June 2018 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

KDE Plasma 5.13 Released
by Peter Reutemann 13 Jun '18

13 Jun '18

'KDE unveils the final release of Plasma 5.13, the free and open-source desktop environment. Members of the Plasma team have focused on optimizing startup and minimizing memory usage. Plasma Browser Integration is a suite of new features which make Firefox, Chrome and Chromium-based browsers work with your desktop. For example, downloads are now displayed in the Plasma notification popup, and the Media Controls Plasmoid can mute and skip videos and music playing from within the browser. Browser tabs can be opened directly using KRunner via the Alt-Space keyboard shortcut. System Settings design has been improved further. Window manager gained much-improved effects for blur and desktop switching. Wayland work continued, with the return of window rules, and initial support for screencasts and desktop sharing.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/06/12/206253 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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Chrome Google Disables Inline Installation For Chrome Extensions
by Peter Reutemann 12 Jun '18

12 Jun '18

'Google today announced that Chrome will no longer support inline installation of extensions. New extensions lose inline installation starting today, existing extensions will lose the ability in three months, and in early December the inline install API will be removed from the browser with the release of Chrome 71. Critics have pointed out such moves make the Chrome Web Store a walled garden, while Google insists pushing users to the store ultimately protects them.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/06/12/1820217 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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KDE Slimbook 2 Review
by Peter Reutemann 08 Jun '18

08 Jun '18

'The kind folks at Slimbook recently sent me the latest generation of their ultrabook-style laptop line for review, the KDE Slimbook 2. You can hear my thoughts on the latest episode of the Ubuntu Podcast, released on June 7th 2018. Slimbook are a small laptop vendor based in Spain. All the laptops ship with KDE Neon as the default operating system. In addition to their hardware, they also contribute to and facilitate local Free Software events in their area. I was sent the laptop only for review purposes. There's no other incentive provided, and Slimbook didn't see this blog post before I published it. Being a small vendor, they don't have the same buying power with OEM vendors as other big name laptop suppliers. This is reflected in the price you pay. You're supporting a company who are themselves supporting Free Software developers and communities. If you're after the cheapest possible laptop, and don't care about its origin or the people behind the device, then maybe this laptop isn't for you. However, if you like to vote with your wallet, then the KDE Slimbook should absolutely be on your list to seriously consider.' -- source: https://popey.com/blog/posts/kde-slimbook-2-review.html 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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Stymied by browsers, attackers embed Flash 0-day inside MS Office document
by Peter Reutemann 08 Jun '18

08 Jun '18

'As browser makers make it increasingly hard to exploit vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash and other plugins, hackers targeting diplomats in the Middle East tried a new approach this month: using Microsoft Office to remotely load Flash content that used a potent zero-day flaw to take control of computers.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/06/stymied-by-browsers-… 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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How Much Physical Memory Do I Have?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 07 Jun '18

07 Jun '18

The free(1) <https://linux.die.net/man/1/free> command shows you system memory usage. E.g. on my laptop a few seconds ago: ldo(a)theodora:~> free total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 7922644 1210968 3137520 135964 3574156 6265612 Swap: 8388604 24912 8363692 But there’s something not quite right about that “total” number. The machine has 8GiB of RAM, which should show as 8388608KiB. What happened to the remaining 465964KiB? That is taken up by the kernel. But where can you find a figure for this amount? Where can you make up a total that adds up to 8388608KiB? Seems there is no such place, at least not one accessible to non-privileged software. free(1) gets its info from /proc/meminfo, which is where the kernel reports it. But there is no place in this file (or anywhere else that I know of) that the kernel calculates its own memory usage. However, there is a privileged tool, dmidecode(8) <https://linux.die.net/man/8/dmidecode>, which can get information direct from the “DMI” (aka “SMBIOS”) table. In particular, the command dmidecode -t 17 on the laptop reports two “Memory Device” entries (slots for RAM DIMMs?), one of which says “Size: No Module Installed” while the other has “Size: 8192 MB” (which obviously means 8192MiB). So you have to take the total from here as your actual physical RAM, and subtract the amount shown by free(1) (or read from /proc/meminfo) to get the kernel RAM usage.

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Microsoft Addresses Pressure From Developer Community, Promises To Rename GVFS
by Peter Reutemann 07 Jun '18

07 Jun '18

'Earlier this week an article ran about how Microsoft's multi-year refusal to rename its terabyte-scale Git extension "GVFS" (Git Virtual File System) had drawn the ire and dismay of the GNOME GVfs project (Gnome Virtual File System) which predates the Microsoft project by years. Thanks to Slashdot coverage and community pressure, Microsoft has now officially promised to rename GVFS to something else, and is asking the community for suggestions for a new name. Is this an official sign that MIcrosoft is finally listening to developers (albeit with a Slashdot-level of negative attention), or are they simply trying to appease the crowd while they are still in the news due to their acquisition of GitHub?' -- source: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/18/06/06/132215 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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Microsoft Adds Post-Quantum Cryptography To an OpenVPN Fork
by Peter Reutemann 07 Jun '18

07 Jun '18

'Microsoft recently published an interesting open source project called "PQCrypto-VPN" that implements post-quantum cryptography (PQC) within OpenVPN. Being developed by the Microsoft Research Security and Cryptography group, as part of their research into post-quantum cryptography, this fork is being used to test PQC algorithms and their performance and functionality when used with VPNs. Microsoft's PQCrypto-VPN is published on Github and allows anyone to build an OpenVPN implementation that can encrypt communications using three different post-quantum cryptography protocols, with more coming as they are developed. These protocols are: (1) Frodo: a key exchange protocol based on the learning with errors problem (2) SIKE: a key exchange protocol based on Supersingular Isogeny Diffie-Hellman and (3) Picnic: a signature algorithm using symmetric-key primitives and non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/06/06/138258 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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VPNFilter malware infecting 500, 000 devices is worse than we thought
by Peter Reutemann 07 Jun '18

07 Jun '18

'Two weeks ago, officials in the private and public sectors warned that hackers working for the Russian government infected more than 500,000 consumer-grade routers in 54 countries with malware that could be used for a range of nefarious purposes. Now, researchers from Cisco’s Talos security team say additional analysis shows that the malware is more powerful than originally thought and runs on a much broader base of models, many from previously unaffected manufacturers.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/06/vpnfilter-malware-in… 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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UN Plan To Move The World To IPv6
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 06 Jun '18

06 Jun '18

The UN has a plan to try to increase IPv6 adoption <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/30/internet_engineers_united_nations_i…>. However, it does it by essentially saddling IPv6 with all the limitations of IPv4 that IPv6 was specifically created to overcome. The UN has been trying for a while to take over governance of the Internet and its standards. This has been fought off by a US-led effort in favour of the IETF, ICANN etc -- all the bodies we know and love. However, the UN can claim some moral high ground in its advocacy for greater adoption among the developing world -- places where such bodies tend to be under-represented.

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Web Radio
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 06 Jun '18

06 Jun '18

Just came across this WebSDR website <http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/> which lets people listen to short-wave stations remotely. I haven’t actually tried fiddling with it -- it was linked from this article <https://warontherocks.com/2018/05/explaining-the-mystery-of-numbers-station…> on those mysterious “numbers stations” for broadcasting messages to spies.

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