- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

GIMP Developers Outline Plan For 2019
by Peter Reutemann 02 Jan '19

02 Jan '19

'The GIMP developers on Wednesday published a blog post in which they look back at the year 2018 (release of GIMP 2.10) and outline the things that they intend to get around this year. From the post: We expect to be shipping 2.10.x updates throughout 2019, starting with the version 2.10.10 currently expected in January/February. This version will feature faster layer groups rendering, smart colorization with the Bucket Fill tool, and various usability improvements. We are also planning the first unstable release of GIMP that will have version 2.99.2, eventually leading up to version 3.0. The prerequisite for releasing that version will be the completion of the space invasion. ZeMarmot project (which can be supported on Patreon or Tipeee) is also planning to focus a bit more on better canvas interactions, as well as animation support improvements, starting from merging existing work. On the GEGL and babl front, we expect to continue working towards better CMYK support and performance.' -- source: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/19/01/02/1655210 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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USB Type-C Authentication Program Launched
by Peter Reutemann 02 Jan '19

02 Jan '19

'With the arrival of USB-C a few years back, plugging into laptops, tablets and smartphones became even easier than before. But there are potential security risks. The USB Type-C Authentication Program launched today aims to address such issues. From a report: The new protocol from the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) can be used to validate the authenticity of a cable, charger or hardware at the moment of connection, and stop attacks in their tracks. The USB-IF has chosen DigiCert to operate registrations and certificate authority services for the new specification, which makes use of 128-bit cryptographic-based authentication for certificate format, digital signing, hash and random number generation. "USB Type-C Authentication gives OEMs the opportunity to use certificates that enable host systems to confirm the authenticity of a USB device or USB charger, including such product aspects as the descriptors, capabilities and certification status," said DigiCert in a press release. "This protects against potential damage from non-compliant USB chargers and the risks from maliciously embedded hardware or software in devices attempting to exploit a USB connection."' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/19/01/02/2025207 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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wget Command Stores Extended Attributes
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 02 Jan '19

02 Jan '19

Here’s something I didn’t know: the “wget” command saves the URL where it got a downloaded file as an extended attribute of the file. This behaviour isn’t mentioned anywhere in the man page or in the info file, that I can find. Unfortunately, this can lead to a security issue where the URL includes confidential password details. And it appears other apps, like Chrome, do a similar thing. <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/01/02/wget_bug_fix/>

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Banana Pi 24-Core ARM Server Running Ubuntu Breaks Cover
by Peter Reutemann 27 Dec '18

27 Dec '18

'ARM-based server processors have threatened to take on Intel in the data center for some time but not much has materialized thus far in terms of significant deployments. However, a new breed of low cost ARM server implementations may be in the works with a many-core platform called Banana Pi. The latest Banana Pi device being teased is something very different in the form of a 24-core ARM server that speculation suggests might be sold as a Banana Pi server board or as a finished server product. A video has surfaced that reportedly shows a 24-core ARM Cortex-A53 processor with 32GB of RAM, though the OS only sees 29.4GB of that RAM. The OS is Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS with MATE desktop. Unless the processor used in this device is something unannounced, and that seems unlikely, the chip itself would likely be a SocioNext SC2A11. The same processor is used in the Linaro Developer Box. The demo shows the server fully loaded at 100% CPU utilization building a Linux kernel and reportedly the system also supports NVMe storage as well as TensorFlow workloads for machine learning. Not much else is known about the system at this time but it's an interesting development in the Linux server space to be sure.' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/18/12/27/0556243 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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Requesting The Data You’ve Left Online
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 26 Dec '18

26 Dec '18

Article from a correspondent for the Otago Daily Times <https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12182555> about what he discovered when he asked Google, Facebook, the NZ Police, the NZSIS and various credit ratings companies what information they had on him. All except one responded with rather sobering amounts of personal detail.

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LibreHunt: The Linux Distro Counsellor
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 23 Dec '18

23 Dec '18

Here’s a site <https://www.librehunt.org/> which purports to suggest a suitable Linux distro for you, based on your answers to questions about your ability, needs etc. The selection is made from a “curated” list of just 44 distros, to simplify things.

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Word For The Week: “Kaomoji”
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 20 Dec '18

20 Dec '18

For those who might previously have gone “(＠_＠)” or “¯\_(ツ)_/¯” when they heard this word, here it is all explained: <http://kaomoji.ru/en/>. So now you can be all “\(^ヮ^)/” instead. Actually I came across that word in this article <https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/12/windows-10-will-make-it-easier-to-%…>, which reports that Windows 10 will make it easier to enter these character sequences.

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Bye bye Mongo, Hello Postgres
by Peter Reutemann 20 Dec '18

20 Dec '18

'In April the Guardian switched off the Mongo DB cluster used to store our content after completing a migration to PostgreSQL on Amazon RDS. This post covers why and how' -- source: https://www.theguardian.com/info/2018/nov/30/bye-bye-mongo-hello-postgres 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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Facebook Does Not “Sell” Your Data, But ...
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 20 Dec '18

20 Dec '18

... they sure as hell have been rather free and easy in sharing it with others <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20181219/10370941268/facebooks-latest-pri…>. Seems a bunch of companies have had extra-privileged access to user data on Facebook, and they in turn supplied information about those users back to Facebook. This is how the “People You May Know” feature is able to make links like between different patients of the same psychiatrist, and other things equally dodgy ethically, if not downright illegal (or at least they should be). And this may be how Amazon was able to make a (spurious) association between a book reviewer and the book author, and disallow the review on that basis, just because the reviewer had previously followed the author on Facebook.

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kflickr wants http/ssl
by Barry Marchant 19 Dec '18

19 Dec '18

Hi all, When I try to start kflickr from cmd line I get a msg HTTP request to Flickr.com failed. (msg: SSL is required). Am I missing a pkg? or is there another problem? System is x86-64 running Mageia5 TIA Barry

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How Computers Got Shockingly Good At Recognizing Images
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 19 Dec '18

19 Dec '18

Some good background on the origins of all the current hubbub over automated image recognition: <https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/12/how-computers-got-shockingly-good-a…>. A key breakthrough came in 2012, when a team at the University of Toronto combined the “convolutional” neural network concept with a massive deployment of sheer computing power to leave its competitors in the dust in the “ImageNet” image-recognition competition that year. That team are now working at Google. Oh, and the recognition algorithms are now scoring better than many humans in some areas.

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Windows 10 October 2018 Update Is Getting There
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 19 Dec '18

19 Dec '18

Microsoft seems to think its October update is now worth inflicting on “advanced” users <https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/12/windows-10-october-2018-update-now-…>. The more general populace will have to wait a bit longer. I wonder when we’ll see the November update ...

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You’ve Heard Of The Wayback Machine, Now Meet Archive Team
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 18 Dec '18

18 Dec '18

You probably already know about the Wayback machine <https://archive.org/>. You might think of them as the “respectable” side of trying to save snapshots of old websites: they respect robots.txt and takedown demands. Well, now meet the, um, more “wild and woolly” side with the same mission: Archive Team <https://archiveteam.org/>. They describe themselves as ... a loose collective of rogue archivists, programmers, writers and loudmouths dedicated to saving our digital heritage. Since 2009 this variant force of nature has caught wind of shutdowns, shutoffs, mergers, and plain old deletions - and done our best to save the history before it's lost forever. Along the way, we've gotten attention, resistance, press and discussion, but most importantly, we've gotten the message out: IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY. I just heard about them because they were trying to save all the X-rated blogs on tumblr.com before these disappeared, on orders of new owner Verizon. The company tried to block them from achieving this mission, but they found a way around the block (NSFW language) <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20181216/22420341242/as-final-fuck-you-to…>.

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MIPS Goes Open Source
by Peter Reutemann 18 Dec '18

18 Dec '18

'Junko Yoshida, writing for EETimes: Without question, 2018 was the year RISC-V genuinely began to build momentum among chip architects hungry for open-source instruction sets. That was then. By 2019, RISC-V won't be the only game in town. Wave Computing (Campbell, Calif.) announced Monday (Dec. 17) that it is putting MIPS on open source, with MIPS Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) and MIPS' latest core R6 available in the first quarter of 2019. Art Swift, hired by Wave this month as president of its MIPS licensing business, described the move as critical to accelerate the adoption of MIPS in an ecosystem. Going open source is "a big plan" that Wave CEO Derek Meyer, a MIPS veteran, has been quietly fostering since Wave acquired MIPS Technologies in June, explained Swift. Swift himself is a MIPS alumnus who worked at the company as a vice president of marketing and business development for four years. Wave, which styles itself as a tech startup poised to bring "AI and deep learning from the datacenter to the edge," sees MIPS as a key to advancing Wave's AI into a host of uses and applications. Included in MIPS instruction sets are extensions such as SIMD (single instruction, multiple data) and DSP. Swift promised that MIPS will bring to the open-source community "commercial-ready" instruction sets with "industrial-strength" architecture. "Chip designers will have opportunities to design their own cores based on proven and well tested instruction sets for any purposes," said Swift.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/18/12/17/1954247 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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Red Hat Enterprise Linux Comes To Windows 10 in the Form of WLinux Enterprise
by Peter Reutemann 18 Dec '18

