September 2018 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Booting Debian Jessie On An SGI UV-1000 Supercomputer
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 07 Sep '18

07 Sep '18

Just one of several YouTube vids showing a supercomputer run a stock-standard Linux kernel <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8hKjPh5SVo>. Note the part where it says “System RAM: 2096630MB”.

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Tor Browser Gets a Redesign, Switches To New Firefox Quantum Engine
by Peter Reutemann 06 Sep '18

06 Sep '18

'The Tor Browser has rolled out a new interface with the release of v8. From a report: The Tor Browser has always been based on the Firefox codebase, but it lagged behind a few releases. Mozilla rolled out a major overhaul of the Firefox codebase in November 2017, with the release of Firefox 57, the first release in the Firefox Quantum series. Firefox Quantum came with a new page rendering engine, a new add-ons API, and a new user interface called the Photon UI. Because these were major, code-breaking changes, it took the smaller Tor team some time to integrate all of them into the Tor Browser codebase and make sure everything worked as intended. The new Tor Browser 8, released yesterday, is now in sync with the most recent version of Firefox, the Quantum release, and also supports all of its features. This means the Tor Browser now uses the same modern Photon UI that current Firefox versions use, it supports the same speed-optimized page rendering engine and has also dropped support for the old XUL-based add-ons system for the new WebExtensions API system used by Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi, Brave, and the rest of the Chromium browsers.' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/18/09/06/1651255 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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400, 000 Websites Vulnerable Through Exposed .git Directories
by Peter Reutemann 06 Sep '18

06 Sep '18

'Open .git directories are a bigger cybersecurity problem than many might imagine, at least according to a Czech security researcher who discovered almost 400,000 web pages with an open .git directory possibly exposing a wide variety of data. From a report: Vladimir Smitka began his .git directory odyssey in July when he began looking at Czech websites to find how many were improperly configured and allow access to their .git folders within the file versions repository. Open .git directories are a particularly dangerous issue, he said, because they can contain a great deal of sensitive information. "Information about the website's structure, and sometimes you can get very sensitive data such as database passwords, API keys, development IDE settings, and so on. However, this data shouldn't be stored in the repository, but in previous scans of various security issues, I have found many developers that do not follow these best practices," Smitka wrote. Smitka queried 230 million websites to discover the 390,000 allowing access to their .git directories. The vast majority of the websites with open directories had a .com TLD with .net, .de, .org and uk comprising most of the others.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/09/06/1954253 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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Shutter screenshotting application - no edit button
by Peter Reutemann 06 Sep '18

06 Sep '18

Hi everyone In case you're a Shutter user for capturing screenshots, you may have noticed that the "Edit" button in the main window is disabled. Apparently, shutter hasn't been updated for a while and it is missing some older libraries, like on my Linux Mint 18. However, this is easily fixed: https://itsfoss.com/shutter-edit-button-disabled/ 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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Firefox 62 Arrives With Variable Fonts, Automatic Dark Theme on macOS, and Better Scrolling on Android
by Peter Reutemann 05 Sep '18

05 Sep '18

'Mozilla today released Firefox 62 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. The release builds on Firefox Quantum, which the company calls "by far the biggest update since Firefox 1.0 in 2004." Version 62 brings variable fonts, automatic dark theme on macOS, and better scrolling on Android. Firefox 62 for the desktop is available for download now on Firefox.com, and all existing users should be able to upgrade to it automatically. As always, the Android version is trickling out slowly on Google Play. The latest iOS version is available on Apple's App Store.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/18/09/05/1423259 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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Official Chrome Extension of Cloud Storage Service Mega Caught Stealing Passwords, Cryptocurrency Private Keys
by Peter Reutemann 05 Sep '18

05 Sep '18

'The official Chrome extension for the MEGA.nz file sharing service has been compromised with malicious code that steals usernames and passwords, but also private keys for cryptocurrency accounts, ZDNet reports. From the report: The malicious behavior was found in the source code of the MEGA.nz Chrome extension version 3.39.4, released as an update earlier today. Google engineers have already intervened and removed the extension from the official Chrome Web Store, and also disabled the extension for existing users. According to an analysis of the extension's source, the malicious code triggered on sites such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, GitHub, the MyEtherWallet and MyMonero web wallet services, and the IDEX cryptocurrency trading platform. The malicious code would record usernames, passwords, and other session data that attackers would need to log in and impersonate users. If the website managed cryptocurrency, the attacker would also extract the private keys needed to access users' funds.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/18/09/05/1841240 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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Mobile Spyware Maker mSpy Leaks Millions of Sensitive Records
by Peter Reutemann 05 Sep '18

