- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

A big bet to kill the password for good
by Peter Reutemann 21 Mar '22

21 Mar '22

'After years of tantalizing hints that a passwordless future is just around the corner, you're probably still not feeling any closer to that digital unshackling. Ten years into working on the issue, though, the FIDO Alliance, an industry association that specifically works on secure authentication, thinks it has finally identified the missing piece of the puzzle. On Thursday, the organization published a white paper that lays out FIDO's vision for solving the usability issues that have dogged passwordless features and, seemingly, kept them from achieving broad adoption. FIDO's members collaborated to produce the paper, and they span chipmakers like Intel and Qualcomm, prominent platform developers like Amazon and Meta, financial institutions like American Express and Bank of America, and the developers of all major operating systems—Google, Microsoft, and Apple. The paper is conceptual, not technical, but after years of investment to integrate what are known as the FIDO2 and WebAuthn passwordless standards into Windows, Android, iOS, and more, everything is now riding on the success of this next step.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/03/a-big-bet-to-kill-th… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Trickbot is using MikroTik routers to ply its trade. Now we know why
by Peter Reutemann 18 Mar '22

18 Mar '22

'For years, malicious hackers have been hacking large fleets of MikroTik routers and conscripting them into Trickbot, one of the Internet’s most destructive botnets. Now, Microsoft has finally figured out why and how the routers are being put to use. Trickbot came to light in 2016 as a trojan for stealing account passwords for use in bank fraud. Since then, Trickbot has mushroomed into one of the Internet's most aggressive threat platforms, thanks to its highly modular, multistage malware framework that provides a full suite of tools that are used to install ransomware and other forms of malware from other hacking groups. The malware driving Trickbot is notable for its advanced capabilities. It excels at gaining powerful administrator privileges, spreading rapidly from computer to computer in networks, and performing reconnaissance that identifies infected computers belonging to high-value targets. The malware often uses readily available software like Mimikatz or exploits like EternalBlue, which was stolen from the National Security Agency.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/03/trickbot-is-using-mi… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Researcher uses Dirty Pipe exploit to fully root a Pixel 6 Pro and Samsung S22
by Peter Reutemann 17 Mar '22

17 Mar '22

'A researcher has successfully used the critical Dirty Pipe vulnerability in Linux to fully root two models of Android phones—a Pixel 6 Pro and Samsung S22—in a hack that demonstrates the power of exploiting the newly discovered OS flaw. The researcher chose those two handset models for a good reason: they are two of the few—if not the only—devices known to run Android version 5.10.43, the only release of Google's mobile OS that's vulnerable to Dirty Pipe. Because the LPE, or local privilege escalation, vulnerability wasn't introduced until the recently released version 5.8 of the Linux kernel, the universe of exploitable devices—whether mobile, Internet of Things, or servers and desktops—is relatively small.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/03/researcher-uses-dirt… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Nasty Linux Netfilter Firewall Security Hole Found
by Peter Reutemann 16 Mar '22

16 Mar '22

'Sophos threat researcher Nick Gregory discovered a hole in Linux's netfilter firewall program that's "exploitable to achieve kernel code execution (via ROP [return-oriented programming]), giving full local privilege escalation, container escape, whatever you want." ZDNet reports: Behind almost all Linux firewalls tools such as iptables; its newer version, nftables; firewalld; and ufw, is netfilter, which controls access to and from Linux's network stack. It's an essential Linux security program, so when a security hole is found in it, it's a big deal. [...] This problem exists because netfilter doesn't handle its hardware offload feature correctly. A local, unprivileged attacker can use this to cause a denial-of-service (DoS), execute arbitrary code, and cause general mayhem. Adding insult to injury, this works even if the hardware being attacked doesn't have offload functionality! That's because, as Gregory wrote to a security list, "Despite being in code dealing with hardware offload, this is reachable when targeting network devices that don't have offload functionality (e.g. lo) as the bug is triggered before the rule creation fails." This vulnerability is present in the Linux kernel versions 5.4 through 5.6.10. It's listed as Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE-2022-25636), and with a Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) score of 7.8), this is a real badie. How bad? In its advisory, Red Hat said, "This flaw allows a local attacker with a user account on the system to gain access to out-of-bounds memory, leading to a system crash or a privilege escalation threat." So, yes, this is bad. Worse still, it affects recent major distribution releases such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.x; Debian Bullseye; Ubuntu Linux, and SUSE Linux Enterprise 15.3. While the Linux kernel netfilter patch has been made, the patch isn't available yet in all distribution releases. ' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/22/03/15/221258 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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A brief tour of the PDP-11, the most influential minicomputer of all time
by Peter Reutemann 15 Mar '22

