January 2020 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Unpatched Citrix Vulnerability Now Exploited, Patch Weeks Away
by Peter Reutemann 14 Jan '20

14 Jan '20

'On December 16, 2019, Citrix revealed a vulnerability in the company's Application Delivery Controller and Gateway products -- commercial virtual-private-network gateways formerly marketed as NetScaler and used by tens of thousands of companies. The flaw, discovered by Mikhail Klyuchnikov of Positive Technologies, could give an attacker direct access to the local networks behind the gateways from the Internet without the need for an account or authentication using a crafted Web request. Citrix has published steps to reduce the risk of the exploit. But these steps, which simply configure a responder to handle requests using the text that targets the flaw, breaks under some circumstances and might interfere with access to the administration portal for the gateways by legitimate users. A permanent patch will not be released until January 20. And as of January 12, over 25,000 servers remain vulnerable, based on scans by Bad Packets. This is not surprising, considering the number of Pulse Secure VPNs that have not yet been patched over six months after a fix was made available, despite Pulse Secure executives saying that they have "worked aggressively" to get customers to patch that vulnerability. And given that vulnerable Pulse Secure servers have been targeted now for ransomware attacks, the same will likely be true for unprotected Citrix VPN servers -- especially since last week, proof-of-concept exploits of the vulnerability began to appear, including at least two published on GitHub, as ZDNet's Catalin Cimpanu reported. "The vulnerability allows the remote execution of commands in just two HTTP requests, thanks to a directory traversal bug in the implementation of the gateway's Web interface," the report adds. "The attacks use a request for the directory '/vpn/../vpns/' to fool the Apache Web server on the gateway to point to the '/vpns/' directory without authentication. The attacks then inject a command based on the template returned from the first request." You can check for the vulnerability here. ' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/20/01/13/2116206 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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Bing Loses Out To DuckDuckGo in Google's New Android Search Engine Ballot
by Peter Reutemann 14 Jan '20

14 Jan '20

'Google announced last week the alternative search engines it will show to new Android users in the EU, with DuckDuckGo the most frequently offered choice and Bing tied for last place. From a report: EU citizens setting up Android devices from March 1 will given a choice of four search engines to use as their default, including Google. Whichever provider they chose will become the default for searches made in Chrome and through Android's home screen search box. A dedicated app for that provider will also be installed on their device. ' -- source: https://search.slashdot.org/story/20/01/13/2042211 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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ICANN Wants to Let VeriSign Raise Prices on .Com Domains
by Peter Reutemann 14 Jan '20

14 Jan '20

'VeriSign has released a "proposed agreement" with ICANN to amend their exclusive .com registry agreement to allow them to raise the price of dotcom registrations up to 28% every six years. Those new terms "are now open to public comment" -- and the Register points out that ICANN's decision seems to come with a corresponding $20 million for ICANN: Operator of the dot-com registry, Verisign, has decided to pay DNS overseer ICANN $4 million a year for the next five years in order to "educate the wider ICANN community about security threats." Even though the generous $20 million donation has nothing to do with ICANN signing off on an extension of the dot-com contract until 2024, the "binding letter of intent" [PDF] stating the exact amount of funding will be appended to the registry agreement that Verisign has with ICANN to run the dot-com registry. That extension lifts a price freeze put in place several years ago and will allow Verisign to increase prices by seven per cent a year [in each of the last four years of each six year contract renewal]. It's an increase that we calculated was worth $993 million and which the stock market appeared to agree with when it raised the company's share price by 16 per cent when the agreement was first flagged in November 2018... ICANN explains the $20 million this time will be used to "support ICANN's initiatives to preserve and enhance the security, stability and resiliency of the DNS, including root server system governance, mitigation of DNS security threats, promotion and/or facilitation of DNSSEC deployment, the mitigation of name collisions, and research into the operation of the DNS." Which is all entirely above board and not at all shady.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/01/13/0512230 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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linux.conf.au: 2020 live streams
by Peter Reutemann 13 Jan '20

