September 2021 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Facebook’s Special Rules For VIPs
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 14 Sep '21

14 Sep '21

A report on some leaked documents <https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/09/leaked-documents-reveal-the-spe…> detailing Facebook’s “XCheck” system for exempting certain user accounts from its normal content-moderation rules. The sole reason for the exemption is that, regardless of the rights and wrongs of what they are saying, such users (e.g. politicians, celebrities) can raise a PR storm that can make Facebook look bad, and of course the company wants to avoid that. Except that the list of such special users has now grown to about 5.8 million accounts, which is getting a bit unwieldy. Note this: In the meantime, Facebook plans to assume “good intent” on the part of high-profile users in the program and take an approach of “innocent until proven guilty,” a product manager on Facebook’s Mistakes Prevention Team wrote. Does that sound like basic fairness, rather than arbitrary treatment, to you? If only all their users were treated that way ...

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Mozilla Has Defeated Microsoft's Default Browser Protections in Windows
by Peter Reutemann 14 Sep '21

14 Sep '21

'Mozilla has quietly made it easier to switch to Firefox on Windows recently. From a report: While Microsoft offers a method to switch default browsers on Windows 10, it's more cumbersome than the simple one-click process to switch to Edge. This one-click process isn't officially available for anyone other than Microsoft, and Mozilla appears to have grown tired of the situation. In version 91 of Firefox, released on August 10th, Mozilla has reverse engineered the way Microsoft sets Edge as default in Windows 10, and enabled Firefox to quickly make itself the default. Before this change, Firefox users would be sent to the Settings part of Windows 10 to then have to select Firefox as a default browser and ignore Microsoft's plea to keep Edge. Mozilla's reverse engineering means you can now set Firefox as the default from within the browser, and it does all the work in the background with no additional prompts. This circumvents Microsoft's anti-hijacking protections that the company built into Windows 10 to ensure malware couldn't hijack default apps. Microsoft tells us this is not supported in Windows.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/21/09/13/1527222 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Torvalds Merges Support for Microsoft's NTFS File System, Complains GitHub 'Creates Absolutely Useless Garbage Merges'
by Peter Reutemann 13 Sep '21

13 Sep '21

'"Linux creator Linus Torvalds has agreed to include Paragon Software's NTFS3 kernel driver, giving the Linux kernel 5.15 release improved support for Microsoft's NTFS file system..." reports ZDNet, adding that the driver "will make working with Windows' NTFS drives in Linux an easier task — ending decades of difficulties with Microsoft's proprietary file system that succeeded FAT...." "But he also had some process and security lessons to offer developers about how to code submissions to the kernel should be made." "I notice that you have a GitHub merge commit in there," wrote Torvalds. He continued: "That's another of those things that I *really* don't want to see — GitHub creates absolutely useless garbage merges, and you should never ever use the GitHub interfaces to merge anything...GitHub is a perfectly fine hosting site, and it does a number of other things well too, but merges are not one of those things." Torvalds' chief problem with it was that merges need "proper commit messages with information about [what] is being merged and *why* you merge something." He continued: "But it also means proper authorship and committer information etc. All of which GitHub entirely screws up." TechRadar supplies some more context: One of the shortcomings Torvalds highlighted are GitHub's concise, factually correct, but functionally useless, commit messages. For instance, GitHub's commit message for Paragon's merge read "Merge branch 'torvalds:master' into master", which didn't impress Torvalds one bit... Torvalds also had some pertinent security advice, perhaps useful in light of recent software supply chain cyberattacks that the Linux Foundation wants to address by improving supply chain integrity through tools that make it easier to sign software cryptographically. As Torvalds points out, this is particularly important for new contributors to the Linux kernel. "For GitHub accounts (or really, anything but kernel.org where I can just trust the account management), I really want the pull request to be a signed tag, not just a plain branch," Torvalds explains... Torvalds suggests Paragon do future merges from the command-line.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/21/09/11/2316216 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Linux For Apple Silicon Macs Gets Closer To Reality
by Peter Reutemann 13 Sep '21

