- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Browser Extension uMatrix Ends Active Development
by Peter Reutemann 21 Sep '20

21 Sep '20

'Raymond Hill, known online as gorhill, has set the status of the uMatrix GitHub repository to archived; this means that it is read-only at the time and that no updates will become available. The uMatrix extension is available for several browsers including Firefox, Google Chrome, and most Firefox and Chromium-based browsers. It is a privacy and security extensions for advanced users that provides firewall-like capabilities when it is installed... Hill suggests that developers could fork the extension to continue development under a new name. There is also the chance that Hill might resume development in the future but there is no guarantee that this is going to happen. For now, uMatrix is no longer in active development. ' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/09/20/2124248 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

DuckDuckGo Is Growing Fast
by Peter Reutemann 18 Sep '20

18 Sep '20

'DuckDuckGo, the privacy-focused search engine, announced that August 2020 ended in over 2 billion total searches via its search platform. While Google remains the most popular search engine, DuckDuckGo has gained a great deal of traction in recent months as more and more users have begun to value their privacy on the internet. DuckDuckGo saw over 2 billion searches and 4 million app/extension installations, and the company also said that they have over 65 million active users. DuckDuckGo could shatter its old traffic record if the same growth trend continues. Even though DuckDuckGo is growing rapidly, it still controls less than 2 percent of all search volume in the United States. However, DuckDuckGo's growth trend has continued throughout the year, mainly due to Google and other companies' privacy scandal.' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/09/17/2036241 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

Patient Dies After Hospital Hit By Ransomware Attack
by Peter Reutemann 18 Sep '20

18 Sep '20

'A patient died after a German hospital was hit by ransomware attack, when hackers thought they were targeting a university. German authorities said that what appears to have been a misdirected hacker attack impacted systems at a major hospital in Duesseldorf, and a woman who needed urgent admission died after she had to be taken to another city for treatment. Duesseldorf police established contact and told the attacker that the hospital, and not the university, had been affected, endangering patients. The attacker then withdrew the extortion attempt and provided a digital key to decrypt the data.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/09/17/144257 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

YouTube's Recommendation System is Criticized as Harmful. Mozilla Wants To Research It
by Peter Reutemann 18 Sep '20

18 Sep '20

'YouTube's video recommendation system has been repeatedly accused by critics of sending people down rabbit holes of disinformation and extremism. Now Mozilla, the nonprofit that makes the Firefox browser, wants YouTube's users to help it research how the controversial algorithms work. From a report: Mozilla on Thursday announced a project that asks people to download a software tool that gives Mozilla's researchers information on what video recommendations people are receiving on the Google-owned platform. YouTube's algorithms recommend videos in the "What's next" column along the right side of the screen, inside the video player after the content has ended, or on the site's homepage. Each recommendation is tailored to the person watching, taking into account things like their watch history, list of channel subscriptions or location. The recommendations can be benign, like another live performance from the band you're watching. But critics say YouTube's recommendations can also lead viewers to fringe content, like medical misinformation or conspiracy theories. ' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/09/17/150228 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

Cloudflare and the Wayback Machine, Joining Forces For a More Reliable Web
by Peter Reutemann 18 Sep '20

18 Sep '20

'Cloudflare and the Internet Archive are now working together to help make the web more reliable. Websites that enable Cloudflare's Always Online service will now have their content automatically archived, and if by chance the original host is not available to Cloudflare, then the Internet Archive will step in to make sure the pages get through to users. From a report: Cloudflare has become core infrastructure for the Web, and we are glad we can be helpful in making a more reliable web for everyone."The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine has an impressive infrastructure that can archive the web at scale," said Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare. "By working together, we can take another step toward making the Internet more resilient by stopping server issues for our customers and in turn from interrupting businesses and users online." For more than 20 years the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine has been archiving much of the public Web, and making those archives available to journalists, researchers, activists, academics and the general public, in total to hundreds of thousands of people a day. To date more than 468 billion Web pages are available via the Wayback Machine and we are adding more than 1 billion new archived URLs/day. We archive URLs that are identified via a variety of different methods, such as "crawling" from lists of millions of sites, as submitted by users via the Wayback Machine's "Save Page Now" feature, added to Wikipedia articles, referenced in Tweets, and based on a number of other "signals" and sources, such multiple feeds of "news" stories. An additional source of URLs we will preserve now originates from customers of Cloudflare's Always Online service. As new URLs are added to sites that use that service they are submitted for archiving to the Wayback Machine. In some cases this will be the first time a URL will be seen by our system and result in a "First Archive" event.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/09/17/1544222 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

