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Vanilla OS: More Than Just Vanilla GNOME With Ubuntu
by Peter Reutemann 31 Oct '22

31 Oct '22

'Slashdot reader Soul_Predator writes: Vanilla OS is Ubuntu on stock GNOME, with on-demand immutability and package selection freedom. It is currently a beta project, with a stable release planned for the next month. "The first-time setup process is a breeze to experience," writes It's FOSS News, applauding how it lets uses choose and enable Flatpak/Snap/AppImage. Overall, a package manager that installs applications utilizing a container, getting the ability to choose your package managers, on-demand immutability, and vanilla GNOME make it seem like a good deal to keep an eye on... I'd say it is a project that I believe a lot of users will appreciate. You can download the ISO by joining its Discord channel for now. The ISO is not yet publicly available to all. Take a look at its documentation if you are curious. However, as per the roadmap, they plan to have a release candidate soon enough. ' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/22/10/29/1953233 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Teaching The Kids To Be Safe Online
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 30 Oct '22

30 Oct '22

A program is being introduced into schools to give students a better appreciation for how to keep themselves safe online <https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/130292250/students-urged-to-be-l…>. It covers things like spotting phishing attacks, and avoiding making personal information public that you might regret later: Naenae College principal Nic Richards said while students were experts in social media, parents and teachers were aware that “the decisions made now can exist online forever.” “Experts” in putting information up and interacting with other users, not so savvy perhaps in understanding the consequences of doing so. And maybe some of what they learn will rub off on others in their family ... including their parents?

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“You must enable DRM to play some audio or video on this page.”
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 28 Oct '22

28 Oct '22

I have seen Firefox give me this message that I need to “enable DRM” (i.e. install support for Encrypted Media Extensions) when I visit certain pages. One site that is currently triggering this for me is Metservice <https://www.metservice.com/towns-cities/locations/hamilton>. Yet I can’t see anything on that page that I might be blocked from playing. There is a Video Forecast clip, but I seem to be able to play that OK. Anybody else get this message?

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'Old/Weird Laptops' Sought To Help Test Linux Kernel Backlight Drivers
by Peter Reutemann 28 Oct '22

28 Oct '22

'Do you have a laptop that's either "pretty old" or "weird in some other way"? Did it ship without Windows from the factory, or did you flash its firmware with coreboot? You could help the Linux kernel move its backlight code forward without abandoning quirky gear like yours. ArsTechnica: Hans de Goede, a longtime Linux developer and principal engineer at Red Hat, writes on his Livejournal about the need to test "a special group of laptops" to prevent their backlight controls from disappearing in Linux kernel 6.1. Old laptop tests are needed because de Goede is initiating some major changes to user-space backlight controls, something he has been working on since 2014. As detailed at Linux blog Phoronix, there are multiple issues with how Linux tries to address the wide variety of backlight schemes in displays, which de Goede laid out at the recent Linux Plumbers Conference. There can be multiple backlight devices operating a single display, leaving high-level controls to "guess which one will work." Brightness control requires root permissions at the moment. And "0" passed along as a backlight value remains a conundrum, as the engineer pointed out in 2014: Is that entirely off, or as low as the display can be lit?' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/22/10/27/1920206 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Systemd Supremo Proposes Tightening up Linux Boot Process
by Peter Reutemann 27 Oct '22

27 Oct '22

'Lennart Poettering's latest blog post proposes moving the Linux boot process into a "Brave New Trusted Boot World" of cryptographically signed Unified Kernel Images. From a report: Agent Poettering offers a mechanism for tightening up the security of the system startup process on Linux machines, using TPM 2.0 hardware. In brief, what he sees as the problem is that on hardware with Secure Boot enabled, while the boot process up to and including the kernel is signed, the next step, loading the initrd, is not. That's what he wants to fix. ' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/22/10/26/1743234 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Passkeys Are Finally Here
by Peter Reutemann 26 Oct '22

