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Telnet Passwords Leaked For More Than 500,000 Servers, Routers, and IoT Devices
by Peter Reutemann 20 Jan '20

20 Jan '20

'ZDNet is reporting on a security breach leaking "a massive list of Telnet credentials for more than 515,000 servers, home routers, and IoT (Internet of Things) 'smart' devices." The list, which was published on a popular hacking forum, includes each device's IP address, along with a username and password for the Telnet service, a remote access protocol that can be used to control devices over the internet... Some devices were located on the networks of known internet service providers (indicating they were either home router or IoT devices), but other devices were located on the networks of major cloud service providers... According to experts to who ZDNet spoke this week, and a statement from the leaker himself, the list was compiled by scanning the entire internet for devices that were exposing their Telnet port. The hacker then tried using (1) factory-set default usernames and passwords, or (2) custom, but easy-to-guess password combinations.... To our knowledge, this marks the biggest leak of Telnet passwords known to date. As ZDNet understands, the list was published online by the maintainer of a DDoS-for-hire (DDoS booter) service... When asked why he published such a massive list of "bots," the leaker said he upgraded his DDoS service from working on top of IoT botnets to a new model that relies on renting high-output servers from cloud service providers.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/20/01/19/1649234 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 Did Red Hat Drop Its Support for Docker's Runtime Engine?
by Peter Reutemann 19 Jan '20

19 Jan '20

'"I've grown quite fond of the docker container runtime. It's easy to install and use, and many of the technologies I write about depend upon this software," writes TechRepublic/Linux.com contributor Jack Wallen. "But Red Hat has other plans." The company decided -- seemingly out of the blue -- to drop support for the docker runtime engine. In place of docker came Podman. When trying to ascertain why Red Hat split with Docker, nothing came clear. Sure, I could easily draw the conclusion that Red Hat had grown tired of the security issues surrounding Docker and wanted to take matters in their own hands. There was also Red Hat's issue with "no big fat daemons." If that's the case, how do they justify their stance on systemd? Here's where my tinfoil hat comes into play. Understand this is pure conjecture here and I have zero facts to back these claims up... Red Hat is now owned by IBM. IBM was desperate to gain serious traction within the cloud. To do that, IBM needed Red Hat, so they purchased the company. Next, IBM had to score a bit of vendor lock-in. Using a tool like docker wouldn't give them that lock-in. However, if Red Hat developed and depended on their own container runtime, vendor lock-in was attainable.... Red Hat has jettisoned a mature, known commodity for a less-mature, relatively unknown piece of software -- without offering justification for the migration.... Until Red Hat offers up a sound justification for migrating from the docker container engine to Podman, there's going to be a lot of people sporting tinfoil hats. It comes with the territory of an always-connected world. And if it does turn out to be an IBM grab for vendor lock-in, there'll be a lot of admins migrating away from RHEL/CentOS to the likes of Ubuntu Server, SUSE/openSUSE, Debian, and more. Red Hat's product manager of containers later touted Podman's ability to deploy containers without root access privileges in an interview with eWeek. "We felt the sum total of its features, as well as the project's performance, security and stability, made it reasonable to move to 1.0. Since Podman is set to be the default container engine for the single-node use case in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, we wanted to make some pledges about its supportability." And a Red Hat spokesperson also shared their position with The New Stack. "We saw our customer base wanting the container runtime lifecycle baked-in to the OS or in delivered tandem with OpenShift."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/20/01/18/0236253 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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Tuxedo's New Manjaro Linux Laptops Will Include Massive Customization
by Peter Reutemann 19 Jan '20

