December 2019 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

'Link in Bio' is a Slow Knife
by Peter Reutemann 15 Dec '19

15 Dec '19

'Anil Dash: We don't even notice it anymore -- "link in bio." It's a pithy phrase, usually found on Instagram, which directs an audience to be aware that a pertinent web link can be found on that user's profile. Its presence is so subtle, and so pervasive, that we barely even noticed it was an attempt to kill the web. Links on the web are incredibly powerful. There are decades of theory behind the role of hyperlinks in hypertext -- did you know in most early versions, links were originally designed to be two-way? You'd be able to see every page on the web that links to this one. But even in the very simple form that we've ended up with on the World Wide Web for the last 30 years, links are incredibly powerful, opening up valuable connections between unexpected things. For a closed system, those kinds of open connections are deeply dangerous. If anyone on Instagram can just link to any old store on the web, how can Instagram -- meaning Facebook, Instagram's increasingly-overbearing owner -- tightly control commerce on its platform? If Instagram users could post links willy-nilly, they might even be able to connect directly to their users, getting their email addresses or finding other ways to communicate with them. Links represent a threat to closed systems. Here's the thing, though: people like links. So closed systems have to present a pressure release valve. Hashtags are a great way out. They use the semiotics of links (early versions of hashtags on social platforms were really barely more than automated links to a search for a particular term) but are also constrained by the platforms they live on. A hashtag is easier to gather into a database, to harvest, to monetize. It's much easier, sure, but it also doesn't have all the messiness of a real link. Instagram doesn't have to worry that clicking on its hashtags will accidentally lead people to Twitter, or vice versa.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/12/12/1540216 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 1

Building Your Own Open Source, Privacy-Protecting Voice Assistant With A Raspberry Pi
by Peter Reutemann 15 Dec '19

15 Dec '19

'PC Magazine's "tech nerd" Whitson Gordon writes that "Once you start using a smart speaker to set reminders, play the news, or turn the lights on, it's hard to go back." But if you want the convenience of voice control without the data-collecting tech giant behind the scenes, an open-source project called Mycroft is a great alternative. And you can run it right on a Raspberry Pi. Mycroft is a free, open-source voice assistant designed to run on Linux-based devices... Mycroft has been around for quite a few years, but it's recently gained a bit more notoriety thanks to privacy concerns surrounding data collection at Amazon and Google. Unlike those assistants, Mycroft only collects data if you opt in during setup. And for the users who do opt in, Mycroft promises never to sell your data to advertisers or third parties -- instead, it only uses it to help developers improve the product. Mycroft even uses the privacy-focused DuckDuckGo as its search engine instead of Google when you ask for information. Mycroft makes its own smart speaker called the Mark I, though it's currently sold out with a new Mark II (video here) on the way. However, since the project is open-source, you can install Mycroft on just about any Linux machine, including the Raspberry Pi (thanks to a pre-made build called Picroft). Using Mycroft on the Pi is free, but you can also subscribe to a $1.99-per-month plan to help support its development -- you'll even get a few goodies, like other voices that sound more lifelike than the default robotic voice.' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/19/12/14/1954242 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

Raspberry Pi Foundation Sells Its 30,000,000th Raspberry Pi
by Peter Reutemann 15 Dec '19

15 Dec '19

'In a reply to a Twitter post, Raspberry Pi Foundation's CEO Eben Upton announced that they have sold their thirty-millionth Raspberry Pi. "We don't get sales returns from our licensees until month end," Upton acknowledged in a later tweet, but "at the end of November, we were at 29.8Mu, with a monthly run rate of 500-600ku..."' -- source: https://build.slashdot.org/story/19/12/14/203231 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

Managing Spectre/Meltdown-Style Vulnerabilities At AWS
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 15 Dec '19

15 Dec '19

Some insights <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/12/10/linux_kernel_aws/> into the different priorities often faced by different groups faced with the same problem. Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman says to avoid most of these “MDS” (“Microarchitectural Data Sampling”) vulnerabilities, you must turn off Intel’s hyperthreading, full stop. Amazon, on the other hand, find that the resulting 30-40% performance loss is unacceptable for many of their customers. So they have come up with a tweaked scheduler algorithm for their Linux kernels that avoids running two different guests on the same physical core at the same time. With this and other careful management, they claim to be able to keep their customers safe from each other, with much less dramatic performance impact. But then you have the downside that the mainline kernel is not interested in accepting patches with such narrow applicability. Of course Amazon would like to come up with something they will accept, just to reduce their own maintenance burden.

1 0

Mozilla To Force All Add-on Devs To Use 2FA To Prevent Supply-Chain Attacks
by Peter Reutemann 14 Dec '19

14 Dec '19

'Mozilla announced this week that all developers of Firefox add-ons must enable a two-factor authentication (2FA) solution for their account. From a report: "Starting in early 2020, extension developers will be required to have 2FA enabled on AMO [the Mozilla Add-Ons portal]," said Caitlin Neiman, Add-ons Community Manager at Mozilla. "This is intended to help prevent malicious actors from taking control of legitimate add-ons and their users," Neiman added. When this happens, hackers can use the developers' compromised accounts to ship tainted add-on updates to Firefox users. Since Firefox add-ons have a pretty privileged position inside the browser, an attacker can use a compromised add-on to steal passwords, authentication/session cookies, spy on a user's browsing habits, or redirect users to phishing pages or malware download sites. These types of incidents are usually referred to as supply-chain attacks.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/19/12/13/152239 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