15 Mar '22

'The history of computing could arguably be divided into three eras: that of mainframes, minicomputers, and microcomputers. Minicomputers provided an important bridge between the first mainframes and the ubiquitous micros of today. This is the story of the PDP-11, the most influential and successful minicomputer ever. In their moment, minicomputers were used in a variety of applications. They served as communications controllers, instrument controllers, large system pre-processors, desk calculators, and real-time data acquisition handlers. But they also laid the foundation for significant hardware architecture advances and contributed greatly to modern operating systems, programming languages, and interactive computing as we know them today. In today’s world of computing, in which every computer runs some variant of Windows, Mac, or Linux, it’s hard to distinguish between the CPUs underneath the operating system. But there was a time when differences in CPU architecture were a big deal. The PDP-11 helps explain why that was the case. The PDP-11 was introduced in 1970, a time when most computing was done on expensive GE, CDC, and IBM mainframes that few people had access to. There were no laptops, desktops, or personal computers. Programming was done by only a few companies, mostly in assembly, COBOL, and FORTRAN. Input was done on punched cards, and programs ran in non-interactive batch runs.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/03/a-brief-tour-of-the-pdp-11-the-most… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Researcher uses 379-year-old algorithm to crack crypto keys found in the wild
by Peter Reutemann 15 Mar '22

15 Mar '22

'Cryptographic keys generated with older software now owned by technology company Rambus are weak enough to be broken instantly using commodity hardware, a researcher reported on Monday. This revelation is part of an investigation that also uncovered a handful of weak keys in the wild. The software comes from a basic version of the SafeZone Crypto Libraries, which were developed by a company called Inside Secure and acquired by Rambus as part of its 2019 acquisition of Verimatrix, a Rambus representative said. That version was deprecated prior to the acquisition and is distinct from a FIPS-certified version that the company now sells under the Rambus FIPS Security Toolkit brand. Researcher Hanno Böck said that the vulnerable SafeZone library doesn't sufficiently randomize the two prime numbers it used to generate RSA keys. (These keys can be used to secure Web traffic, shells, and other online connections.) Instead, after the SafeZone tool selects one prime number, it chooses a prime in close proximity as the second one needed to form the key. "The problem is that both primes are too similar," Böck said in an interview. "So the difference between the two primes is really small." The SafeZone vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2022-26320. Cryptographers have long known that RSA keys that are generated with primes that are too close together can be trivially broken with Fermat's factorization method. French mathematician Pierre de Fermat first described this method in 1643.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/03/researcher-uses-600-… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Intel Finds Bug In AMD's Spectre Mitigation, AMD Issues Fix
by Peter Reutemann 14 Mar '22