Mozilla Shuts Down Firefox Send and Firefox Notes Services
by Peter Reutemann 18 Sep '20

18 Sep '20

'Mozilla is shutting down two of its legacy products, Firefox Send and Firefox Notes, the company announced today. From a report: "Both services are being decommissioned and will no longer be a part of our product family," a Mozilla spokesperson told ZDNet this week. Of the two, the most beloved was Firefox Send, a free file-sharing service, and one of the few that supported sharing files in encrypted formats. Launched in March 2019, the service gained a dedicated fanbase but Send was taken offline earlier this summer after ZDNet reported on its constant abuse by malware groups. At the time, Mozilla said that Send's shutdown was temporary and promised to find a way to curb the service's abuse in malware operations. But weeks later, things changed after Mozilla leadership laid off more than 250 employees as part of an effort to re-focus its business on commercial products.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/09/17/1923240 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

Billions of Devices Vulnerable To New 'BLESA' Bluetooth Spoofing Attack
by Peter Reutemann 17 Sep '20

17 Sep '20

'"Billions of smartphones, tablets, laptops, and IoT devices are using Bluetooth software stacks that are vulnerable to a new security flaw disclosed over the summer," reports ZDNet. Named BLESA (Bluetooth Low Energy Spoofing Attack), the vulnerability impacts devices running the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocol, and affects the reconnection process that occurs when a device moves back into range after losing or dropping its pairing. A successful BLESA attack allows bad actors to connect with a device (by getting around reconnection authentication requirements) and send spoofed data to it. In the case of IoT devices, those malicious packets can convince machines to carry out different or new behavior. For humans, attackers could feed a device deceptive information. BLESA impacts billions of devices that run vulnerable BLE software stacks. Vulnerable are BLE software libraries like BlueZ (Linux-based IoT devices), Fluoride (Android), and the iOS BLE stack. Windows' BLE stack is not impacted.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/20/09/16/220211 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

Microsoft To Open-Source Windows Security-Testing Tool
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 16 Sep '20

16 Sep '20

Ever wondered how Microsoft manages to keep Windows so secure? You won’t have to wonder for much longer, as it is planning to open-source OneFuzz <https://www.theregister.com/2020/09/16/microsoft_open_sources_fuzzing_tool/>, a key tool it uses to probe its OS for vulnerabilities. Yes, third-party developers! Soon you, too, will be able to achieve truly Microsoftian levels of code quality!

1 0

Microsoft To Build Data Centre In Auckland
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 16 Sep '20

16 Sep '20

The Overseas Investment Office has approved <https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=123654…> Microsoft’s proposal to build a cloud data centre in Auckland: The applicant was Microsoft NZ - 100 per cent owned by a Bermuda entity but ultimately controlled by Microsoft Corporation in the US. Wonder why Bermuda is involved ...

2 1

Microsoft Submits Linux Kernel Patches For a 'Complete Virtualization Stack' With Linux and Hyper-V
by Peter Reutemann 16 Sep '20

16 Sep '20

'Microsoft has submitted a series of patches to the Linux kernel with its aim being "to create a complete virtualization stack with Linux and Microsoft Hypervisor." The Register reports: The patches are designated "RFC" (Request for comments) and are a minimal implementation presented for discussion. The key change is that with the patched kernel, Linux will run as the Hyper-V root partition. In the Hyper-V architecture, the root partition has direct access to hardware and creates child partitions for the VMs it hosts. "Just think of it like Xen's Dom0," said Microsoft principal software engineer Wei Liu. Hyper-V's architecture is more similar to Xen than it is to KVM or to VMware's ESXi, and Liu acknowledged that "we drew inspiration from the Xen code in Linux," specifically for code handing interrupts. Until now, the Hyper-V root partition had to run Windows. Microsoft has also ported Intel's open-source Cloud Hypervisor, a Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) written in Rust that normally runs on KVM, the hypervisor that is built into the Linux kernel. Cloud Hypervisor itself is currently in "very early pre-alpha stage." Even when Linux is the root partition, it will still run on top of Microsoft's hypervisor, a thin layer running with ring -1 privileges. It will no longer be necessary to run Windows on that hypervisor, though, enabling Microsoft to call the new arrangement "a complete virtualization stack with Linux."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/20/09/15/207219 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