26 Oct '22

'Ars Technica: Generically, passkeys refer to various schemes for storing authenticating information in hardware, a concept that has existed for more than a decade. What's different now is that Microsoft, Apple, Google, and a consortium of other companies have unified around a single passkey standard shepherded by the FIDO Alliance. Not only are passkeys easier for most people to use than passwords; they are also completely resistant to credential phishing, credential stuffing, and similar account takeover attacks. On Monday, PayPal said US-based users would soon have the option of logging in using FIDO-based passkeys, joining Kayak, eBay, Best Buy, CardPointers, and WordPress as online services that will offer the password alternative. In recent months, Microsoft, Apple, and Google have all updated their operating systems and apps to enable passkeys. Passkey support is still spotty. Passkeys stored on iOS or macOS will work on Windows, for instance, but the reverse isn't yet available. In the coming months, all of that should be ironed out, though. Passkeys work almost identically to the FIDO authenticators that allow us to use our phones, laptops, computers, and Yubico or Feitian security keys for multi-factor authentication. Just like the FIDO authenticators stored on these MFA devices, passkeys are invisible and integrate with Face ID, Windows Hello, or other biometric readers offered by device makers. There's no way to retrieve the cryptographic secrets stored in the authenticators short of physically dismantling the device or subjecting it to a jailbreak or rooting attack. Even if an adversary was able to extract the cryptographic secret, they still would have to supply the fingerprint, facial scan, or -- in the absence of biometric capabilities -- the PIN that's associated with the token. What's more, hardware tokens use FIDO's Cross-Device Authentication flow, or CTAP, which relies on Bluetooth Low Energy to verify the authenticating device is in close physical proximity to the device trying to log in. "Users no longer need to enroll each device for each service, which has long been the case for FIDO (and for any public key cryptography)," said Andrew Shikiar, FIDO's executive director and chief marketing officer. "By enabling the private key to be securely synced across an OS cloud, the user needs to only enroll once for a service, and then is essentially pre-enrolled for that service on all of their other devices. This brings better usability for the end-user and -- very significantly -- allows the service provider to start retiring passwords as a means of account recovery and re-enrollment." In other words: "Passkeys just trade WebAuthn cryptographic keys with the website directly," says Ars Review Editor Ron Amadeo. "There's no need for a human to tell a password manager to generate, store, and recall a secret -- that will all happen automatically, with way better secrets than what the old text box supported, and with uniqueness enforced." If you're eager to give passkeys a try, you can use this demo site created by security company Hanko.' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/22/10/25/1912214 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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meeting next *Tuesday*
by Peter Reutemann 26 Oct '22

26 Oct '22

Hi everyone We have a meeting next week on Tuesday (not Monday, due to Labour Day) with the following topic: "Ever wondered what Docker was all about? Peter Reutemann will give a hands-on introduction into the tool and show you why it is so useful." Details: https://www.meetup.com/waikatolinuxusersgroup/events/283776731/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Memtest86+ Is Back After 9 Years
by Peter Reutemann 26 Oct '22

26 Oct '22

'Memtest86+ just got its first update after 9 years. The program has reportedly been rewritten from scratch and is back in active development. The new version, 6.0, features a plethora of updates to bring the application up to date, and support the latest system hardware from Intel and AMD. Tom's Hardware reports: For the uninitiated, MemTest86 was originally created back in the mid 1990s, and was one of the earliest DDR memory testing applications for personal computers. But development stopped in 2013 once Memtest86 was split into Memtest86 and Memtest86", with the former being bought by PassMark. Officially, we don't know why development stopped. But compared to the now modern Memtest86, Memtest86+ is the open-source variant. Needless to say, version 6.00 features a lot of updates, which were required to bring it up to modern standards compared to the 2013 version. The new version includes completely rewritten code for UEFI-based motherboards, the modern version of a BIOS, for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the application. Furthermore, the application features added support for x64 long mode paging, support for up to 256 cores, added detection for DDR4 and DDR5 memory -- since DDR3 was the latest memory standard in 2013 -- and adds support for XMP version 3.0. CPU support has been significantly enhanced, addingdetection for all pre-Zen and AMD Zen-based processors ranging from the Ryzen 1000 series to 7000 series, and any older parts that were made after 2013. Intel support has also been added for chips up to 13th gen Raptor Lake. Finally, the last patch notes indicate version 6.0 adds support for older Nvidia and AMD chipsets - probably pre-2010 since it mentions Nvidia nForce chipsets, along with numerous bug fixes, optimizations and enhancements.' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/22/10/24/2315242 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Just When You Thought Y2K Was Done And Dusted ...
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 25 Oct '22

25 Oct '22

Remember what the whole Y2K issue was like, over a quarter-century ago? And all the work that had to be done to fix it? You’d think that lessons were learned, software developers would be wiser, and henceforth they would always use four digits for year numbers, so that a situation like that would not occur again. Guess again. Recently I hit a situation where a piece of software was *still* using just two digits for year numbers. Basically it was maintaining Certificate Revocation Lists (CRLs) for OpenVPN connections; these have an expiry date, in the form of the “nextupdate” field, to ensure that outdated lists are regularly replaced with fresh ones, to reduce the chance that anybody is inadvertently continuing to use compromised keys. The software in question is pfSense, from Netgate <https://forum.netgate.com/topic/172870/crl-has-expired>. The standard format for these CRLs can handle a full range of dates, but the internal system on pfSense for generating them can only handle years from 1950 to 2049. The generated CRLs were being given validity durations of 9999 days, which was fine up until about August this year, when the expiry date went past 2049, and wrapped around to 1950. On an incoming connection attempt, OpenSSL would check the CRL, find it invalid, and cause OpenVPN to drop the connection. The forum discussion above links to a patch to fix the issue. Only the patch doesn’t really make for a permanent fix: all it does is reduce the assigned validity duration from 9999 days to 730 days; the actual underlying software is still only working with 2-digit year numbers. This gives Netgate a few decades’ breathing room to come up with a proper fix.

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Online Misinformation Monitor Newsletter
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 20 Oct '22

20 Oct '22

Came across this useful series of monthly reports <https://www.newsguardtech.com/misinformation-monitor/> on how online services are being conduits for spreading misinformation and disinformation. Don’t trust them? Learn to watch out for those who keep insisting they are correct, versus those who are willing to offer reasons why they are correct (and are willing to correct their mistakes) <https://www.newsguardtech.com/about/why-should-you-trust-us/>.

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