18 Dec '18

'Mark Wilson writes: Earlier in the year open-source software startup Whitewater Foundry brought WLinux to the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Not content with creating the first native Linux distribution for WSL, the company has now gone a step further, targeting enterprise users with WLinux Enterprise. Whitewater Foundry says that WLinux Enterprise is the first product to support the industry-standard Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Windows Sub' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/12/17/2041255 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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Google isn’t the company that we should have handed the Web over to
by Peter Reutemann 17 Dec '18

17 Dec '18

'With Microsoft's decision to end development of its own Web rendering engine and switch to Chromium, control over the Web has functionally been ceded to Google. That's a worrying turn of events, given the company's past behavior. Chrome itself has about 72 percent of the desktop-browser market share. Edge has about 4 percent. Opera, based on Chromium, has another 2 percent. The abandoned, no-longer-updated Internet Explorer has 5 percent, and Safari—only available on macOS—about 5 percent. When Microsoft's transition is complete, we're looking at a world where Chrome and Chrome-derivatives take about 80 percent of the market, with only Firefox, at 9 percent, actively maintained and available cross-platform. The mobile story has stronger representation from Safari, thanks to the iPhone, but overall tells a similar story. Chrome has 53 percent directly, plus another 6 percent from Samsung Internet, another 5 percent from Opera, and another 2 percent from Android browser. Safari has about 22 percent, with the Chinese UC Browser sitting at about 9 percent. That's two-thirds of the mobile market going to Chrome and Chrome derivatives. In terms of raw percentages, Google won't have quite as big a lock on the browser space as Microsoft did with Internet Explorer—Internet Explorer 6 peaked at around 80 percent, and all versions of Internet Explorer together may have reached as high as 95 percent. But Google's reach is, in practice, much greater: not only is the Web a substantially more important place today than it was in the early 2000s, but also there's a whole new mobile Web that operates in addition to the desktop Web.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/12/the-web-now-belongs-to-google-and-t… 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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Do Alternative Software Licenses Represent Open Source's 'Midlife Crisis'?
by Peter Reutemann 16 Dec '18

16 Dec '18

'"it is clear to me that open source -- now several decades old and fully adult -- is going through its own midlife crisis," writes Joyent CTO Bryan Cantrill. [O]pen source business models are really tough, selling software-as-a-service is one of the most natural of them, the cloud service providers are really good at it -- and their commercial appetites seem boundless. And, like a new cherry red two-seater sports car next to a minivan in a suburban driveway, some open source companies are dealing with this crisis exceptionally poorly: they are trying to restrict the way that their open source software can be used. These companies want it both ways: they want the advantages of open source -- the community, the positivity, the energy, the adoption, the downloads -- but they also want to enjoy the fruits of proprietary software companies in software lock-in and its concomitant monopolistic rents. If this were entirely transparent (that is, if some bits were merely being made explicitly proprietary), it would be fine: we could accept these companies as essentially proprietary software companies, albeit with an open source loss-leader. But instead, these companies are trying to license their way into this self-contradictory world: continuing to claim to be entirely open source, but perverting the license under which portions of that source are available. Most gallingly, they are doing this by hijacking open source nomenclature. Of these, the laughably named commons clause is the worst offender (it is plainly designed to be confused with the purely virtuous creative commons), but others...are little better... "[T]heir business model isn't their community's problem, and they should please stop trying to make it one," Cantrill writes, adding letter that "As we collectively internalize that open source is not a business model on its own, we will likely see fewer VC-funded open source companies (though I'm honestly not sure that that's a bad thing)..." He also points out that "Even though the VC that led the last round wants to puke into a trashcan whenever they hear it, business models like 'support', 'services' and 'training' are entirely viable!" Jay Kreps, Co-founder of @confluentinc, has posted a rebuttal on Medium. "How do you describe a license that lets you run, modify, fork, and redistribute the code and do virtually anything other than offer a competing SaaS offering of the product? I think Bryan's sentiment may be that it should be called the Evil Proprietary Corruption of Open Source License or something like that, but, well, we disagree."' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/18/12/15/2221232 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 Last Independent Mobile OS
by Peter Reutemann 16 Dec '18

16 Dec '18

'The year was 2010 and the future of mobile computing was looking bright. The iPhone was barely three years old, Google's Android had yet to swallow the smartphone market whole, and half a dozen alternative mobile operating systems -- many of which were devoutly open source -- were preparing for launch. Eight years on, you probably haven't even heard of most of these alternative mobile operating systems, much less use them. Today, Android and iOS dominate the global smartphone market and account for 99.9 percent of mobile operating systems. Even Microsoft and Blackberry, longtime players in the mobile space with massive revenue streams, have all but left the space. Then there's Jolla, the small Finnish tech company behind Sailfish OS, which it bills as the "last independent alternative mobile operating system." Jolla has had to walk itself back from the edge of destruction several times over the course of its seven year existence, and each time it has emerged battered, but more determined than ever to carve out a spot in the world for a truly independent, open source mobile operating system. Jolla's Sailfish OS rose from the ashes of Nokia and Intel's ill-fated collaboration, MeeGo. The MeeGo project launched in 2010 in an attempt to merge Intel's Linux-based Moblin OS and Nokia's Maemo software platform into a single open-source mobile operating system that could take on Google. By 2011, Android had already surpassed Nokia in the smartphone market, a fact that wasn't lost on Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop, who in a memo described the company as standing on a "burning platform." Nokia only ever released one phone running MeeGo: the Nokia N9, which ended up being well received despite its limited release. But it was too little, too late. By 2011, Nokia was bleeding talent and it was clear that MeeGo wasn't going to keep the company competitive in the rapidly changing smartphone market. In a last-ditch effort, Nokia struck a partnership with Microsoft to provide the hardware for its next generation of Windows Phones, abandoning MeeGo entirely. The same couldn't be said for those developers who had worked on MeeGo and, before that, an open source mobile OS called Mer, based on Intel's Maemo system. In October 2011, three developers that had worked on Mer sent a message on a mailing list calling for the creation of a "MeeGo 2.0." At the same time, developer Sami Pienimaki and two others left Nokia to found their own company, which would use this new version of MeeGo as the basis for an open source mobile OS. And thus, Sailfish was born. In a cheeky homage to the "burning platform" memo, Pienimaki and his fellow defectors decided to name their company Jolla, a Finnish word connoting a small boat or life raft. Jolla has since turned to Russia and China, both of which were hungry for a secure alternative to Google-based systems. In late 2016, Sailfish OS achieved domestic certification in Russia for government and corporate us. Around the same time, Sailfish was also making moves in China. In early 2017, the Sailfish China Consortium gained the exclusive rights and license to develop a Chinese OS based on Sailfish.' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/18/12/16/0758215 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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Tesla Model 3 Modded To Run Ubuntu
by Peter Reutemann 16 Dec '18

16 Dec '18

'CleanTechnica is reporting that someone hacked the infotainment system of a Tesla Model 3 and got root access and installed Linux distribution Ubuntu. Redditor trsohmers is able to show an Ubuntu command shell running alongside the Tesla OS. Since Tesla supports a browser that allows you to visit any site, could this be leveraged into remote hacks? It could also mean that if Tesla sells a long-range version of the Model 3, but limits it via software, people might try to remove the block. One could potentially get a 15-day trial of full self-driving for free and extend that 15-day window forever. At least he had some guts messing with $50,000 hardware that phones home all the time. Will Tesla brick his car to attempt to disprove the security issue?' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/18/12/15/0355250 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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Evelyn Berezin Has Died
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 15 Dec '18

15 Dec '18

Among her many achievements: While IBM had been producing word processors of a sort for a few years when Berezin developed hers in 1968, she was the first to use semiconductor chips to make a true computing system for this purpose. IBM's solution used a typewriter and a magnetic tape drive and was much less efficient to use. <https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/12/evelyn-berezin-creator-of-the-first…>

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Automatically Generating Fake Photos
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 15 Dec '18

15 Dec '18

Look at the photo grid about halfway down this article <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/14/ai_created_photos/>: as I understand it, the main facial features are taken from the photos down the leftmost column; these are then resynthesized into a new orientation, expression and other embellishments (including hair colour/style, gender and apparent age!) to match the photos across the topmost row. Or something like that. Apparently, Nvidia is planning to publish its source code. Kids, you may not be able to afford the hardware to try this at home ...