05 Sep '18

'mSpy, the makers of a software-as-a-service product that claims to help more than a million paying customers spy on the mobile devices of their kids and partners, has leaked millions of sensitive records online, including passwords, call logs, text messages, contacts, notes and location data secretly collected from phones running the stealthy spyware. Krebs On Security reports: Less than a week ago, security researcher Nitish Shah directed KrebsOnSecurity to an open database on the Web that allowed anyone to query up-to-the-minute mSpy records for both customer transactions at mSpy's site and for mobile phone data collected by mSpy's software. The database required no authentication. Before it was taken offline sometime in the past 12 hours, the database contained millions of records, including the username, password and private encryption key of each mSpy customer who logged in to the mSpy site or purchased an mSpy license over the past six months. The private key would allow anyone to track and view details of a mobile device running the software, Shah said. In addition, the database included the Apple iCloud username and authentication token of mobile devices running mSpy, and what appear to be references to iCloud backup files. Anyone who stumbled upon this database also would have been able to browse the Whatsapp and Facebook messages uploaded from mobile devices equipped with mSpy. Other records exposed included the transaction details of all mSpy licenses purchased over the last six months, including customer name, email address, mailing address and amount paid. Also in the data set were mSpy user logs -- including the browser and Internet address information of people visiting the mSpy Web site. ' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/18/09/04/2236213 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 69 Arrives With Revamped Design, More Powerful Omnibox, and Better Password Manager
by Peter Reutemann 04 Sep '18

04 Sep '18

'Google today launched Chrome 69 for Windows, Mac, and Linux, Android, and iOS, just a few days after the browser's 10-year anniversary. The release includes a new design, more powerful omnibox, updated password manager, more accurate autofill, plenty of developer-specific changes, and a slew of security improvements. You can update to the latest version now using Chrome's built-in updater, download it directly from google.com/chrome, or grab it from Google Play and Apple's App Store.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/09/04/1711250 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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MikroTik Routers Are Forwarding Owners' Traffic To Unknown Attackers
by Peter Reutemann 04 Sep '18

04 Sep '18

'Attackers have been exploiting vulnerabilities in MikroTik routers to forward network traffic to a handful of IP addresses under their control. "The bug is in Winbox management component and allows a remote attacker to bypass authentication and read arbitrary files," reports Bleeping Computer. "Exploit code is freely available from at least three sources from at least three sources." From the report: 360Netlab announced in a blog post today that more than 7,500 MikroTik routers across the world are currently delivering their TZSP (TaZmen Sniffer Protocol) traffic to nine external IP addresses. According to the researchers, the attacker modified the device's packet sniffing settings to forward the data to their locations. "37.1.207.114 is the top player among all the attackers. A significant number of devices have their traffic going to this destination," Qihoo experts inform. The analysis shows that the attacker is particularly interested in ports 20, 21, 25, 110, and 144, which are for FTP-data, FTP, SMTP, POP3, and IMAP traffic. An unusual interest is in traffic from SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) ports 161 and 162, which researchers cannot explain at the moment. The largest number of compromised devices, 1,628, is in Russia, followed by Iran (637), Brazil (615), India (594) and Ukraine (544). The researchers say that security outfits in the affected countries can contact them at netlab[at]360.cn for a full list of IPs. ' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/18/09/04/2116202 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 Do Spectre/Meltdown Fixes Affect The Linux Kernel?
by Peter Reutemann 01 Sep '18

01 Sep '18

'"Using the newly minted Linux 4.19 feature code, fresh benchmarks were carried out looking at the performance cost of Spectre/Meltdown/Foreshadow mitigations on Intel Xeon v. AMD EPYC CPUs," writes an anonymous Slashdot reader: Workloads affected by these CPU vulnerabilities mainly deal with I/O and frequent kernel calls while CPU bound tests are still found to be minimally impacted. When toggling these mitigations on Linux 4.19, Intel Xeon CPUs were found to be 10~15% slower with the default kernel while AMD EPYC CPUs dropped to about 5% slower.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/18/09/01/1727238 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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