October 2019 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Privacy-Respecting Smart Home System Can Work Offline and Sends Fake Data
by Peter Reutemann 21 Oct '19

21 Oct '19

'A publicly-funded group of designers, artists and privacy experts from Amsterdam have designed a smart home system prototype to "prove it's technically possible to build a privacy respecting smart home while maintaining convenience." Its controller uses an Arduino Nano to disconnect the system from the internet during times when it's not in use. They're building everything on Mozilla's open smart home gateway software. The system's microphone is a separate USB device that can be easily unplugged. For extra security, the devices don't even use wifi to communicate. "The Candle devices offer the advantages of a smart home system -- such as voice control, handy automations and useful insights -- without the downsides of sending your data to the cloud and feeling watched in your own home," explains their blurb for Dutch Design Week, where they're launching their prototypes of trust-worthy smart locks, thermostats, and other Internet of Things devices: Most smart devices promises us an easier life, but they increasingly disappoint; they eavesdrop, share our data with countless third parties, and offer attractive targets to hackers. Candle is different. Your data never leaves your home, all devices work fine without an internet connection, and everything is open source and transparent. One of the group's members is long-time Slashdot reader mrwireless, who shares an interesting observation: Smart homes track everything that happens inside them. For developing teenagers, this makes it more difficult to sneak in a date or break the rules in other subtle ways, which is a normal, healthy part of growing up. Candle is a prototype smart home that tries to mitigate these issue. It has given its sensors the ability to generate fake data for a while. In the future, children could get a monthly fake data allowance. Some of the devices have "skirts", simple fabric covers that can be draped over the devices to hide their screen. If you own a dust sensor, this can be useful if your mother in law comes over and you haven't vacuumed in a while.' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/19/10/20/216238 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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Unpatched Linux bug may open devices to serious attacks over Wi-Fi
by Peter Reutemann 18 Oct '19

18 Oct '19

'A potentially serious vulnerability in Linux may make it possible for nearby devices to use Wi-Fi signals to crash or fully compromise vulnerable machines, a security researcher said. The flaw is located in the RTLWIFI driver, which is used to support Realtek Wi-Fi chips in Linux devices. The vulnerability triggers a buffer overflow in the Linux kernel when a machine with a Realtek Wi-Fi chip is within radio range of a malicious device. At a minimum, exploits would cause an operating-system crash and could possibly allow a hacker to gain complete control of the computer. The flaw dates back to version 3.10.1 of the Linux kernel released in 2013. "The bug is serious," Nico Waisman, who is a principal security engineer at Github, told Ars. "It's a vulnerability that triggers an overflow remotely through Wi-Fi on the Linux kernel, as long as you're using the Realtek (RTLWIFI) driver." The vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2019-17666. Linux developers proposed a fix on Wednesday that will likely be incorporated into the OS kernel in the coming days or weeks. Only after that will the fix make its way into various Linux distributions.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/10/unpatched-linux-flaw… 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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IBM+Red Hat: A Successful Acquisition For A Change?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 18 Oct '19

18 Oct '19

IBM reports <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/17/ibm_q3_2019_financials/> that its Red Hat division has been doing quite nicely since it was acquired. This is in contrast to the rest of the company, which seems to be continuing its long, slow downward slide. I have seen mention elsewhere of economic studies that show that, on average, corporate mergers and acquisitions tend to destroy value rather than create it (e.g. the all-too-common scenario of “big company buys small company and then drives away its customers and shuts it down”). The realization of actual “synergies” seems to be the exception rather than the rule. Maybe IBM will continue jettisoning its other parts, and end up being just Red Hat in all but name...

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Bug In Python Script May Have Affected Hundreds Of Studies
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 18 Oct '19

18 Oct '19

A set of Python scripts popularly used to analyze chemistry data has had a long-standing bug in that it had assumptions about the order in which filenames in a directory would be returned <https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/10/chemists-discover-cr…>. The code worked correctly on Windows and an older version of macOS, but discrepancies crept in on Linux and on newer macOS. The fix was to sort the returned names into a consistent order before processing. I just note this Twitter comment from one of the original authors: When I wrote the scripts 6 years ago, the OS was able to handle the sorting. That would never have been true on Linux. There have never been any guarantees about ordering of directory entries on POSIX-compliant systems. Note the docs <https://docs.python.org/3/library/glob.html#glob.glob> clearly say: Whether or not the results are sorted depends on the file system. One of the researchers who found (and fixed) the bug says ... he hopes the paper will get scientists to pay more attention to the computational side of experiments in the future.