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Windows Server 2019 Officially Supports OpenSSH For the First Time
by Peter Reutemann 13 Dec '18

13 Dec '18

'Microsoft said in 2015 that it would build OpenSSH, a set of utilities that allow clients and servers to connect securely, into Windows, while also making contributions to its development. Neowin: Since then, the company has delivered on that promise in recent releases of Windows 10, being introduced as a feature-on-demand in version 1803. However, Windows Server hadn't received the feature until now, at least not in an officially supported way -- Windows Server version 1709 included it as a pre-release feature. But that's finally changed, as Microsoft this week revealed that Windows Server 2019, which was made available (again) in November, includes OpenSSH as a supported feature.' -- source: https://slashdot.org/story/18/12/13/1947257 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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In a Test, 3D Model of a Head Was Able To Fool Facial Recognition System of Several Popular Android Smartphones
by Peter Reutemann 13 Dec '18

13 Dec '18

'Forbes magazine tested four of the most popular handsets running Google's operating systems and Apple's iPhone to see how easy it'd be to break into them with a 3D-printed head. All of the Android handsets opened with the fake. Apple's phone, however, was impenetrable. From the report: For our tests, we used my own real-life head to register for facial recognition across five phones. An iPhone X and four Android devices: an LG G7 Linq, a Samsung S9, a Samsung Note 8 and a OnePlus 6. I then held up my fake head to the devices to see if the device would unlock. For all four Android phones, the spoof face was able to open the phone, though with differing degrees of ease. The iPhone X was the only one to never be fooled. There were some disparities between the Android devices' security against the hack. For instance, when first turning on a brand new G7 Linq, LG actually warns the user against turning facial recognition on at all. No surprise then that, on initial testing, the 3D-printed head opened it straightaway. [...] The OnePlus 6 came with neither the warnings of the other Android phones nor the choice of slower but more secure recognition.' -- source: https://apple.slashdot.org/story/18/12/13/1438218 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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Linux Kernel Developers Discuss Dropping x32 Support
by Peter Reutemann 12 Dec '18

12 Dec '18

'It was just several years ago that the open-source ecosystem began supporting the x32 ABI, but already kernel developers are talking of potentially deprecating the support and for it to be ultimately removed.. [...] While the x32 support was plumbed through the Linux landscape, it really hasn't been used much. Kernel developers are now discussing the future of the x32 ABI due to the maintenance cost involved in still supporting this code but with minimal users. Linus Torvalds is in favor of sunsetting x32 and many other upstream contributors in favor of seeing it deprecated and removed.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/18/12/12/1336210 More information on x32 ABI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X32_ABI 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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Getting Shown Pregnancy Ads After Child Was Stillborn
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 12 Dec '18

12 Dec '18

An op-ed on the pitfalls of algorithmically-targeted advertising, originally from the Washington Post <https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=121760…>: Please, Tech Companies, I implore you: If your algorithms are smart enough to realize that I was pregnant, or that I've given birth, then surely they can be smart enough to realize that my baby died, and advertise to me accordingly - or maybe, just maybe, not at all. Unfortunately, the old adage “if you’re not paying for the product, then you are the product” applies yet again. Notwithstanding a personal reply from a high-up Facebook exec at the end of the above article, don’t expect these algorithms to be “smart enough” to do anything more than maximize advertising revenue. Anything more ends up counting as “unnecessary expenditure”.

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FreeBSD 12 Released
by Peter Reutemann 12 Dec '18

12 Dec '18

'The 12th version of the FreeBSD has been released, bringing support for updated hardware. Some of the highlights include: OpenSSL has been updated to version 1.1.1a (LTS). Unbound has been updated to version 1.8.1, and DANE-TA has been enabled by default. OpenSSH has been updated to version 7.8p1. Additonal capsicum(4) support has been added to sshd(8). Clang, LLVM, LLD, LLDB, compiler-rt and libc++ has been updated to version 6.0.1. The vt(4) Terminus BSD Console font has been updated to version 4.46. The bsdinstall(8) utility now supports UEFI+GELI as an installation option. The VIMAGE kernel configuration option has been enabled by default. The NUMA option has been enabled by default in the amd64 GENERIC and MINIMAL kernel configurations. The netdump(4) driver has been added, providing a facility through which kernel crash dumps can be transmitted to a remote host after a system panic. The vt(4) driver has been updated with performance improvements, drawing text at rates ranging from 2- to 6-times faster. Various improvements to graphics support for current generation hardware. Support for capsicum(4) has been enabled on armv6 and armv7 by default. The UFS/FFS filesystem has been updated to consolidate TRIM/BIO_DELETE commands, reducing read/write requests due to fewer TRIM messages being sent simultaneously. The NFS version 4.1 server has been updated to include pNFS server support. The pf(4) packet filter is now usable within a jail(8) using vnet(9). The bhyve(8) utility has been updated to add NVMe device emulation. The bhyve(8) utility is now able to be run within a jail(8). Various Lua loader(8) improvements. KDE has been updated to version 5.12.' -- source: https://bsd.slashdot.org/story/18/12/12/1510202 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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Could NZ Get Its Own “Assistance and Access” Law?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 11 Dec '18

11 Dec '18

The ever-perceptive Juha Saarinen gives his commentary <https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=121750…> on the law recently passed in Australia to compel access to decrypted forms of encrypted communications. Thanks to the new law requiring them to quietly add that backdoor that mustn't be called a backdoor into their code, Aussie developers can no longer be trusted by their international peers. You can't say no when government agencies issue a notice, saying absolutely do not tell your employer about it or you'll cop a hefty punishment. But the law is not supposed to achieve this by introducing “systemic weaknesses” into the encryption. Can you use that as a defence against having to weaken the encryption? Not a chance. The not-so-fine irony is that the Aussie Government is doing the same thing it alleges the Chinese spies would force Huawei to do, and which was considered dangerous enough to ban the telco equipment vendor from national communications networks. This gets pointed out repeatedly about similar discussions in the US, UK etc. But there seems to be a mentality among politicians, law enforcement, spies etc that “we’re the good guys, they’re the bad guys, therefore what we do cannot be classed in the same league as what they do”. Forgetting that what makes us good is that we don’t act like bad guys. And the kicker: The risk now is that other Five-Eyes countries, including New Zealand, follow Australia into making the same monumental mistake. What are the odds?

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New Firefox Suggests Ways To Get More Out of the Web
by Peter Reutemann 11 Dec '18

11 Dec '18

'Starting Tuesday, Firefox will nudge you to try out options designed to make the web more interesting, more useful or more productive. From a report: Mozilla's new Firefox 64 keeps an eye on what you're up to and prompts you to try extensions and features that could help you with that activity, the browser maker said. For example, if you open the same tab lots of times, it could suggest you pin it to your tab strip for easier future access. Other suggestions include installing the Facebook Container extension to curtail the social network's snooping, a Google Translate extension to tap into Google's service, and the Enhancer for YouTube extension to do things like block ads and control playback on Google's video site. The feature could help you customize Firefox more to your liking -- something that could help you stick with the browser in the face of Google Chrome's dominance. And that, in turn, could help Mozilla pursue its push toward a privacy-respecting web that's not just effectively controlled by Chrome.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/18/12/11/1756217 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

Super Micro Says Review Found No Malicious Chips in Motherboards
by Peter Reutemann 11 Dec '18

11 Dec '18

'Computer hardware maker Super Micro Computer told customers on Tuesday that an outside investigations firm had found no evidence of any malicious hardware in its current or older-model motherboards. >From a report: In a letter to customers, the San Jose, California, company said it was not surprised by the result of the review it commissioned in October after a Bloomberg article reported that spies for the Chinese government had tainted Super Micro equipment to eavesdrop on its clients.' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/18/12/11/1410200 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

Android Trojan Steals Money From PayPal Accounts Even With 2FA On
by Peter Reutemann 11 Dec '18

11 Dec '18

'ESET researchers have discovered a new Android Trojan using a novel Accessibility-abusing technique that targets the official PayPal app, and is capable of bypassing PayPal's two-factor authentication. A report elaborates: At the time of writing, the malware is masquerading as a battery optimization tool, and is distributed via third-party app stores. After being launched, the malicious app terminates without offering any functionality and hides its icon. This video, courtesy of ESET, demonstrates the process in practice.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/18/12/11/1722251 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 Fixes Notepad
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 11 Dec '18

11 Dec '18

Windows Notepad has never been able to handle any newline convention other than the old DOS/Windows/CP/M one (CR-LF). Now, after so many decades, Microsoft has finally decided to give it “universal newline” capability, so it can handle lines ending in LF-only (Unix/Linux) and CR-only (old MacOS) <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/08/windows_notepad_unix_macos_line_end…>. Gee, I wonder how many lines of code that took...