13 Sep '21

'"Asahi Linux for Apple M1 Macs is moving closer to reality," writes Slashdot reader TroysBucket. An Asahi developer posted a detailed status update on Twitter. Linux enthusiast Bryan Lunduke offers this succinct summary: - The Asahi Linux team has Linux (Debian, in this case) booting and usable with network support. - They now have (very early) display drivers which "take full advantage of the display hardware." - They have at least two base distributions — both Arch and Debian — working and functional (to some extent). They also have, according to their latest update, "boot picker" support so that you can manually select which OS / Drive to boot from on the M1 Macs... I, for one, can't wait to see the first public, functional release of Asahi Linux — and will be following it extremely closely.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/21/09/12/0044227 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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The Strange Tale of the Freedom Phone
by Peter Reutemann 08 Sep '21

08 Sep '21

'A 22-year-old Bitcoin millionaire wants Republicans to ditch their iPhones for a low-end handset that he hopes to turn into a political tool. From a report: It was a pitch tuned for a politically polarized audience. Erik Finman, a 22-year-old who called himself the world's youngest Bitcoin millionaire, posted a video on Twitter for a new kind of smartphone that he said would liberate Americans from their "Big Tech overlords." His splashy video, posted in July, had stirring music, American flags and references to former Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Donald J. Trump. Conservative pundits hawked Mr. Finman's Freedom Phone, and his video amassed 1.8 million views. Mr. Finman soon had thousands of orders for the $500 device. Then came the hard part: Building and delivering the phones. First, he received bad early reviews for a plan to simply put his software on a cheap Chinese phone. And then there was the unglamorous work of shipping phones, hiring customer-service agents, collecting sales taxes and dealing with regulators. "I feel like practically I was prepared for anything," he said in a recent interview. "But I guess it's kind of like how you hope for world peace, in the sense you don't think it's going to happen." For even the most lavishly funded start-ups, it is hard to compete with tech industry giants that have a death grip on their markets and are valued in the trillions of dollars. Mr. Finman was part of a growing right-wing tech industry taking on the challenge nonetheless, relying more on their conservative customers' distaste for Silicon Valley than expertise or experience. [...] To make a smartphone, however, he had to rely on Google. The company's Android software already works with millions of apps, and Google makes a free, open version of the software for developers to modify. So Mr. Finman hired engineers to strip it of any sign of Google and load it with apps from conservative social networks and news outlets. Then he uploaded the software on phones he bought from China. To unveil the phone, he recorded an infomercial in which he cast the tech companies as enemies of the American way. "Imagine if Mark Zuckerberg banned MLK or Abraham Lincoln," he said in the video. "The course of history would have been altered forever." [...] Thousands of people bought the $500 phone. Others, including some conservatives, quickly panned the animated pitch. Quickly, news outlets reported that the Freedom Phone was based on a low-cost handset from Umidigi, a Chinese manufacturer that had used chips shown to be vulnerable to hacks. Mr. Finman, who marketed the device as "the best phone in the world," was on the defensive. In an interview in July, Mr. Finman admitted that Umidigi made the phone but still said he was "100 percent" sure it was more secure than the latest iPhone. Apple has tens of thousands of engineers. Mr. Finman said he employed 15 people in Utah and Idaho.' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/21/09/07/1450242 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Ghostscript Zero-Day Allows Full Server Compromises
by Peter Reutemann 08 Sep '21