13 Jan '20

Hi everyone This just came through on my twitter feed, the live feeds of linux.conf.au 2020: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD8dAKx4J2I45efawJoyCJ0CGjqi7Q78w -- source: https://twitter.com/xfxf/status/1216514835057238016 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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This Year's Y2K20 Bug Came Directly From 'A Lazy Fix' to the Y2K Bug
by Peter Reutemann 13 Jan '20

13 Jan '20

'Slashdot reader The8re still remembers the Y2K bug. Now he shares a New Scientist article explaining how it led directly to this year's Y2020 bug -- which affected more than just parking meters: WWE 2K20, a professional wrestling video game, also stopped working at midnight on 1 January 2020. Within 24 hours, the game's developers, 2K, issued a downloadable fix. Another piece of software, Splunk, which ironically looks for errors in computer systems, was found to be vulnerable to the Y2020 bug in November. The company rolled out a fix to users the same week -- which include 92 of the Fortune 100, the top 100 companies in the US.... The Y2020 bug, which has taken many payment and computer systems offline, is a long-lingering side effect of attempts to fix the Y2K, or millennium bug. Both stem from the way computers store dates. Many older systems express years using two numbers -- 98, for instance, for 1998 -- in an effort to save memory. The Y2K bug was a fear that computers would treat 00 as 1900, rather than 2000. Programmers wanting to avoid the Y2K bug had two broad options: entirely rewrite their code, or adopt a quick fix called "windowing", which would treat all dates from 00 to 20, as from the 2000s, rather than the 1900s. An estimated 80 percent of computers fixed in 1999 used the quicker, cheaper option. "Windowing, even during Y2K, was the worst of all possible solutions because it kicked the problem down the road," says Dylan Mulvin at the London School of Economics.... Another date storage problem also faces us in the year 2038. The issue again stems from Unix's epoch time: the data is stored as a 32-bit integer, which will run out of capacity at 3.14 am on 19 January 2038.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/20/01/12/0221226 Laziness always bites you in the bum in the end... 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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'Why I Finally Switched from Chrome to Firefox - and You Should Too'
by Peter Reutemann 13 Jan '20

13 Jan '20

'In 2018 an associate technology editor at Fast Company's Co.Design wrote an article titled "Why I'm switching from Chrome to Firefox and you should too." Today shanen shared a similar article from Digital Trends. Their writer announces that after years of experimenting with both browsers, they've also finally switched from Chrome to Mozilla Firefox -- "and you should too." The biggest draw for me was, of course, the fact that Mozilla Firefox can finally go toe-to-toe with Google Chrome on the performance front, and often manages to edge it out as well... Today, in addition to being fast, Firefox is resource-efficient, unlike most of its peers. I don't have to think twice before firing up yet another tab. It's rare that I'm forced to close an existing tab to make room for a new one. On Firefox, my 2015 MacBook Pro's fans don't blast past my noise-canceling headphones, which happened fairly regularly on Chrome as it pushed my laptop's fans to their helicopter-like limits to keep things running. This rare balance of efficiency and performance is the result of the countless under-the-hood upgrades Firefox has rolled out in the last couple of years... Its Enhanced Tracking Protection framework keeps your identity safe by blocking trackers and cookies that otherwise follow you around the internet and collect sensitive information you probably didn't even know you were giving up. On top of that, Firefox can warn if a website is covertly mining cryptocurrency in the background. Most of these protections kick in by default and you have an exhaustive set of options to customize them the way you want. Firefox also lets you look into just how invasive a website is. It actively updates your personal privacy report so you can check how many trackers it has shut overall and for a specific website... What really clinched the switch to Mozilla Firefox was the fact that it's the only cross-platform browser that's not running Google's open-source Chromium platform. Microsoft's Edge, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi -- each of these browsers run on Chromium, accelerating Google's dominance over the web even when you're not directly using a Chrome user. Firefox, on the other hand, is powered by Mozilla's in-house Gecko engine that's not dependent on Chromium in any way. It may not seem like as vital of a trait as I make it sound, but it truly is, even though Chromium is open-source. Google oversees a huge chunk of the web, including ads, browser, and search, and this supremacy has allowed the company to pretty much run a monopoly and set its own rules for the open internet... Mozilla as a company has, despite a rocky journey, often taken bold stances in complex situations. In the Cambridge Analytica aftermath, Mozilla announced it would no longer run Facebook advertisements, cutting off direct marketing to over 2 billion users. In a world of tech companies taking frail, facile shots at protecting user privacy and barely delivering on their commitments, Mozilla is a breath of fresh air and you no longer have to live with any compromises to support it.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/01/11/2246247 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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Linus Torvalds: Avoid Oracle's ZFS Kernel Code Until 'Litigious' Larry Signs Off
by Peter Reutemann 12 Jan '20