2 2

No, I Didn’t Know That
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 11 Dec '18

11 Dec '18

Would you believe, malware can make money by generating fake clicks on ads? Would you further believe, that ad networks pay more for clicks from Apple devices than from Android? Can you guess what happens next? <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/10/android_ios_clickfraud/>

1 0

Presentations using the Waikato Uni video projector - Console windows font size.
by Ian Stewart 11 Dec '18

11 Dec '18

Hi, This is mostly a memo to myself as I have twice been caught out with Linux consoles being displayed with too small a font on the Uni video projector. However the following may also be useful to other presenters in the future. Most wlug presentations are done with a Linux laptop or PC running in a GUI Environment that is connected to the video projector. If you open a GUI console terminal window or web-browser window and the video projector display is difficult to read, then you can increase the size with the keystroke sequence Control + Shift + Plus, or decrease the size with Control + Minus. Linux also has 6 x console windows available. The keystroke sequence Ctrl + Alt + F1 opens tty1 console, through to Ctrl + Alt + F6 opening tty6 console. Note that Ctrl + Alt + F7 returns you to the laptops GUI environment. As your laptop/pc is likely to auto-size to the resolution of the video projector, then I think your laptop will opt to displaying the 1080p resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. By default your Linux consoles are likely to be configured to display a "Fixed" font of "8x16". When you display your console window with the video projector then one page of the display will be about 60 lines of text with 200 characters across the page. This is almost impossible to read on the projector screen. One way to overcome this problem this is to edit... /etc/default/console-setup You will see... FONTFACE="Fixed" FONTSIZE="8x16" At the bottom of the file add something like... # For Waikato University Video Projector # Choices of Fontsize with Terminus font: # 6x12, 8x14, 8x16, 10x20, 11x22, 12x24, 14x28, 16x32 FONTFACE="Terminus" FONTSIZE="14x28" ...save the changes to the console-setup file and execute... $ setupcon The console displayed should now be about 35 rows by 80 character cells, and should allow everyone to read what is displayed. cheers, Ian. PS: Another approach to making these changes is... $ dpkg-reconfigure console-setup ...this will step through 4 x graphical input screens. From these screens select "Terminus" as the Font and the "14x28" as the Font size. To restore to the original settings run dpkg-reconfigure console-setup again and select "Fixed" and "8x16".

1 0

Malicious Sites Abuse 11-Year-Old Firefox Bug That Mozilla Failed To Fix
by Peter Reutemann 11 Dec '18

11 Dec '18

'Malware authors, ad farmers, and scammers are abusing a Firefox bug to trap users on malicious sites. From a report: This wouldn't be a big deal, as the web is fraught with this kind of malicious sites, but these websites aren't abusing some new never-before-seen trick, but a Firefox bug that Mozilla engineers appear to have failed to fix in the 11 years ever since it was first reported back in April 2007. The bug narrows down to a malicious website embedding an iframe inside their source code. The iframe makes an HTTP authentication request on another domain. [...] For the past few years, malware authors, ad farmers, and scammers have been abusing this bug to lure users on sites where they show all sorts of nasties, such as tech support scams, ad farms that reload the page with new ads in a loop, pages that push users to buy fake gift cards, or sites that offer malware-laced software updates. Whenever users try to leave, the owners of these shady sites trigger the authentification modal in a loop.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/18/12/10/0220258 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

ESET Discovers 21 New Linux Malware Families
by Peter Reutemann 11 Dec '18

11 Dec '18

'In a report published last week by cyber-security firm ESET, the company detailed 21 "new" Linux malware families. All operate in the same manner, as trojanized versions of the OpenSSH client. From a report: They are developed as second-stage tools to be deployed in more complex "botnet" schemes. Attackers would compromise a Linux system, usually a server, and then replace the legitimate OpenSSH installation with one of the trojanized versions.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/18/12/10/1538203 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

Faxes To Be Banned At The NHS
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 10 Dec '18

10 Dec '18

The UK’s National Health Service is being forced to phase out its heavy reliance on fax machines <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/10/hancock_fax_ban_nhs/> and resort to more, um, “digital” alternatives like e-mail instead: However, it's worth noting that just last week, up to 1.2 million staffers were locked out of their NHSmail accounts after Accenture reportedly botched a data centre upgrade. [Helen Stokes-Lampard, chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners] raised similar concerns about the resilience of the IT systems the NHS is racing to introduce. "What's shocking is how often digital innovations fall over," she said. "It doesn't mean we shouldn’t do it, but what it does mean is we have to be realistic about with the time scales for this."

1 0

National Oracle System Is A Write-Off
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 10 Dec '18

10 Dec '18

Looks like the nationwide attempt to streamline and update the IT systems of all the DHBs is now going to be written off <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/10/national_oracle_solution_write_dow…>. It hasn’t officially been abandoned, mind you, but because it’s been “on hold” for so long, the DHBs are now obliged to start recording “impairments” in their accounts over their investment in the system. By the way, the Waikato DHB was one of the four that managed a rollout of the system so far. Not sure whether that stays in place or gets rolled back...

1 0

How to Auto Backup Files to USB Media When Connected
by Peter Reutemann 10 Dec '18

10 Dec '18

'A backup is the last defense against data loss, offering a means to restore original data. You can use either a removable media such as an external hard drive or USB flash disk or a shared network folder, or a remote host to back up your data. It’s very easy (and equally essential) to automatically backup your important files without you having to remember to do so. In this article, we will learn how to auto backup data to a removable media after connecting it to your Linux machine. We will test with an external disk. This is a basic guide to get you started with using udev for real-life solutions.' -- source: https://www.tecmint.com/auto-backup-files-to-usb-media-in-linux/ 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/

3 3

Linux.org's DNS Got Hijacked
by Peter Reutemann 09 Dec '18

09 Dec '18

'Linux.org reports: Wednesday afternoon around 5pm EST someone was able to get into the registrar account for our domain and point DNS to another server -- as well as lock us out from changing it. They pointed the domain name to a pretty rude page for most of the evening until Cloudflare stepped in and blocked the domain for us. After a lot of back and forth with our registrar, we were able to get things back under our control. I'd like to point out that our server environment was not touched so there are no worries about your data. We've gone over security protocols and are tightening things up that may have slipped through in the past. Thanks for your support! Linux.org apparently pointed to a page exclaiming "G3T 0WNED L1NUX N3RDZ", which also included a NSFW picture, some abusive language, a shout-out to recently-deceased programmer Terry Davis, and a link to an article about Linus Torvalds' controversial apology for "his hostile behavior towards others in the community." Long-time Slashdot reader Grady Martin says he also saw the page pointing to "presumably doxed info" about the creator of Linux's code of conduct, a fact confirmed by a report in the Register. "As for how it was hacked, [Linux.org owner Mike] McLagan blames the public Whois displaying his partner's email address -- presumably the hacker worked their way into the Yahoo email account listed as the admin of the site and from there requested a password change in her Network Solutions account to gain access to the domain."' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/18/12/08/0355227 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

50 Years Since “The Mother Of All Demos”
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 08 Dec '18

08 Dec '18

On the 9th of December 1968, Doug Engelbart did a demo of NLS, his system for real-time interactive collaboration at a distance. This was also the first known use of a computer mouse. <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20181207/15484041180/been-50-years-take-s…>

1 0

Running Linux Mint 19.1
by tom butz 07 Dec '18

07 Dec '18

Linux Mint 19.1 works well using my laptop (Toshiba Z930 6 GB RAM) and a USB3 connection to a 500G USB3-harddisk. I first tried a fast 10-speed 64GB SD-card, but that actually seemed to be slower - and the SD-card would have worn out in the end. For some reason Mint has got a swapFILE in the root directory - pretty hard on the SD-card. I haven't got USB3.1 (yet). 19.1 supports Bluetooth in both directions: under Mint 19, I couldn't send from Mint to my Android phone (Android 7.1) 19.1 also features snapshots. I didn't have to test them as I prefer to run Mint off my laptop (no power-cuts there). Occasionally I run it off my MacMini (8 GB of RAM, OS 10.7.5). The MacOS is too old for many things, and to avoid having to buy new Mac gear, I 'upgraded' by running Mint on it. Tom Butz.

3 2

Report: Microsoft is scrapping Edge, switching to just another Chrome clone
by Peter Reutemann 06 Dec '18

06 Dec '18

'Windows Central reports that Microsoft is planning to replace its Edge browser, which uses Microsoft's own EdgeHTML rendering engine and Chakra JavaScript engine, with a new browser built on Chromium, the open source counterpart to Google's Chrome. The new browser has the codename Anaheim. The report is short on details. The easiest thing for Microsoft to do would be to use Chromium's code wholesale—the Blink rendering engine, the V8 JavaScript engine, and the Chrome user interface with the Google Account parts omitted—to produce something that looks, works, and feels almost identical to Chrome. Alternatively, Redmond could use Blink and V8 but wrap them in Edge's user interface (or some derivative thereof), to retain its own appearance. It might even be possible to do something weird, such as use Blink with the Chakra JavaScript engine. We'll have to wait and see.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/12/report-microsoft-is-scrapping-edge-… 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 3

White House Cybersecurity Advisor Gets Hacked
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 05 Dec '18

05 Dec '18

Rudy Giuliani, the White House cybersecurity advisor, has posted a tweet <https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12172128> <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20181205/07205841164/rudy-giulianis-paran…> where he meant to say “... just as the President left for G-20. In July...” Unfortunately he left out the space in “G-20. In”, turning it into “G-20.In”, which Twitter automatically formatted as a link. Someone noticed that the domain name in question was available, and promptly snapped it up and used it to post an anti-Trump message. This has made Mr Giuliani somewhat angry. He has tried to blame Twitter for the slipup, claiming the social media service “allowed someone to invade my text with a disgusting anti-President message”, as though he was not the one who created the link in the first place. Remember, this man has the job of advising the entire executive arm of the US government on keeping people’s computer usage secure. I wonder if he’s figured out how to delete a tweet yet?