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Germany's Cybersecurity Agency Recommends Firefox As Most Secure Browser
by Peter Reutemann 18 Oct '19

18 Oct '19

'Firefox is the only browser that received top marks in a recent audit carried out by Germany's cyber-security agency -- the German Federal Office for Information Security (or the Bundesamt fur Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik -- BSI). The BSI tested Mozilla Firefox 68 (ESR), Google Chrome 76, Microsoft Internet Explorer 11, and Microsoft Edge 44. The tests did not include other browsers like Safari, Brave, Opera, or Vivaldi. The audit was carried out using rules detailed in a guideline for "modern secure browsers" that the BSI published last month, in September 2019. The BSI normally uses this guide to advise government agencies and companies from the private sector on what browsers are safe to use. The article includes a list of all the minimum requirements required for the BSI to consider a browser "secure." It also lists the areas where the other browsers failed, such as: Lack of support for a master password mechanism (Chrome, IE, Edge); No built-in update mechanism (IE), and No option to block telemetry collection (Chrome, IE, Edge)' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/10/17/2136219 Cheers, Pete -- 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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Hard drives not mounting
by Ian Young 17 Oct '19

17 Oct '19

Hi John (et al) I am going to assume these are drives formatted NTFS. Of late I have encountered drives from Windows machines which Linux won't mount, I think ntfs-3g is a bit finicky about this in recent versions. Get in touch with me directly if you wish, I have a gadget which will connect drives via USB to avoid having to put them into a machine. Some distributions may be able to see the drives even if Mint doesn't wish to, we could try various versions.

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Google Ejects Open-Source WireGuard From Play Store Over Donation Links
by Peter Reutemann 17 Oct '19

17 Oct '19

'Google appears to be removing apps that have donation links, including open-source apps where donations are one of the main sources of revenue. WireGuard, a free and open-source VPN, has been reportedly dropped over this according to WireGuard lead developer Jason Donenfeld. Phoronix reports: After waiting days for Google to review the latest version of their secure VPN tunnel application, it was approved and then removed and delisted -- including older versions of WireGuard. The reversal comes on the basis of violating their "payments policy." The only bit of possible "payments" within the WireGuard app is a donation link within the program taking the user to the WireGuard website should anyone want to donate to support this promising open-source secure networking tech. An appeal to the situation was also rejected by Google, Donenfeld has confirmed this morning on their mailing list. In trying to make it back into Android's Play Store, Jason has dropped the donation link from the Android app version while it's still awaiting review from Google. ' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/10/16/2215248 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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meeting NEXT Monday
by Peter Reutemann 17 Oct '19

17 Oct '19

Hi everyone Due to Labor Day falling on our usual meeting slot and the university no longer opening up rooms on public holidays, this month's meeting takes place a week earlier, ie next Monday! "Creating a low power consumption Print Server using a Raspberry Pi. Peter Reutemann will present/demo the material prepared by Ian Stewart as he cannot attend the meeting unfortunately." -- details: https://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/257884319/ 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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Calibre Replacement Considerations
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 17 Oct '19

17 Oct '19

This blog post <https://anarc.at/software/desktop/calibre/> popped up in my screensaver display a few minutes ago, and was interesting enough for me to find the original. Calibre is the well-known software package for viewing and managing ebooks and converting between formats. As the blog writer says: It's used by Linux geeks as well as Windows power-users and vastly surpasses any native app shipped by ebook manufacturers. I know almost exactly zero people that have an ebook reader that do *not* use Calibre. However, there seem to be quite a few problems with it, not the least of which is that the principal developer seems to have trouble appreciating security vulnerabilities. Another issue is that it is written in Python 2 (though an in-progress port to Python 3 seems to be mostly “going well”). At one point the developer claimed that wasn’t a big deal, as he could continue to maintain Python 2 himself after it became obsolete upstream, but he seems to have backtracked from that position. One pressing problem is that newer versions of Calibre depend on Python 2 libraries that are no longer available in Debian (and therefore would also disappear from all the usual Debian derivatives, like Ubuntu and Linux Mint). However, the list of useful functions that Calibre performs is remarkably long, so finding substitutes for them all is going to be rather daunting.

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In 2019, multiple open source companies changed course—is it the right move?
by Peter Reutemann 17 Oct '19

17 Oct '19

'Free and open source software enables the world as we know it in 2019. From Web servers to kiosks to the big data algorithms mining your Facebook feed, nearly every computer system you interact with runs, at least in part, on free software. And in the larger tech industry, free software has given rise to a galaxy of startups and enabled the largest software acquisition in the history of the world. Free software is a gift, a gift that made the world as we know it possible. And from the start, it seemed like an astounding gift to give. So astounding in fact that it initially made businesses unaccustomed to this kind of generosity uncomfortable. These companies weren't unwilling to use free software, it was simply too radical and by extension too political. It had to be renamed: "open source." Once that happened, open source software took over the world. Recently, though, there's been a disturbance in the open source force. Within the last year, companies like Redis Labs, MongoDB, and Confluent all changed their software licenses, moving away from open source licenses to more restrictive terms that limit what can be done with the software, making it no longer open source software. The problem, argue Redis Labs, MongoDB and others, is a more modern tech trend: hosted software services. Also known as, "the cloud." Also known as Amazon AWS. Amazon, for its part, came out swinging, releasing its own version of the code behind Elastic Search this spring in response to licensing changes at Elastic (the company behind Elastic Search). And besides a new trademark dispute over Amazon's naming convention, Elastic has a very different response from that of MongoDB and Redis—it hasn't said a word in protest.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/10/is-the-software-worl… 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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