12 Jan '20

'"Linux kernel head Linus Torvalds has warned engineers against adding a module for the ZFS filesystem that was designed by Sun Microsystems -- and now owned by Oracle -- due to licensing issues," reports ZDNet: As reported by Phoronix, Torvalds has warned kernel developers against using ZFS on Linux, an implementation of OpenZFS, and refuses to merge any ZFS code until Oracle changes the open-source license it uses. ZFS has long been licensed under Sun's Common Development and Distribution License as opposed to the Linux kernel, which is licensed under GNU General Public License (GPL). Torvalds aired his opinion on the matter in response to a developer who argued that a recent kernel change "broke an important third-party module: ZFS". The Linux kernel creator says he refuses to merge the ZFS module into the kernel because he can't risk a lawsuit from "litigious" Oracle -- which is still trying to sue Google for copyright violations over its use of Java APIs in Android -- and Torvalds won't do so until Oracle founder Larry Ellison signs off on its use in the Linux kernel. "If somebody adds a kernel module like ZFS, they are on their own. I can't maintain it and I cannot be bound by other people's kernel changes," explained Torvalds. "And honestly, there is no way I can merge any of the ZFS efforts until I get an official letter from Oracle that is signed by their main legal counsel or preferably by Larry Ellison himself that says that yes, it's OK to do so and treat the end result as GPL'd," Torvalds continued. "Other people think it can be OK to merge ZFS code into the kernel and that the module interface makes it OK, and that's their decision. But considering Oracle's litigious nature, and the questions over licensing, there's no way I can feel safe in ever doing so."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/20/01/11/0421238 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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Computer stuff
by Noel Villamor 12 Jan '20

12 Jan '20

Hi, I cleaned my garage and I have some stuff which might be useful to some - see attached pdf. Email me back if you need my address for pickup. I live in Fitzroy. With regards, Noel

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Hundreds of Millions of Cable Modems Are Vulnerable To New Cable Haunt Vulnerability
by Peter Reutemann 11 Jan '20

11 Jan '20

'A team of four Danish security researchers has disclosed this week a security flaw that impacts cable modems that use Broadcom chips. From a report: The vulnerability, codenamed Cable Haunt, is believed to impact an estimated 200 million cable modems in Europe alone, the research team said today. The vulnerability impacts a standard component of Broadcom chips called a spectrum analyzer. This is a hardware and software component that protects the cable modem from signal surges and disturbances coming via the coax cable. The component is often used by internet service providers (ISPs) in debugging connection quality. On most cable modems, access to this component is limited for connections from the internal network. The research team says the Broadcom chip spectrum analyzer lacks protection against DNS rebinding attacks, uses default credentials, and also contains a programming error in its firmware.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/20/01/10/1914204 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 gets patch for critical 0-day that’s being actively exploited
by Peter Reutemann 10 Jan '20