1 0

Google Personalizes Search Results Even When You're Logged Out, a DuckDuckGo Study Finds
by Peter Reutemann 05 Dec '18

05 Dec '18

'According to a new study conducted by Google competitor DuckDuckGo, it does not seem possible to avoid personalization when using Google search, even by logging out of your Google account and using the private browsing "incognito" mode. From a report: DuckDuckGo conducted the study in June of this year, at the height of the US midterm election season. It did so with the ostensible goal of confirming whether Google's search results exacerbate ideological bubbles by feeding you only information you've signaled you want to consume via past behavior and the data collected about you. It's not clear whether that question can be reliably answered with these findings, and it's also obvious DuckDuckGo is a biased source with something to gain by pointing out how flawed Google's approach may be. But the study's findings are nonetheless interesting because they highlight just how much variance there are in Google search results, even when controlling for factors like location.' -- source: https://search.slashdot.org/story/18/12/04/1610237 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

Kubernetes' First Major Security Hole Discovered
by Peter Reutemann 05 Dec '18

05 Dec '18

'Kubernetes has become the most popular cloud container orchestration system by far, so it was only a matter of time until its first major security hole was discovered. And the bug, CVE-2018-1002105, aka the Kubernetes privilege escalation flaw, is a doozy. It's a CVSS 9.8 critical security hole. From a report: With a specially crafted network request, any user can establish a connection through the Kubernetes application programming interface (API) server to a backend server. Once established, an attacker can send arbitrary requests over the network connection directly to that backend. Adding insult to injury, these requests are authenticated with the Kubernetes API server's Transport Layer Security (TLS) credentials. Can you say root? I knew you could. Worse still, "In default configurations, all users (authenticated and unauthenticated) are allowed to perform discovery API calls that allow this escalation." So, yes, anyone who knows about this hole can take command of your Kubernetes cluster.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/18/12/04/1958222 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

Hackers breach Quora.com and steal password data for 100 million users
by Peter Reutemann 04 Dec '18

04 Dec '18

'Brace yourself for yet another massive data breach. Quora.com, a site where people ask and answer questions on a range of topics, said hackers breached its computer network and accessed a variety of potentially sensitive personal data for about 100 million users. Compromised information includes cryptographically protected passwords, full names, email addresses, data imported from linked networks, and a variety of non-public content and actions, including direct messages, answer requests, and downvotes. The breached data also included public content and actions, such as questions, answers, comments, and upvotes. In a post published late Monday afternoon, Quora officials said they discovered the unauthorized access on Friday. They have since hired a digital forensics and security firm to investigate and have also reported the breach to law enforcement officials.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/12/quora-says-hackers-s… 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

Blockchain Study Finds 0% Success Rate and Vendors Don't Call Back When Asked For Evidence
by Peter Reutemann 04 Dec '18

04 Dec '18

'Though Blockchain has been touted as the answer to everything, a study of 43 solutions advanced in the international development sector has found exactly no evidence of success. From a report: Three practitioners including erstwhile blockchain enthusiast John Burg, a Fellow at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), looked at instances of the distributed crypto ledger being used in a wide range of situations by NGOs, contractors and agencies. But they drew a complete blank. "We found a proliferation of press releases, white papers, and persuasively written articles," Burg et al wrote. "However, we found no documentation or evidence of the results blockchain was purported to have achieved in these claims. We also did not find lessons learned or practical insights, as are available for other technologies in development." Blockchain vendors were keen to puff the merits of the technology, but when the three asked for proof of success in the field, it all went very quiet. "We fared no better when we reached out directly to several blockchain firms, via email, phone, and in person. Not one was willing to share data on program results, MERL [monitoring, evaluation, research and learning] processes, or adaptive management for potential scale-up. Despite all the hype about how blockchain will bring unheralded transparency to processes and operations in low-trust environments, the industry is itself opaque." Burg was an enthusiastic advocate for blockchain until recently -- as he explained in this Medium post.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/18/12/03/2058244 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 2

Twitter User Hacks 50, 000 Printers To Tell People To Subscribe To a YouTube Channel
by Peter Reutemann 03 Dec '18

03 Dec '18

'A Twitter user using the pseudonym of @TheHackerGiraffe has hacked over 50,000 printers to print out flyers telling people to subscribe to PewDiePie's YouTube channel. The message the printers received was a simple one. It urged people to subscribe to PewDiePie's YouTube channel in order for PewDiePie -- a famous YouTuber from Sweden, real name Felix Kjellberg -- to keep the crown of most subscribed to YouTube channel. If this sounds ...odd... it's because over the past month, an Indian record label called T-Series has caught up and surpassed PewDiePie, once considered untouchable in terms of YouTube followers. The Swedish Youtube star made a comeback after his fans banded together in various social media campaigns, but T-Series is catching up with PewDiePie again.' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/18/12/02/2241230 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

Is Linux Taking Over The World?
by Peter Reutemann 02 Dec '18

02 Dec '18

'"2019 just might be the Year of Linux -- the year in which Linux is fully recognized as the powerhouse it has become," writes Network World's "Unix dweeb." The fact is that most people today are using Linux without ever knowing it -- whether on their phones, online when using Google, Facebook, Twitter, GPS devices, and maybe even in their cars, or when using cloud storage for personal or business use. While the presence of Linux on all of these systems may go largely unnoticed by consumers, the role that Linux plays in this market is a sign of how critical it has become. Most IoT and embedded devices -- those small, limited functionality devices that require good security and a small footprint and fill so many niches in our technology-driven lives -- run some variety of Linux, and this isn't likely to change. Instead, we'll just be seeing more devices and a continued reliance on open source to drive them. According to the Cloud Industry Forum, for the first time, businesses are spending more on cloud than on internal infrastructure. The cloud is taking over the role that data centers used to play, and it's largely Linux that's making the transition so advantageous. Even on Microsoft's Azure, the most popular operating system is Linux. In its first Voice of the Enterprise survey, 451 Research predicted that 60 percent of nearly 1,000 IT leaders surveyed plan to run the majority of their IT off premises by 2019. That equates to a lot of IT efforts relying on Linux. Gartner states that 80 percent of internally developed software is now either cloud-enabled or cloud-native. The article also cites Linux's use in AI, data lakes, and in the Sierra supercomputer that monitors America's nuclear stockpile, concluding that "In its domination of IoT, cloud technology, supercomputing and AI, Linux is heading into 2019 with a lot of momentum." And there's even a long list of upcoming Linux conferences...' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/18/12/01/2018223 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

Node.js Event-Stream Hack Reveals Open Source 'Developer Infrastructure' Exploit
by Peter Reutemann 02 Dec '18

02 Dec '18

'"[O]n Nov. 26 it was publicly revealed that a widely deployed open-source Node.js programming language module known as event-stream had been injected with malicious code that looked to steal cryptocurrency wallets," reports eWeek, adding "The event-stream library has over two million downloads." An anonymous reader quotes Ars Technica: The backdoor came to light [November 20th] with this report from Github user Ayrton Sparling. Officials with the NPM, the open source project manager that hosted event-stream, didn't issue an advisory until six days later.... "This compromise was not targeting module developers in general or really even developers," an NPM official told Ars in an email. "It targeted a select few developers at a company, Copay, that had a very specific development environment set up. Even then, the payload itself didn't run on those developers' computers; rather, it would be packaged into a consumer-facing app when the developers built a release. The goal was to steal Bitcoin from this application's end users...." According to the Github discussion that exposed the backdoor, the longtime event-stream developer no longer had time to provide updates. So several months ago, he accepted the help of an unknown developer. The new developer took care to keep the backdoor from being discovered. Besides being gradually implemented in stages, it also narrowly targeted only the Copay wallet app. The malicious code was also hard to spot because the flatmap-stream module was encrypted. The attack is the latest to exploit weaknesses in a widely used supply chain to target downstream end users... The supply-chain attacks show one of the weaknesses of open source code. Because of its openness and the lack of funds of many of its hobbyist developers and users, open source code can be subject to malicious modifications that often escape notice. "The time has come," concludes Ars Technica, "for maintainers and users of open source software to devise new measures to better police the millions of packages being used all around us." Sophos' security blog also asks why so many developers "immediately and blindly trusted the new maintainer," and shared a concerned comment from developer named Chris Northwood.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/18/12/01/2217231 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

Australia Has Rushed Through Its Copyright Amendment Bill
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 30 Nov '18

30 Nov '18

Seems like the Aussie government has disregarded <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/28/australia_to_build_a_pirateproof_f…> <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20181127/13425541113/australian-parliamen…> most of the objections to its plan to impose more draconian copyright restrictions on Internet usage. Rightsholders will be able to get injunctions against sites whose “primary effect” (no longer just “primary purpose”) is to facilitate copyright infringement, and they will also have “adaptive injunctions”, meaning they can reinterpret an existing court order as circumstances change, instead of having to go back to court to get a new order. You’d think a statement like “The Government has zero tolerance for online piracy. It is theft...” should be an instant disqualification from making any kind of statement about copyright law...