19 Jan '20

'Tuxedo Computers "has teamed up with Manjaro to tease not one, not two, but several" Linux laptops, Forbes reports: The Tuxedo Computers InfinityBook Pro 15...can be loaded with up to 64GB of RAM, a 10th-generation Intel Core i7 CPU, and as high as a 2TB Samsung EVO Plus NVMe drive. You can also purchase up to a 5-year warranty, and user-installed upgrades will not void the warranty... Manjaro Lead Project Developer Philip Müller also teased a forthcoming AMD Ryzen laptop [on Forbes' "Linux For Everyone" podcast]. "Yes, we are currently evaluating which models we want to use because the industry is screaming for that," Müller says. "In the upcoming weeks we might get some of those for internal testing. Once they're certified and the drivers are ready, we'll see when we can launch those." Müller also tells me they're prepping what he describes as a "Dell XPS 13 killer." "It's 10th-generation Intel based, we will have it in 14-inch with a 180-degree lid, so you can lay it flat on your desk if you like," he says. The Manjaro/Tuxedo Computers partnership will also offer some intense customization options, Forbes adds. "Want your company logo laser-etched on the lid? OK. Want to swap out the Manjaro logo with your logo on the Super key? Sure, no problem. Want to show off your knowledge of fictional alien races? Why not get a 100% Klingon keyboard?"' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/20/01/18/0045242 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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“Windows Refund Day” Retrospective
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 18 Jan '20

18 Jan '20

Just been watching this video <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j9j-Ywjmbk> about that day in 1999 when open-source fans in a number of countries (including NZ) staged a march to demand a refund for the copies of Microsoft Windows that were bundled with hardware that they bought, even though they didn’t want that OS. It also recounts the story of the first person to actually get such a refund, and the rigmarole she had to go through to get it. Nowadays, I expect such a demand would be even less effective than it was then. The price of Windows to the hardware manufacturers is heavily offset (likely by more than 100%) by payments they get for preinstalling “crapware” (demo, time-limited and “lite” versions of various apps) from software vendors. So if they have to refund you the one, they will also deduct the other, and you end up with a net pittance, or very likely nothing at all, for saying no to Windows.

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Do Parents Think Free Software Is Malware?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 18 Jan '20

18 Jan '20

Came across this article <https://opensource.com/life/15/12/dear-parents-let-your-kids-use-open-sourc…> from a few years ago, relating the tale of a teenager who was given an expensive laptop, who chose to replace its Windows OS (and included software) with Ubuntu. His parents were livid when they found out--two years after the fact. They jumped to the conclusion that his machine was now under the control of malware and hackers and all the rest of it, not to mention his throwing away the software they had paid good money for. So he resorted to Reddit (!) to get advice on how to explain things to his parents. The thread <https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/3rfukp/i_really_need_advice/> has, in perhaps typical Reddit fashion, a mix of useful and not-so-useful responses. Though the upshot was, he was able to come to an accommodation with his parents, even if it did involve paying back the cost of the firewall/antivirus subscription that he didn’t use. That teen is an adult now. I wonder if it was an isolated case...

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Marketroid boilerplate text
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 17 Jan '20

17 Jan '20

I came across what might be described as a more “modern” alternative to the well-known “lorem ipsum” text for dummying up article layouts. You can find lots of occurrences of this all over the web with this search <https://www.google.com/search?q=Capitalize+on+low+hanging+fruit>, and frankly, most of them look like accidents. But I can’t find where this text originally came from. Anyone have any idea?

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Pinebook Pro Review - US$199 Linux Powered ARM laptop
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 17 Jan '20

17 Jan '20

Part <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgNYQsdxlMw> of a series reviewing an ARM-based device that is not a Chromebook. Seems to have remarkable build quality for its price, offers versatility for those who like to tinker, and the battery life and performance are also quite reasonable. The main downside is some issues with multimedia in browsers (e.g. YouTube).

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Bruce Schneier on 5G Security
by Peter Reutemann 17 Jan '20