10 Jan '20

'Mozilla has released a new version of Firefox that fixes an actively exploited zero-day that could allow attackers to take control of users' computers. In an advisory, Mozilla rated the vulnerability critical and said it was "aware of targeted attacks in the wild abusing this flaw." The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said one or more exploits were "detected in the wild" and warned that attacks could be exploited to "take control of an affected system." The Mozilla advisory credited researchers at China-based Qihoo 360 with reporting the flaw. No other details about the attacks were immediately available. Neither Mozilla nor Qihoo 360 responded to emails asking for more information. CVE-2019-17026, as the vulnerability is indexed, is a type confusion, a potentially critical error that can result in data being written to, or read from, memory locations that are normally off-limits. These out-of-bounds reads may allow attackers to discover memory locations where malicious code is stored so that protections such as address space layout randomization can be bypassed. Out-of-bounds reads can also cause crashes. The flaw is fixed in Tuesday's release of Firefox 72.0.1. The patch came a day after version 72 fixed 11 other vulnerabilities, six of which were rated high. Three of those six bugs might make it possible for attackers to run malicious code on affected computers.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/01/firefox-gets-patch-f… 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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Huawei Unveils OpenEuler, CentOS-Based Linux Distribution
by Peter Reutemann 10 Jan '20

10 Jan '20

'Huawei has released the source code of openEuler, its distribution of Linux based on CentOS. The operating system was formally launched by Huawei in September 2019 in response to U.S. sanctions, which had briefly affected the company's access to Windows and Android operating systems. The source code has now been published on Gitee, the Chinese version of Github. OpenEuler comprises two organizations on Gitee, one for source code and one for package sources. The openEuler organization was keen to highlight two particular packages, iSulad and A-Tune, among the openEuler source code. "iSulad is a lightweight gRPC service-based container runtime. Compared to runc, iSulad is written in C, but all interfaces are compatible with OCI. A-Tune is a system software to auto-optimize the system adaptively to multiple scenarios with embedded AI-engine." The announcement continues: "You will also see several infrastructure-supported projects that set up the community's operating systems... these systems are built on the Huawei Cloud through script automation." Among the package sources, covered by the src-openeuler organization on Gitee, are around 1,000 packages with versions in both ARM64 and X86 architecture packages. Huawei claims its developers have made a number of enhancements to ARM64 openEuler code to improve multi-core efficiency. It is also working on a "green computing" ecosystem with Linaro and the Green Industry Alliance. At the moment, the organization claims, there are more than 50 contributors and just under 600 commits. The openEuler community has around 20 SIGs or project groups.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/01/09/058218 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 Ars tests Wi-Fi gear (and you can, too)
by Peter Reutemann 09 Jan '20

09 Jan '20

'The tools and methodology we test Wi-Fi with are open source—so you can use them, too. After our review of Google's Nest Wi-Fi kit last fall, we received an unexpected request: Ars reader GerbilMagnus hopped into the comments and asked for an explainer about how we test Wi-Fi. Machination minutiae hadn't necessarily struck us as something of interest, but ask and you shall receive dear readers. Today, we're taking GerbilMagnus' lead and taking readers behind the scenes of our Wi-Fi testing process—we'll also toss in a little theory and practice along the way. If you want to try our methods at home, know up front that you don't necessarily have to replicate our entire test setup to start seeing useful results for yourself. But if you want to put the latest and greatest mesh gear through the gauntlet, we'll absolutely cover everything from top to bottom before we're done.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/01/how-ars-tests-wi-fi-gear-and-you-ca… 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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Google Chrome To Hide Notification Spam Starting February 2020
by Peter Reutemann 09 Jan '20