1 0

Mass Router Hack Exposes Millions of Devices To Potent NSA Exploit
by Peter Reutemann 29 Nov '18

29 Nov '18

'More than 45,000 Internet routers have been compromised by a newly discovered campaign that's designed to open networks to attacks by EternalBlue, the potent exploit that was developed by, and then stolen from, the National Security Agency and leaked to the Internet at large, researchers say. From a report: The new attack exploits routers with vulnerable implementations of Universal Plug and Play to force connected devices to open ports 139 and 445, content delivery network Akamai said in a blog post. As a result, almost 2 million computers, phones, and other network devices connected to the routers are reachable to the Internet on those ports. While Internet scans don't reveal precisely what happens to the connected devices once they're exposed, Akamai said the ports --which are instrumental for the spread of EternalBlue and its Linux cousin EternalRed -- provide a strong hint of the attackers' intentions. The attacks are a new instance of a mass exploit the same researchers documented in April. They called it UPnProxy because it exploits Universal Plug and Play -- often abbreviated as UPnP -- to turn vulnerable routers into proxies that disguise the origins of spam, DDoSes, and botnets.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/11/29/1849254 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

Proprietary Software Subverts Security Of Your PC
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 28 Nov '18

28 Nov '18

Audio company Sennheiser has just issued a fix <https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/11/sennheiser-discloses…> for a really nasty vulnerability where their software for Windows and Mac would install a special fake browser certificate that the machine would continue to trust thereafter, even after the software was removed. Unfortunately, because the installation also included the private key for that certificate (which is never supposed to be distributed), it could then be exploited by arbitrary third parties to trick such machines into trusting random sites.

1 0

Deleting Windows Server Child Folder Changes Parent Folder Permissions
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 28 Nov '18

28 Nov '18

<https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/28/microsoft_windows_10_server_2016_p…>: ... Microsoft's support team [said] initially that the behaviour was by design and introduced in Windows Server 2016. Interestingly, it only occurs when folders are deleted (or cut and pasted) using File Explorer. Using the command line makes things behave as one would expect. It also only occurred when using a local path. Deleting using a UNC path was fine.

1 0

Half of all Phishing Sites Now Have the Padlock
by Peter Reutemann 27 Nov '18

27 Nov '18

'You may have heard you should look for the padlock symbol at the top of a website before entering your password or credit card information into an online form. It's well-meaning advice, but new data shows it isn't enough to keep your sensitive information secure. From a report: Recent data from anti-phishing company PhishLabs shows that 49 percent of all phishing sites in the third quarter of 2018 bore the padlock security icon next to the phishing site domain name as displayed in a browser address bar. That's up from 25 percent just one year ago, and from 35 percent in the second quarter of 2018. This alarming shift is notable because a majority of Internet users have taken the age-old "look for the lock" advice to heart, and still associate the lock icon with legitimate sites. A PhishLabs survey conducted last year found more than 80% of respondents believed the green lock indicated a website was either legitimate and/or safe. In reality, the https:// part of the address (also called "Secure Sockets Layer" or SSL) merely signifies the data being transmitted back and forth between your browser and the site is encrypted and can't be read by third parties. The presence of the padlock does not mean the site is legitimate, nor is it any proof the site has been security-hardened against intrusion from hackers.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/18/11/27/1521240 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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AGM next week
by Peter Reutemann 26 Nov '18

26 Nov '18

Hi everyone Just a friendly reminder that our AGM is next Monday: https://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/246737212/ In order to be eligible to vote, "only those people who were paid members in the previous financial year and who have signed a membership form for the then-current financial year will be eligible to vote." (https://github.com/WLUG/charter/blob/master/rules_140120.pdf) See you next Monday! 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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Two Linux Kernels Revert Performance-Killing Spectre Patches
by Peter Reutemann 25 Nov '18

25 Nov '18

'Friday Greg Kroah-Hartman released stable point releases of Linux kernel 4.19.4, as well as 4.14.83 and 4.9.139. While they were basic maintenance updates, the 4.19.4 and 4.14.83 releases are significant because they also reverted the performance-killing Spectre patches (involving "Single Thread Indirect Branch Predictors", or STIBP) that had been back-ported from Linux 4.20, according to Phoronix: There is improved STIBP code on the way for Linux 4.20 that by default just applies STIBP to SECCOMP threads and processes requesting it via prctl() but otherwise is off by default (that behavior can also be changed via kernel parameters). Once that code is ready to go for Linux 4.20, we may see it then back-ported to these stable trees. Aside from reverting STIBP, these point releases just have various fixes in them as noted for 4.19.4, 4.14.83, and 4.9.139. Last Sunday Linus Torvalds complained that the performance impact of the STIPB code "was clearly way more expensive than people were told," according to ZDNet: "When performance goes down by 50 percent on some loads, people need to start asking themselves whether it was worth it. It's apparently better to just disable SMT entirely, which is what security-conscious people do anyway," wrote Torvalds. "So why do that STIBP slow-down by default when the people who *really* care already disabled SMT?"' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/18/11/24/2320228 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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Alphabet's Cybersecurity Group Touts Its New Open Source Private VPN
by Peter Reutemann 25 Nov '18

25 Nov '18

'Alphabet's cybersecurity division Jigsaw has designed a new open source private VPN aimed at journalists and the people sending them data. "Their work makes them more vulnerable to attack," said Santiago Andrigo, Jigsaw's product manager. "It can get really scary when they're outed and you're passing over information." Unscrupulous VPN providers can steal your identity, peek in on your data, inject their own ads on non-secure pages, or analyze your browsing habits and sell that information to advertisers, says one Jigsaw official. And you can't know for sure whether you can trust them, no matter what they say in the app store. "Journalists should be aware that their online activities might be subject to surveillance either by government agencies, their internet service providers or a hacker with malicious intent," said Laura Tich, technical evangelist for Code for Africa, a resource for African journalists. "As surveillance becomes ubiquitous in today's world, journalists face an increasing challenge in establishing secure communication in the digital space." The new private VPN, dubbed "Outline", is specifically designed to be resistant to censorship — because it's harder to detect as a VPN (and therefore is less likely to be blocked). Outline uses an encrypted socks5 proxy that looks like normal internet traffic. Once the user chooses a server location, Outline spins up a DigitalOcean server on Ubuntu, installs Docker, and imports an image of the actual server. It's been named Outline because in places where internet use may be restricted — it gives you a line out.' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/18/11/25/0117226 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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New Gmail Bug Allows Sending Messages Anonymously
by Peter Reutemann 25 Nov '18

25 Nov '18

'Earlier this week software developer Tim Cotten discovered a serious glitch in Gmail. An anonymous reader quotes BleepingComputer: Tampering with the 'From:' header by replacing some text with an <object>, <script> or <img> tag causes the interface to show a blank space instead of the sender's address.... Opening the email does not help, either, as the sender's address continues to remain hidden and shows no info even when hovering on it, an action that typically reveals the details.... Trying to reply to the message is also of no help. Cotten attempted this thinking that Gmail would read the original email headers and determine the destination. "Wrong again! Gmail is at a complete loss at what to do!" Cotten writes in a blog post that details his new finding.... Using the Show Original option, which allows users with more experience to trace an email, the desired detail is still unavailable in the user-friendly view. Looking at the raw info, however, shows the source address buried at the end of the <img> tag Cotten used in his experiment. He didn't even have to spell correctly the data type to trigger the bug. Unfortunately, it is highly unlikely that the average Gmail user will be able to navigate to this area and determine who the apparently anonymous message is coming from. Due to this, for these users the risk of phishing is high. Cotten's bug report "relies on his previous discovery that proved how a malformed 'From:' header allows placing an arbitrary email address in the sender field," the article points out, also noting a third recently-reported Gmail bug that "allows fraudsters to create a 'mailto:' link that populates the destination field in the app with whatever address they want; the latter was reported about 19 months ago to Google and is still present in the Gmail app for Android." "According to the developer, one solution Google could implement to avoid forging the From field is to properly check the email headers and deny communication with an anomalous structure in the sender or recipient fields. Another method proposed by Cotten is Joran Greef's project Ronomon, which can trigger errors when email specifications are not followed." Threatpost reported Tuesday that Google "did not respond to a request for comment."' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/18/11/25/1731238 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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Potentially disastrous Rowhammer bitflips can bypass ECC protections
by Peter Reutemann 22 Nov '18

22 Nov '18

'In early 2015, researchers unveiled Rowhammer, a cutting-edge hack that exploits unfixable physical weaknesses in the silicon of certain types of memory chips to transform data they stored. In the 42 months that have passed since then, an enhancement known as error-correcting code (or ECC) available in higher-end chips was believed to be an absolute defense against potentially disastrous bitflips that changed 0s to 1s and vice versa. Research published Wednesday has now shattered that assumption.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/11/potentially-disastro… 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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Have We Reached Peak Silicon Valley?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 21 Nov '18

21 Nov '18

From <https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=121638…>: ... global smartphone sales saw their first year-on-year fall in history at the end of 2017. Apple seemed unaffected at the time, but its latest quarterly results now show falls in unit sales, as a result of which it will stop reporting them in future. >From beginnings that we might date to around the mid-1970s, PC sales (and development) went on an uninterrupted upward curve right through the 1990s, only starting to stutter around about the 2000s. The smartphone revolution, even if it includes the Symbian era and not just Android and Apple, has not lasted quite as long. So what new information-processing technology will ignite the mass market next? If any?