08 Sep '21

'Proof-of-concept exploit code was published online over the weekend for an unpatched Ghostscript vulnerability that puts all servers that rely on the component at risk of attacks. From a report: Published by Vietnamese security researcher Nguyen The Duc, the proof-of-concept code is available on GitHub and was confirmed to work by several of today's leading security researchers. Released back in 1988, Ghostscript is a small library that allows applications to process PDF documents and PostScript-based files. While its primary use is for desktop software, Ghostscript is also used server-side, where it is typically included with image conversion and file upload processing toolkits, such as the popular ImageMagick. The proof-of-concept code released by Nguyen on Sunday exploits this latter scenario, allowing an attacker to upload a malformed SVG file that escapes the image processing pipeline and runs malicious code on the underlying operating system. While Nguyen released the public exploit for this bug, he is not the one who discovered the vulnerability.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/21/09/07/1532205 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Linus Torvalds Jokes About Celebrations for Linux's 30th Anniversary
by Peter Reutemann 05 Sep '21

05 Sep '21

'Despite Linux reaching its 30th anniversary, "most outside the tech industry will be unaware that Linux has reached such a milestone," writes ZDNet, "even though the project has had a huge impact on everything from smartphones to cloud computing." They add that Linus Torvalds "poked fun at that lack of recognition in his usual Sunday release note for a new stable version of the Linux kernel." "So I realize you must all still be busy with all the galas and fancy balls and all the other 30th anniversary events, but at some point you must be getting tired of the constant glitz, the fireworks, and the champagne," Torvalds said. "That ball gown or tailcoat isn't the most comfortable thing, either. The celebrations will go on for a few more weeks yet, but you all may just need a breather from them." Linux 5.14 includes additional features for Intel's Alder Lake mobile-ready CPUs, extra AMD support and better support for the Raspberry Pi 400 PC. "Because 5.14 is out there, just waiting for you to kick the tires and remind yourself what all the festivities are about," notes Torvalds... Torvalds is upbeat about Linux's future, predicting decades more work for the kernel's several thousand contributors who help shape the Linux kernel and drivers. "Of course, the poor tireless kernel maintainers won't have time for the festivities, because for them, this just means that the merge window will start tomorrow. We have another 30 years to look forward to, after all. But for the rest of you, take a breather, build a kernel, test it out, and then you can go back to the seemingly endless party that I'm sure you just crawled out of," he wrote.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/21/09/04/2037241 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Vocus DDoS
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 04 Sep '21

04 Sep '21

Vocus, which owns Orcon, Slingshot, Flip and Stuff Fibre (totalling 15% of NZ broadband users), has suffered a DDoS attack, possibly still ongoing <https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/widespread-internet-outages-across-nz-vocus-h…>. Users in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch were affected from 1:30pm, though some reported services returning by 2:10pm. This has also hit EFTPOS payments.

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Cloudflare Says Intel is Not Inside Its Next-Gen Servers
by Peter Reutemann 02 Sep '21

02 Sep '21

'Internet-grooming company Cloudflare has revealed that it was unable to put Intel inside its new home-brew servers, because they just used too much energy. A Tuesday post by platform operations engineer Chris Howells reveals that Cloudflare has been working on designs for an eleventh-generation server since mid-2020. jaa101 writes: "We evaluated Intel's latest generation of 'Ice Lake' Xeon processors," Howells wrote. "Although Intel's chips were able to compete with AMD in terms of raw performance, the power consumption was several hundred watts higher per server -- that's enormous." Fatally enormous -- Cloudflare's evaluation saw it adopt AMD's 64-core Epyc 7713 for the servers it deploys to over 200 edge locations around the world. Power savings also influenced a decision to go from three disks to two in the new design. A pair of 1.92TB Samsung drives replaced the three of the Korean giant's 960GB units found in previous designs. The net gain was a terabyte of capacity, and six fewer watts of power consumption. Howellls's post also reveals that testing produced data showing that equipping its servers with 512GB of RAM did not produce enough of a performance boost to justify the expense. The company has therefore settled on 384GB of memory, but did jump from DDR4-2933 to DDR4-3200 as the slight cost increase delivered a justifiable performance boost.' -- source: https://slashdot.org/story/21/09/01/1917257 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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