09 Jan '20

'Following in Mozilla's footsteps, Google announced today plans to hide notification popup prompts inside Chrome starting next month, February 2020. ZDNet reports: According to a blog post published today, Google plans to roll out a "quieter notification permission UI that reduces the interruptiveness of notification permission requests." The change is scheduled for Google Chrome 80, scheduled for release on February 4, next month. Starting with Chrome 80 next month, Google's browser will also block most notification popups by default, and show an icon in the URL bar, similar to Firefox. When Chrome 80 launches next month, a new option will be added in the Chrome settings section that allows users to enroll in the new "quieter notification UI." Users can enable this option as soon as Chrome 80 is released, or they can wait for Google to enable it by default as the feature rolls out to the wider Chrome userbase in the following weeks. According to Google, the new feature works by hiding notification requests for Chrome users who regularly dismiss notification prompts. Furthermore, Chrome will also automatically block notification prompts on sites where users rarely accept notifications. ' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/20/01/08/0632203 Nice to see the "[f]ollowing in Mozilla's footsteps". :-) 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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Half of the Websites Using WebAssembly Use it for Malicious Purposes
by Peter Reutemann 09 Jan '20

09 Jan '20

'Around half of the websites that use WebAssembly, a new web technology, use it for malicious purposes, according to academic research published last year. From a report: WebAssembly is a low-level bytecode language that was created after a joint collaboration between all major browser vendors. It introduces a new binary file format for transmitting code from a web server to a browser. Once it reaches the browser, WebAssembly code (Wasm) executes with near-native speed, similar to compiled C, C++, or Rust code. WebAssembly was created for both speed and performance. Due to its binary machine-friendly format, Wasm code is smaller than its equivalent JavaScript form, but also many times faster when executing. This has made WebAssembly the next incarnation of Adobe Flash, allowing websites to run complex CPU-intensive code without freezing a browser, a task for which JavaScript was never designed or optimized for.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/20/01/08/1421216 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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Coming Soon: The Web “Thin Client”
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 08 Jan '20

08 Jan '20

Here’s a new trend to watch out for: it’s being called “browser isolation” <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/01/07/cloudflare_buys_s2/>: S2 developed a ... headless version of Chromium – the open-source foundation of Chrome and about two dozen other browsers – that runs in the cloud and intercepts calls to the browser's Skia graphics layer. "Before it actually draws anything virtual, we intercept those Skia calls, we tokenize them, we compress them, we send them through to any HTML5 browser, where we redraw them locally, right on the machine," Remington explained. "We use WebAssembly. We push a little Skia library that runs local in your browser, any browser. ... Turns out, it's very secure, because that is not an attack vector. It's only draw commands." ... According to Harnett, S2's scheme results in a 60 per cent bandwidth savings. "People are surprised when we say that in many cases, it's faster than local" ...

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PGP keys, software security, and much more threatened by new SHA1 exploit
by Peter Reutemann 08 Jan '20

08 Jan '20

'Three years ago, Ars declared the SHA1 cryptographic hash algorithm officially dead after researchers performed the world’s first known instance of a fatal exploit known as a "collision" on it. On Tuesday, the dead SHA1 horse got clobbered again as a different team of researchers unveiled a new attack that’s significantly more powerful. The new collision gives attackers more options and flexibility than were available with the previous technique. It makes it practical to create PGP encryption keys that, when digitally signed using SHA1 algorithm, impersonate a chosen target. More generally, it produces the same hash for two or more attacker-chosen inputs by appending data to each of them. The attack unveiled on Tuesday also costs as little as $45,000 to carry out. The attack disclosed in 2017, by contrast, didn’t allow forgeries on specific predetermined document prefixes and was evaluated to cost from $110,000 to $560,000 on Amazon’s Web Services platform, depending on how quickly adversaries wanted to carry it out. The new attack is significant. While SHA1 has been slowly phased out over the past five years, it remains far from being fully deprecated. It’s still the default hash function for certifying PGP keys in the legacy 1.4 version branch of GnuPG, the open-source successor to PGP application for encrypting email and files. Those SHA1-generated signatures were accepted by the modern GnuPG branch until recently, and were only rejected after the researchers behind the new collision privately reported their results. Git, the world's most widely used system for managing software development among multiple people, still relies on SHA1 to ensure data integrity. And many non-Web applications that rely on HTTPS encryption still accept SHA1 certificates. SHA1 is also still allowed for in-protocol signatures in the Transport Layer Security and Secure Shell protocols.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/01/pgp-keys-software-se… 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 72 Arrives With Fingerprinting Blocked By Default, Picture-in-Picture on macOS and Linux
by Peter Reutemann 08 Jan '20