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Germany Proposes Rules For Home Router Security
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 21 Nov '18

21 Nov '18

The federal German body responsible for information security has published some recommendations for how consumers’ internet routers should behave by default, including limiting the initially-enabled services, requiring firewall functionality, and mandating the deletion of all personal data on a factory reset <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/20/germany_versus_openwrt_ccc/>. This looks like a welcome first step, even if some argue it doesn’t go far enough.

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Microsoft Azure Outage Fixed, Office 365 Still Broken
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 20 Nov '18

20 Nov '18

They fixed Azure by turning the multi-factor authentication servers off and on again <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/19/microsoft_azure_office_outage_late…>. Lawrence “You Couldn’t Make This Up” D’Oliveiro

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Microsoft Disputing Its NZ Tax Payments
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 19 Nov '18

19 Nov '18

The IRD is demanding that Microsoft NZ pay more tax <https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=121627…>. This is over the whole notorious business of “transfer pricing”, where sales by multinational corporations are recorded in jurisdictions where they attract less tax, rather than where the customers are located. Looks like there have already been some changes to this, though obviously the dispute would be over whether those changes are enough: From February 2018, the local unit's accounts were extended to include the distribution of computer software and hardware, having previously covered marketing. The change effectively means local product sales are being captured. Concomitant with this: The changes to Microsoft's revenue recognition also seem to route GST through the local unit, with GST payments of $8.1 million in the year ended June 30, compared to just $13,441 a year earlier. Man, that’s quite a jump. All of Microsoft’s NZ customers incurring just $13,441 in GST over an entire year ...

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A little collection of cool unix terminal/console/curses tools
by Peter Reutemann 19 Nov '18

19 Nov '18

'Kristof Kovacs: Just a list of 20 (now 28) tools for the command line. Some are little-known, some are just too useful to miss, some are pure obscure -- I hope you find something useful that you weren't aware of yet! Use your operating system's package manager to install most of them. (Thanks for the tips, everybody!) ' -- source: https://kkovacs.eu/cool-but-obscure-unix-tools 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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Mark Shuttleworth Reveals Ubuntu 18.04 Will Get a 10-Year Support Lifespan
by Peter Reutemann 18 Nov '18

18 Nov '18

'At the OpenStack Summit in Berlin last week, Ubuntu Linux founder Mark Shuttleworth said in a keynote that Ubuntu 18.04 Long Term Support (LTS) support lifespan would be extended from five years to 10 years. "I'm delighted to announce that Ubuntu 18.04 will be supported for a full 10 years," said Shuttleworth, "In part because of the very long time horizons in some of industries like financial services and telecommunications but also from IoT where manufacturing lines for example are being deployed that will be in production for at least a decade." ZDNet reports: Ubuntu 18.04 released in April 2018. While the Ubuntu desktop gets most of the ink, most of Canonical's dollars comes from server and cloud customers. It's for these corporate users Canonical first extended Ubuntu 12.04 security support, then Ubuntu 14.04's support, and now, preemptively, Ubuntu 18.04. In an interview after the keynote, Shuttleworth said Ubuntu 16.04, which is scheduled to reach its end of life in April 2021, will also be given a longer support life span. When it comes to OpenStack, Shuttleworth promised again to support versions of OpenStack dating back to 2014's IceHouse. Shuttleworth said, "What matters isn't day two, what matters is day 1,500." He also doubled-down on Canonical's promise to easily enable OpenStack customers to migrate from one version of OpenStack to another. Generally speaking, upgrading from one version of OpenStack is like a root canal: Long and painful but necessary. With Canonical OpenStack, you can step up all the way from the oldest supported version to the newest one with no more than a second of downtime. ' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/18/11/17/1748205 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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Uber Joins Linux Foundation Cementing Commitment To Open Source Tools
by Peter Reutemann 15 Nov '18

15 Nov '18

'At the 2018 Uber Open Summit, Uber announced it was joining the Linux Foundation as a Gold Member, making a firm commitment to using and contributing to open source tools. TechCrunch reports: Uber CTO Thuan Pham sees the Linux Foundation as a place for companies like his to nurture and develop open source projects. "Open source technology is the backbone of many of Uber's core services and as we continue to mature, these solutions will become ever more important," he said in a blog post announcing the partnership. "Uber has made significant investments in shared software development and community collaboration through open source over the years, including contributing the popular open source project Jaeger, a distributed tracing system, to the Linux Foundation's Cloud Native Computing Foundation in 2017," an Uber spokesperson told TechCrunch. As the report mentions, it took the ride-hailing service a long time for them to join the Linux Foundation. "Uber has been long known for making use of open source in its core tools working on over 320 open source projects and repositories from 1500 contributors involving over 70,000 commits, according to data provided by the company," reports TechCrunch.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/18/11/15/226212 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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Mozilla's 'Privacy Not Included' Gift Report Highlights Security Concerns
by Peter Reutemann 15 Nov '18

15 Nov '18

'Mozilla has released its second annual "Privacy Not Included" guide that rates 70 products to help give you an idea as to how secure or insecure they are. "We want to provide people information about how to make informed decisions when shopping for gifts that are connected to the internet," says Ashley Boyd, vice president of advocacy at Mozilla. "These products are becoming really popular. And in some cases, it's easy to forget that they're even connected to the internet." Wired reports: Among the important signifiers of a trustworthy stocking stuffer, according to Mozilla's rubric: the use of encryption, pushing automatic software security updates, strong password hygiene, a way to deal with vulnerabilities should they arise, and a privacy policy that doesn't take a PhD to parse. The most surprising result of Mozilla's testing may be how many products actually earned its seal of approval. Thirty-three of the 70 items in the "Privacy Not Included" guide passed muster; fans of the Nintendo Switch, Google Home, and Harry Potter Kano Coding Kit can sleep a little easier. On the other end of the scale, Mozilla highlighted seven products that may not hit the mark -- yes, including the sous vide wand, the Anova Precision Cooker. Also scoring low marks in Mozilla's accounting: the DJI Spark Selfie Drone (no encryption, does not require users to change the default password), the Parrot Bebop 2 drone (no encryption, complex privacy policy), and unsurprisingly, at least one baby monitor. The remaining 30 items on the list all exist somewhere in the murky middle, usually because Mozilla was unable to confirm at least one attribute. Which may be the real takeaway from the report: Typically, you have no reasonable way to find out if a given internet-connected device is secure. "If you can't tell, that says that there's a problem of communication between manufacturers and consumers," says Boyd. "We would love for makers of these products to be more clear and more transparent about what they're doing and not doing. That's a big place we think change is needed." ' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/11/15/0042210 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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A New Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ Has Arrived With Bluetooth 4.2 and Dual-Band Wi-Fi For $25
by Peter Reutemann 15 Nov '18

15 Nov '18

'Raspberry Pi has introduced a new version of one of its most popular models just in time to stuff your stocking: the Model A+. And this time around, it's even more attractive. From a report: The Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ costs $25, $5 more than the previous generation, but has a lot more going for it. Just like the top-of-the-line Model B+, the new Model A+ has a 1.4GHz 64-bit quad-core processor, and you'll also get dual-band Wi-Fi (2.4GHz + 5 GHz), a feature that was missing from the previous A+. And you'll have to use it, since the A+ doesn't have an Ethernet port. It does, however, have Bluetooth 4.2 on board. For $10 less than the $35 Model B+, you'll also only get a single USB port (versus four on the B+) as well as 512MB of RAM (versus 1GB on the B+). But otherwise, the devices are identical, with a full-size HDMI port, CSI camera port, DSI display port, stereo output and composite video port, and a micro SD port. The Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ isn't the cheapest Pi model available -- the Zero costs $5 and the Zero W costs just $10 -- but it rounds out the options nicely. The new model is available now through Raspberry Pi retailers.' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/18/11/15/1846205 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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AGM
by Peter Reutemann 15 Nov '18

15 Nov '18

Hi everyone For those who weren't at the meeting last night or aren't on meetup.com, the WLUG AGM is next month: https://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/246737212/ 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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ProtonVPN Passes 1 Million Users and Launches on iOS
by Peter Reutemann 14 Nov '18

14 Nov '18

'Encrypted email service provider ProtonMail has launched its standalone VPN app for iOS devices. From a report: The announcement comes more than a year after ProtonVPN launched globally for desktop users and 10 months after it landed on Android, so the iOS launch has been a long time coming. There is, of course, no shortage of VPN apps out there already, but ProtonMail has built a solid reputation in the encrypted communications realm since it was founded out of CERN in 2013. Following the launch of its privacy-focused email service nearly three years ago, the company subsequently added two-factor authentication (2FA), Tor support, an encrypted contacts manager, and of course a VPN service. ProtonMail offers various pricing tiers for ProtonVPN, ranging from free to $24 per month. Those who choose not to pay can access three countries' servers, with access on one device, but will have slower speeds, while the top $24/month tier offers access on 10 devices with server access in all available countries. In related news, ProtonMail said that ProtonVPN now has 1 million users globally.' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/18/11/14/1646222 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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Researchers Discover Seven New Meltdown and Spectre Attacks
by Peter Reutemann 14 Nov '18