17 Jan '20

'Bruce Schneier comments on the issues surrounding 5G security: [...] Keeping untrusted companies like Huawei out of Western infrastructure isn't enough to secure 5G. Neither is banning Chinese microchips, software, or programmers. Security vulnerabilities in the standards, the protocols and software for 5G, ensure that vulnerabilities will remain, regardless of who provides the hardware and software. These insecurities are a result of market forces that prioritize costs over security and of governments, including the United States, that want to preserve the option of surveillance in 5G networks. If the United States is serious about tackling the national security threats related to an insecure 5G network, it needs to rethink the extent to which it values corporate profits and government espionage over security. To be sure, there are significant security improvements in 5G over 4G in encryption, authentication, integrity protection, privacy, and network availability. But the enhancements aren't enough. The 5G security problems are threefold. First, the standards are simply too complex to implement securely. This is true for all software, but the 5G protocols offer particular difficulties. Because of how it is designed, the system blurs the wireless portion of the network connecting phones with base stations and the core portion that routes data around the world. Additionally, much of the network is virtualized, meaning that it will rely on software running on dynamically configurable hardware. This design dramatically increases the points vulnerable to attack, as does the expected massive increase in both things connected to the network and the data flying about it. Second, there's so much backward compatibility built into the 5G network that older vulnerabilities remain. 5G is an evolution of the decade-old 4G network, and most networks will mix generations. Without the ability to do a clean break from 4G to 5G, it will simply be impossible to improve security in some areas. Attackers may be able to force 5G systems to use more vulnerable 4G protocols, for example, and 5G networks will inherit many existing problems. Third, the 5G standards committees missed many opportunities to improve security. Many of the new security features in 5G are optional, and network operators can choose not to implement them. The same happened with 4G; operators even ignored security features defined as mandatory in the standard because implementing them was expensive. But even worse, for 5G, development, performance, cost, and time to market were all prioritized over security, which was treated as an afterthought.' -- source: https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/20/01/16/1514231 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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Browser Benchmark Battle: Chrome Vs. Firefox Vs. Edge Vs. Brave
by Peter Reutemann 17 Jan '20

17 Jan '20

'It's been some 18 months since VentureBeat's last browser benchmark battle. What better time to get the latest results than the start of a new year? Over the past year and a half, Google Chrome has continued to dominate market share, Mozilla Firefox has doubled down on privacy, Microsoft Edge has embraced Chromium, and Brave launched out of beta. You can click on the individual test to see the results: SunSpider: Edge wins! Octane: Chrome wins! Kraken: Firefox wins! JetStream: Edge wins! MotionMark: Edge wins! Speedometer: Edge wins! Basemark: Brave wins! WebXPRT: Firefox wins! The Chromium version of Edge did a lot better given that the stable release only arrived this week. We were expecting improvements, but not so many outright wins. That said, browser performance was solid across all four contestants -- each browser won at least one test. Performance of course shouldn't be your only consideration when picking your preferred app for consuming internet content. As long as you're using a browser that receives regular updates (and all four of these meet that criteria), you can expect performance to be solid. There is certainly room for improvement, but Chrome, Firefox, and now Edge, as well as Brave, are all quite capable.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/01/16/180227 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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The PinePhone starts shipping—a Linux-powered smartphone for $150
by Peter Reutemann 17 Jan '20

17 Jan '20

'Pine64 has announced that it is finally shipping the PinePhone, a smartphone that takes the rare step outside the Android/iOS duopoly and is designed to run mainline Linux distributions. The PinePhone starts shipping January 17 in the "Braveheart" developer edition. This initial "Braveheart" batch of devices is meant for "developer and early adopter" users, according to the Pine64 Store. The phone doesn't come with an end-user OS pre-installed and, instead, only comes with a factory test image that allows for easy verification that the hardware works. Users are expected to flash their own OS to the device. There are several available, from Ubuntu Touch to Sailfish OS, but they are all currently in an unfinished alpha state. Pine64 says that only enthusiasts with "extensive Linux experience" are the intended customer here—this isn't (yet?) a mainstream product. It's hard to mention PinePhone without mentioning that other Linux smartphone, the Purism Librem 5. They could both end up running the same software one day, but the two companies are taking totally different approaches to hardware. Purism has a hardline requirement for the hardware: it needs to be as open and freedom-focused as possible, which means the company couldn't use the typical supply chain that exists for Android phones. Purism has only a limited amount of open source-compatible vendors to choose from, and it uses M.2 socketed chips for the closed-source Wi-Fi/Bluetooth and Cell modem. The result is a device that is very thick (16mm), hot, and expensive, at $750. The PinePhone is less averse to binary blobs and is a lot closer to a normal smartphone. It's a more reasonable thickness (9mm) and a more reasonable price: $150.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/01/the-pinephone-starts-shipping-a-lin… 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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