08 Jan '20

'Mozilla today launched Firefox 72 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Firefox 72 includes fingerprinting scripts blocked by default, less annoying notifications, and Picture-in-Picture video on macOS and Linux. There isn't too much else here, as Mozilla has now transitioned Firefox releases to a four-week cadence (from six to eight weeks).' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/01/07/143225 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 OS Has Stalled Out
by Peter Reutemann 07 Jan '20

07 Jan '20

'Speaking of Chromebooks, David Ruddock, opines at AndroidPolice: Chrome OS' problems really became apparent to me when Android app compatibility was introduced, around five years ago. Getting Android apps to run on Chrome OS was simultaneously one of the Chrome team's greatest achievements and one of its worst mistakes. In 2019, two things are more obvious than ever about the Android app situation on Chrome. The first is that the "build it and they will come" mantra never panned out. Developers never created an appreciable number of Android app experiences designed for Chrome (just as they never did for Android tablets). The second is that, quite frankly, Android apps are very bad on Chrome OS. Performance is highly variable, and interface bugs are basically unending because most of those apps were never designed for a point-and-click operating system. Sure, they crash less often than they did in the early days, but anyone saying that Android apps on Chrome OS are a good experience is delusional. Those apps are also a crutch that Chrome leans on to this day. Chrome OS doesn't have a robust photo editor? Don't worry, you can download an app! Chrome doesn't have native integration with cloud file services like Box, Dropbox, or OneDrive? Just download the app! Chrome doesn't have Microsoft Office? App! But this "solution" has basically become an insult to Chrome's users, forcing them to live inside a half-baked Android environment using apps that were almost exclusively designed for 6" touchscreens, and which exist in a containerized state that effectively firewalls them from much of the Chrome operating system. As a result, file handling is a nightmare, with only a very limited number of folders accessible to those applications, and the task of finding them from inside those apps a labyrinthine exercise no one should have to endure in 2019. This isn't a tenable state of affairs -- it's computing barbarism as far as I'm concerned. And yet, I've seen zero evidence that the Chrome team intends to fix it. It's just how it is. But Android apps, so far as I can tell, are basically the plan for Chrome. Certainly, Linux environment support is great for enthusiasts and developers, but there are very few commonly-used commercial applications available on Linux, with no sign that will change in the near future. It's another dead end. And if you want an even more depressing picture of Chrome's content ecosystem, just look at the pitiable situation with web apps.' -- source: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/20/01/06/1626227 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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“Open Source” Journalism
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 06 Jan '20

06 Jan '20

This week’s “Listening Post” on Al Jazeera (viewable here <https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/listeningpost/2019/09/xinjiang-story-c…>) talks, in the latter part, about this new phenomenon of “open source” journalism. My understanding is, the meaning of “source” here is not that of “source code” familiar to software developers, but “source of information” as understood by journalists. That means getting information from public sources available to all. Even a tightly-controlled society like China makes a surprising amount of information freely available online--more than it really wants to make available, sometimes. And this information can be pieced together like a puzzle by perceptive investigators, to point to conclusions which can be directly at odds with public pronouncements from Government officials.

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Linus Torvalds Calls Blogger's Linux Scheduler Tests 'Pure Garbage'
by Peter Reutemann 06 Jan '20

