrote about a few examples on AdGuard's blog, many of which had millions of downloads, Chrome removed the extensions from the store. I reached out to Google, and a spokesperson confirmed that these extensions had been removed.' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/18/04/19/1946250 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/

1 0

Ask Slashdot: Is There a Good Alternative to Facebook?
by Peter Reutemann 18 Apr '18

18 Apr '18

'Long-time Slashdot reader Lauren Weinstein argues that fixing Facebook may be impossible because "Facebook's entire ecosystem is predicated on encouraging the manipulation of its users by third parties who posses the skills and financial resources to leverage Facebook's model. These are not aberrations at Facebook -- they are exactly how Facebook was designed to operate." Meanwhile one fund manager is already predicting that sooner or later every social media platform "is going to become MySpace," adding that "Nobody young uses Facebook," and that the backlash over Cambridge Analytica "quickens the demise." But Slashdot reader silvergeek asks, "is there a safe, secure, and ethical alternative?" to which tepples suggests "the so-called IndieWeb stack using the h-entry microformat." He also suggests Diaspora, with an anonymous Diaspora user adding that "My family uses a server I put up to trade photos and posts... Ultimately more people need to start hosting family servers to help us get off the cloud craze... NethServer is a pretty decent CentOS based option." Meanwhile Slashdot user Locke2005 shared a Washington Post profile of Mastodon, "a Twitter-like social network that has had a massive spike in sign-ups this week." Mastodon's code is open-source, meaning anybody can inspect its design. It's distributed, meaning that it doesn't run in some data center controlled by corporate executives but instead is run by its own users who set up independent servers. And its development costs are paid for by online donations, rather than through the marketing of users' personal information... Rooted in the idea that it doesn't benefit consumers to depend on centralized commercial platforms sucking up users' personal information, these entrepreneurs believe they can restore a bit of the magic from the Internet's earlier days -- back when everything was open and interoperable, not siloed and commercialized. The article also interviews the founders of Blockstack, a blockchain-based marketplace for apps where all user data remains local and encrypted. "There's no company in the middle that's hosting all the data," they tell the Post. "We're going back to the world where it's like the old-school Microsoft Word -- where your interactions are yours, they're local and nobody's tracking them." On Medium, Mastodon founder Eugene Rochko also acknowledges Scuttlebutt and Hubzilla, ending his post with a message to all social media users: "To make an impact, we must act." Lauren Weinstein believes Google has already created an alternative to Facebook's "sick ecosystem": Google Plus. "There are no ads on Google+. Nobody can buy their way into your feed or pay Google for priority. Google doesn't micromanage what you see. Google doesn't sell your personal information to any third parties..." And most importantly, "There's much less of an emphasis on hanging around with those high school nitwits whom you despised anyway, and much more a focus on meeting new persons from around the world for intelligent discussions... G+ posts more typically are about 'us' -- and tend to be far more interesting as a result." (Even Linus Torvalds is already reviewing gadgets there.) Wired has also compiled their own list of alternatives to every Facebook service. But what are Slashdot's readers doing for their social media fix? Leave your own thoughts and suggestions in the comments. Is there a good alternative to Facebook?' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/03/25/0039218 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/

3 3