Two of China's Largest Tech Firms Are Uniting To Create a New 'Domestic OS'
by Peter Reutemann 13 Dec '19

13 Dec '19

'The two biggest OS (operating system) makers in China announced plans last week to unite and jointly build a new "domestic operating system." From a report: The two companies are China Standard Software (CS2C) and Tianjin Kylin Information (TKC), two of China's largest software firms, with known ties to the Beijing government. Both companies are known on the local Chinese OS market. CS2C created "China's Windows XP clone," known as the NeoKylin OS, and TKC is the current steward of Kylin, China's first-ever homegrown operating system. CS2C and TKC plan to set up a new company in which they'll become investors, and through which the new joint OS will be developed. The new company will handle the new operating system's development, technological decisions, marketing, branding, financials, and sales. The current Kylin and NeoKylin operating systems will serve as a base for the new OS, the two said.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/12/12/146246 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

Russian Police Raid NGINX Moscow Office
by Peter Reutemann 13 Dec '19

13 Dec '19

'Russian police have raided today the Moscow offices of NGINX, Inc., a subsidiary of F5 Networks and the company behind the internet's most popular web server technology. From a report: Equipment was seized and employees were detained for questioning. Moscow police executed the raid after last week the Rambler Group filed a copyright violation against NGINX Inc., claiming full ownership of the NGINX web server code. The Rambler Group is the parent company of rambler.ru, one of Russia's biggest search engines and internet portals. According to copies of the search warrant posted on Twitter today, Rambler claims that Igor Sysoev developed NGINX while he was working as a system administrator for the company, hence they are the rightful owner of the project. Sysoev created NGINX in the early 2000s and open-sourced the NGINX code in 2004. In 2009, he founded NGINX, Inc., a US company, to provide adjacent tools and support services for NGINX deployments. The company is based in San Francisco, but has offices all over the world, including Moscow. The NGINX server's source code is still free and managed through an open-source model, although a large chunk of the project's primary contributors are NGINX, Inc. employees, who have a firm grip on the project's stewardship.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/12/12/175245 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

Inside the Podcast that Hacks Ring Camera Owners Live on Air
by Peter Reutemann 13 Dec '19

13 Dec '19

'In the NulledCast podcast hackers livestream the harassment of Ring camera owners after accessing their devices. Hundreds of people can listen. From a report: A blaring siren suddenly rips through the Ring camera, startling the Florida family inside their own home. "It's your boy Chance on Nulled," a voice says from the Ring camera, which a hacker has taken over. "How you doing? How you doing?" "Welcome to the NulledCast," the voice says. The NulledCast is a podcast livestreamed to Discord. It's a show in which hackers take over people's Ring and Nest smarthome cameras and use their speakers to talk to and harass their unsuspecting owners. In the example above, Chance blared noises and shouted racist comments at the Florida family. "Sit back and relax to over 45 minutes of entertainment," an advertisement for the podcast posted to a hacking forum called Nulled reads. "Join us as we go on completely random tangents such as; Ring & Nest Trolling, telling shelter owners we killed a kitten, Nulled drama, and more ridiculous topics. Be sure to join our Discord to watch the shows live." Software to hack Ring cameras has recently become popular on the forum. The software churns through previously compromised email addresses and passwords to break into Ring cameras at scale. This has led to a recent spate of hacks that have occurred both during the podcast and at other times, several of which have been covered by local media outlets. In Brookhaven a hacker shouted at a sleeping woman through her hacked Ring camera to wake-up. In Texas, a hacker demanded a couple pay a bitcoin ransom. Hackers targeted a family in DeSoto County, Mississippi, and spoke through the device to one of the young children.' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/19/12/12/204240 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

Customizing A KDE Desktop
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 11 Dec '19

11 Dec '19

A video <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyz4-KZOzyI> showing how to set up KDE with an Apple-style dock and the application menu at the top of the screen (with some extra widgets added). Not something I would do myself, but it shows how configurable KDE can be.

1 0

Intel’s SGX coughs up crypto keys when scientists tweak CPU voltage
by Peter Reutemann 11 Dec '19

11 Dec '19

'To counter the growing sophistication of computer attacks, Intel and other chip makers have built digital vaults into CPUs to segregate sensitive computations and secrets from the main engine computers use. Now, scientists have devised an attack that causes the Software Guard Extensions—Intel's implementation of this secure CPU environment to divulge cryptographic keys and induce potentially dangerous memory errors. Plundervault, as the attack has been dubbed, starts with the assumption that an attacker is able to run privileged software on a targeted computer. While that's a lofty prerequisite, it's precisely the scenario Intel's SGX feature is designed to protect against. The chipmaker bills SGX as a private region that uses hardware-based memory encryption to isolate sensitive computations and data from malicious processes that run with high privilege levels. Intel goes as far as saying that "Only Intel SGX offers such a granular level of control and protection." But it turns out that subtle fluctuations in voltage powering the main CPU can corrupt the normal functioning inside the SGX. By subtly increasing or decreasing the current delivered to a CPU—operations known as "overvolting" and "undervolting"—a team of scientists has figured out how to induce SGX faults that leak cryptographic keys, break integrity assurances, and potentially induce memory errors that could be used in other types of attacks.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/12/scientists-pluck-cry… 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