06 Jan '20

'On Wednesday Phoronix cited a blog post by C++ game developer Malte Skarupke claiming his spinlocks experiments had discovered the Linux kernel had a scheduler issue affecting developers bringing games to Linux for Google Stadia. Linus Torvalds has now responded: The whole post seems to be just wrong, and is measuring something completely different than what the author thinks and claims it is measuring. First off, spinlocks can only be used if you actually know you're not being scheduled while using them. But the blog post author seems to be implementing his own spinlocks in user space with no regard for whether the lock user might be scheduled or not. And the code used for the claimed "lock not held" timing is complete garbage. It basically reads the time before releasing the lock, and then it reads it after acquiring the lock again, and claims that the time difference is the time when no lock was held. Which is just inane and pointless and completely wrong... [T]he code in question is pure garbage. You can't do spinlocks like that. Or rather, you very much can do them like that, and when you do that you are measuring random latencies and getting nonsensical values, because what you are measuring is "I have a lot of busywork, where all the processes are CPU-bound, and I'm measuring random points of how long the scheduler kept the process in place". And then you write a blog-post blamings others, not understanding that it's your incorrect code that is garbage, and is giving random garbage values... You might even see issues like "when I run this as a foreground UI process, I get different numbers than when I run it in the background as a batch process". Cool interesting numbers, aren't they? No, they aren't cool and interesting at all, you've just created a particularly bad random number generator... [Y]ou should never ever think that you're clever enough to write your own locking routines.. Because the likelihood is that you aren't (and by that "you" I very much include myself -- we've tweaked all the in-kernel locking over decades, and gone through the simple test-and-set to ticket locks to cacheline-efficient queuing locks, and even people who know what they are doing tend to get it wrong several times). There's a reason why you can find decades of academic papers on locking. Really. It's hard. "It really means a lot to me that Linus responded," the blogger wrote later, "even if the response is negative." They replied to Torvalds' 1,500-word post on the same mailing list -- and this time received a 1900-word response arguing "you did locking fundamentally wrong..." The fact is, doing your own locking is hard. You need to really understand the issues, and you need to not over-simplify your model of the world to the point where it isn't actually describing reality any more... Dealing with reality is hard. It sometimes means that you need to make your mental model for how locking needs to work a lot more complicated...' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/20/01/06/012251 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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Open Source Initiative Co-Founder Bruce Perens Resigns, Citing Move Toward License 'That Isn't Freedom Respecting'
by Peter Reutemann 06 Jan '20

06 Jan '20

'Bruce Perens (Slashdot reader #3872) co-founded the Open Source Initiative with Eric Raymond in 1998. But on Thursday Perens posted "it seems to me that the organization is rather enthusiastically headed toward accepting a license that isn't freedom respecting. Fine, do it without me, please. "I asked Patrick to cancel my membership, and I would have unsubscribed from OSI lists, including this one, if your server was working..." The issue is a new software license drafted by lawyer Van Lindberg called the Cryptographic Autonomy License (or CAL). Another open-source-community leader familiar with the debate -- who spoke with The Register on condition of anonymity -- claimed Lindberg lobbied OSI directors privately to green-light the license, contrary to an approval process that's supposed to be carried out in public. "I don't think that's an appropriate characterization," said Lindberg, of law firm Dykema, in a phone interview with The Register. "I think there are number of people who from the beginning made up their minds about the Cryptographic Autonomy License. You'll see a lot of people jumping onto any pretext they can find in order to oppose it. With regard to this idea of lobbying, there have been procedural-type communications that I think are entirely reasonable," he added. "But all the substantive debate has been on the license review and license discussion forums...." Perens said he resigned because the OSI appears to have already decided to accept the license. He said he's headed in a different direction, which he called "coherent open source." "We've gone the wrong way with licensing," he said, citing the proliferation of software licenses. He believes just three are necessary, AGPLv3, the LGPLv3, and Apache v2. Meanwhile, the Cryptographic Autonomy License is envisioned for use with the distributed development platform Holo, notes the Register: According to Holo co-founder Arthur Brock, distributed peer-to-peer software needs a license that addresses cryptographic key rights, which is why the Cryptographic Autonomy License has been proposed. "We are trying to say: the only valid way to use our code is if that developer's end-users are the sole authors and controllers of their own private crypto keys," he wrote in a post last year. Lindberg said the Cryptographic Autonomy License is applicable to current web applications but it more meaningful in the context of distributed workloads and distributed computation, which he contends will become more important as people seek alternatives to the centralization of today's cloud-based systems. "A lot of people are very concerned about this concept of owning your data, owning your computer, having the ability to really control your computing experience and have it not be controlled by your cloud provider," said Lindberg. Perens said, "It's a good goal but it means you now need to have a lawyer to understand the license and to respond to your users." Slashdot asked Bruce Perens for details on "Coherent Open Source." Here's what he wrote back...' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/01/05/208249 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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Dell's Upcoming XPS 13 Linux Laptop Includes a Fingerprint Reader
by Peter Reutemann 06 Jan '20