14 Mar '22

'"News of a fresh Spectre BHB vulnerability that only impacts Intel and Arm processors emerged this week," reports Tom's Hardware, "but Intel's research around these new attack vectors unearthed another issue. "One of the patches that AMD has used to fix the Spectre vulnerabilities has been broken since 2018." Intel's security team, STORM, found the issue with AMD's mitigation. In response, AMD has issued a security bulletin and updated its guidance to recommend using an alternative method to mitigate the Spectre vulnerabilities, thus repairing the issue anew.... Intel's research into AMD's Spectre fix begins in a roundabout way — Intel's processors were recently found to still be susceptible to Spectre v2-based attacks via a new Branch History Injection variant, this despite the company's use of the Enhanced Indirect Branch Restricted Speculation (eIBRS) and/or Retpoline mitigations that were thought to prevent further attacks. In need of a newer Spectre mitigation approach to patch the far-flung issue, Intel turned to studying alternative mitigation techniques. There are several other options, but all entail varying levels of performance tradeoffs. Intel says its ecosystem partners asked the company to consider using AMD's LFENCE/JMP technique. The "LFENCE/JMP" mitigation is a Retpoline alternative commonly referred to as "AMD's Retpoline." As a result of Intel's investigation, the company discovered that the mitigation AMD has used since 2018 to patch the Spectre vulnerabilities isn't sufficient — the chips are still vulnerable. The issue impacts nearly every modern AMD processor spanning almost the entire Ryzen family for desktop PCs and laptops (second-gen to current-gen) and the EPYC family of datacenter chips.... In response to the STORM team's discovery and paper, AMD issued a security bulletin (AMD-SB-1026) that states it isn't aware of any currently active exploits using the method described in the paper. AMD also instructs its customers to switch to using "one of the other published mitigations (V2-1 aka 'generic retpoline' or V2-4 aka 'IBRS')." The company also published updated Spectre mitigation guidance reflecting those changes [PDF].... AMD's security bulletin thanks Intel's STORM team by name and noted it engaged in the coordinated vulnerability disclosure, thus allowing AMD enough time to address the issue before making it known to the public. ' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/22/03/13/200224 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Copper Lines To Be Cut Starting September
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 14 Mar '22

14 Mar '22

First I heard about it today, but it’s the beginning of the end for copper phone lines; Chorus is going to cut off a few installations (“fewer than 5000”) on a trial basis later this year <https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/124317060/first-copper-phone-services-to-b…>: Chorus chief executive Jean-Baptiste Rousselot said that outside of those “limited initial trial areas” no-one should feel under any pressure to move off copper. This will only happen in areas where the takeup of fibre is already high, and customers will get six months’ notice.

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Arch Linux Turns 20
by Peter Reutemann 13 Mar '22

13 Mar '22

'"Arch Linux, the rolling Linux distribution that powers Valve's Steam Deck is now 20 years old," reports Neowin. Slashdot reader segaboy81 writes that "What's cool to see here is that everything changed behind the scenes, but on the surface, things are the same." From the article: Announced on March 11th, 2002, and codenamed Homer, version 0.1 was released to minor fanfare. The release notes were a far cry from today's, essentially announcing it had broken ground and the foundation was going in, as it were. Homer's release notes: I've finally got a bootable iso image on the ftp site. The bad news is that you don't get a pretty interactive installer. But if you wanted one of those, you would have gone with RedHat, right? ;) I'll try to get the docs up for ABS (Arch Build System) which, IMHO, is one of the best advantages of Arch. With ABS, you can easily create new packages, and it's trivial to rebuild existing packages with your own customizations.... It shipped with Linux kernel 2.4.18 which many of the Linux old-timers (myself included) will remember was right before we started to get nice things like auto-mounting USB drives in kernel 2.6. XFree86 4.2.0 was also in stow, which is what we now call Xorg. If you wanted to build software, you had to use an absolutely ancient gcc toolchain (2.95.3). Web browsing was covered by the ghost of Netscape Navigator, Mozilla 0.9.9. Heady days, these were!' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/22/03/12/0251257 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Brave takes on the creepy websites that override your privacy settings
by Peter Reutemann 10 Mar '22

10 Mar '22

'Some websites just can't take "no" for an answer. Instead of respecting visitors' choice to block third-party cookies—the identifiers that track browsing activity as a user moves from site to site—they find sneaky ways to bypass those settings. Now, makers of the Brave browser are taking action. Earlier this week, Brave Nightly—the testing and development version of the browser—rolled out a feature that's designed to prevent what's known as bounce tracking. The new feature, known as unlinkable bouncing, will roll out for general release in Brave version 1.37 slated for March 29.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/03/brave-has-a-plan-to-… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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