06 Jan '20

'If you've been following the steady march of progress from Dell's Linux-first Project Sputnik team, you're no doubt aware that the "Developer Edition" variant of the XPS 13 is one of the finest Linux-ready ultrabooks you can buy. Just ahead of CES 2020, Dell is pushing out a few more improvements including a feature that's been hotly requested: fingerprint-reader support. It's one of several enhancements Dell is promising to Linux users for its 10th-generation XPS 13, including a new maximum of 32GB RAM and a redesigned "InfinityEdge" display that adds even more screen real estate, resulting in an adjusted 16:10 aspect ratio to match... Details on fingerprint-reader support are still a bit vague, but Dell says it will be released shortly after the system's February 2020 launch as an OTA (over-the-air) update, and then as part of the preloaded Ubuntu Developer Edition image it ships with the system. Dell's lead on Project Sputnik developer systems, Barton George, also blogged about Dell's new 86-inch 4K interactive touch monitor, as well as their upcoming Latitude 9510 notebook and 2-in-1 laptops, promising "a new ultra-premium class of products" offering 5G mobile broadband capabilities, AI-based productivity capabilities, and 30-plus hours of battery life. The blog post ends by noting that "While project Sputnik is the most visible Linux-based offerings from Dell, it is only a small fraction of the over 150 systems that make up Dell's Linux portfolio."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/20/01/05/0137242 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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Linux Kernel Developers and Commits Dropped in 2019
by Peter Reutemann 06 Jan '20

06 Jan '20

'Phoronix reports that on New Year's Day, the Linux kernel's Git source tree showed 27,852,148 lines of code, divided among 66,492 files (including docs, Kconfig files, user-space utilities in-tree, etc). Over its lifetime there's been 887,925 commits, and around 21,074 different authors: During 2019, the Linux kernel saw 74,754 commits, which is actually the lowest point since 2013. The 74k commits is compares to 80k commits seen in both 2017 and 2018, 77k commits in 2016, and 75k commits in both 2014 and 2015. Besides the commit count being lower, the author count for the year is also lower. 2019 saw around 4,189 different authors to the Linux kernel, which is lower than the 4,362 in 2018 and 4,402 in 2017. While the commit count is lower for the year, on a line count it's about average with 3,386,347 lines of new code added and 1,696,620 lines removed... Intel and Red Hat have remained the top companies contributing to the upstream Linux kernel.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/20/01/04/2335200 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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Employee error to blame for massive data leak, Wyze says
by Peter Reutemann 02 Jan '20

02 Jan '20

'Loads of folks found brand-new Wyze surveillance cameras under their trees or in their stockings this Christmas. And on Boxing Day, the company itself unwrapped a whole new world of trouble for everyone who uses its products, confirming a data leak that may have exposed personal data for millions of users over the course of a few weeks. Wyze first found out about the problem on the morning of December 26, company cofounder Dongsheng Song said in a corporate blog post. The company's investigation confirmed that user data was "not properly secured" and was exposed from December 4 onward. The database in question was basically a copy of the production database that Wyze created to work with, Song explained. Data points left exposed include user email addresses, camera nicknames, Wi-Fi network information, Wyze device information, some tokens associated with Alexa integrations, and "body metrics for a small number of product beta testers."' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/12/surveillance-camera-company-wyz… 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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