14 Nov '18

'A team of nine academics has revealed today seven new CPU attacks. The seven impact AMD, ARM, and Intel CPUs to various degrees. From a report: Two of the seven new attacks are variations of the Meltdown attack, while the other five are variations on the original Spectre attack -- two well-known attacks that have been revealed at the start of the year and found to impact CPUs models going back to 1995. Researchers say they've discovered the seven new CPU attacks while performing "a sound and extensible systematization of transient execution attacks" -- a catch-all term the research team used to describe attacks on the various internal mechanisms that a CPU uses to process data, such as the speculative execution process, the CPU's internal caches, and other internal execution stages. The research team says they've successfully demonstrated all seven attacks with proof-of-concept code. Experiments to confirm six other Meltdown-attacks did not succeed, according to a graph published by researchers.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/18/11/14/181225 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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USB Hardware Firewall
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 14 Nov '18

14 Nov '18

You may know that it is possible for USB devices to be created that do malicious things to your PC by committing deceptions right at the USB protocol level. This kind of thing cannot be defeated by antivirus software or erased by, for example, reformatting a USB stick. For example, a device that is labelled as a USB storage stick could actually identify to the PC as two devices, one the actual storage device and the other a keyboard, that feeds malicious keystrokes at carefully-chosen times. Alternatively, it can detect when the PC is booting, and activate a separate partition containing a virus, which is otherwise invisible to antivirus software, at only that point. More details about such possibilities are available here <https://opensource.srlabs.de/projects/badusb>. Here <https://github.com/robertfisk/USG/wiki> is an interesting project to create a hardware device that will act as a “firewall” for untrusted USB devices, to prevent malicious protocol exchanges from occurring between them and your PC. If you don’t want to build your own, there’s a link in the readme to buy NZ-made ones.

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World’s Top Three Most Powerful Supercomputers Are Non-Intel
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 13 Nov '18

13 Nov '18

Machines based on IBM’s Power9 architecture have taken the top two spots in the list of the world’s most powerful (publicly-known) supercomputers <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/13/500_supercomputers_list/>. China’s Sunway TaihuLight machine, which is based on some derivative of MIPS, is in third place, with another Chinese machine, the highest-ranking Intel-based one, coming next. There is also the first ARM-based beastie, built by HP Enterprises, appearing on the list, at number 203.

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Windows 10 Spontaneous Downgrade
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 08 Nov '18

08 Nov '18

Some users of Windows 10 Pro are discovering that their machines are suddenly claiming to only have a Windows 10 Home licence <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/08/windows_10_activation/>. This isn’t confined to the “Insider” prereleases, but production releases as well (both upgrades and fresh installs). Seems some Microsoft support staff have confirmed that there is a “temporary issue” with the licence servers, which may take 1-2 days to fix.

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WLinux, the First Paid-for Linux Distro for Windows 10, Goes On Sale on Microsoft Store
by Peter Reutemann 07 Nov '18

07 Nov '18

'WLinux is a $20 open-source, Debian-based distribution, designed to run on Windows 10's Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). The WSL allows Windows 10 to run various GNU/Linux distros inside Windows as Microsoft Store apps, providing access to Ubuntu, openSUSE, Debian, Fedora, Kali Linux, and others. The WSL has disadvantages over a running a dedicated GNU/Linux system. For example, there's no official support for desktop environments or graphical applications, and I/O performance bottlenecks, but it is being improved over time. The developers of WLinux describe it as a "fast Linux terminal environment for developers", saying it is the first distribution to be "pre-configured and optimized to run specifically on Windows Subsystem for Linux". Announcing WLinux's availability, Microsoft program manager Tara Raj, called out the wlinux-setup tool, "which allows users to easily set up common developer toolchains, and removes unsupported features like systemd."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/18/11/07/1510223 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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How New, Polite Linus Torvalds Points Out Bad Kernel Code
by Peter Reutemann 06 Nov '18

06 Nov '18

'Linus Torvalds "has shown already for the new Linux 4.20~5.0 cycle he isn't relaxing his standards but is communicating better when it comes to bringing up coding," reports Phoronix, adding "So far it looks like Linus' brief retreat is paying off with still addressing code quality issues -- and not blatantly accepting new code into the kernel as some feared -- but in doing so in a professional manner compared to his past manner of exclaiming himself over capitalized sentences and profanity that at time put him at odds with some in the Linux kernel community." AmiMoJo quotes their report: Last Saturday he took issue with the HID pull request and its introduction of the BigBen game controller driver that was introduced: the developer enabled this new driver by default. Linus Torvalds has always frowned upon random new drivers being enabled by default in the kernel configuration driver. [H]e still voiced his opinion over this driver's default "Y" build configuration, but did so in a more professional manner than he has done in the past: We do *not* enable new random drivers by default. And we most *definitely* don't do it when they are odd-ball ones that most people have never heard of. Yet the new "BigBen Interactive" driver that was added this merge window did exactly that. Just don't do it. Yes, yes, every developer always thinks that _their_ driver is so special and so magically important that it should be enabled by default. But no. When we have thousands of drivers, we don't randomly pick one new driver to be enabled by default just because some developer thinks it is special. It's not.... Please don't do things like this. Phoronix also describes another "kernel oops" testing Torvalds' patience, in which Linus responded tactfully that "What makes me *very* unhappy about this is that if I'm right, I think it means that code was literally not tested at all by anybody who didn't have one of the entries in that list."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/18/11/03/1833213 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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Explicating Neural Networks
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 06 Nov '18

06 Nov '18

The usual problem with neural nets is, once you have trained them, you have no actual idea why they come to the decisions that they do. One classic example was a net that was being trained to distinguish between pictures of huskies and wolves, where it turned out it was actually assigning the highest weight to the area of snow in the background of the pictures. Enter LIME, which is a Python-based toolkit that tries to analyze the trained net to show you how each part of the dataset is being interpreted <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/05/hands_on_with_lime/>. The article shows example pictures where areas are colour-coded green or red to indicate whether they make a positive or negative contribution to a particular classification decision. This way, you can spot if any parts that should be ignored are being given an anomalously high weight. Or vice versa.

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Microsoft Microsoft Working on Porting Sysinternals To Linux
by Peter Reutemann 05 Nov '18

05 Nov '18

'A Microsoft exec has confirmed yesterday that the company's engineers are working on porting the highly popular Sysinternals software package to Linux. Microsoft engineers have already ported the ProcDump utility and are currently working on porting ProcMon as well. More tools to follow. Microsoft's decision to port this highly popular debugging utility to Linux comes after two months ago, in September, Scott Guthrie, Microsoft's executive vice president of the cloud and enterprise group, revealed that "sometimes slightly over half of Azure VMs are Linux." With Linux's growing adoption as the preferred OS for running Azure VMs, it's only natural that Azure engineers are now looking into porting their favorite debugging utilities to Linux, for both themselves but also for the company's customers.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/18/11/05/157226 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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Flaws in Self-Encrypting SSDs Let Attackers Bypass Disk Encryption
by Peter Reutemann 05 Nov '18

05 Nov '18

'Researchers have found flaws that can be exploited to bypass hardware encryption in well known and popular SSD drives. Master passwords and faulty standards implementations allow attackers access to encrypted data without needing to know the user-chosen password. SSDs from Micron (Crucial) and Samsung are affected. These are SSDs that support hardware-level encryption via a local built-in chip, separate from the main CPU. Some of these devices have a factory-set master password that bypasses the user-set password, while other SSDs store the encryption key on the hard drive, from where it can be retrieved. The issue is worse on Windows, where BitLocker defers software-level encryption to hardware encryption-capable SSDs, meaning user data is vulnerable to attacks without the user's knowledge. More in the research paper.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/18/11/05/213255 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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Slashdot poll: What do you make of programming languages and open source organizations adopting a code of conduct?
by Peter Reutemann 05 Nov '18

05 Nov '18

See this link for poll: https://slashdot.org/poll/3103 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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Old School 'Sniffing' Attacks Can Still Reveal Your Browsing History
by Peter Reutemann 04 Nov '18

04 Nov '18

'Most modern browsers -- such as Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, and even browsers such as FuzzyFox and DeterFox (different, security-focused versions of Firefox) -- have vulnerabilities that allow hosts of malicious websites to extract hundreds to thousands of URLs in a user's web history, per new research from the University of California San Diego. What's worse, the vulnerabilities are built into the way they structure links, meaning that major structural changes will have to take place in these browsers in order to protect user privacy. The only browser that was immune to the attacks was Tor Browser, as the browser does not keep track of a user's internet history. The vulnerabilities have to do with why, for instance, unclicked links appear blue while visited links appear violet: there's a different set of rules and style that apply to links depending on whether they've been visited or not. However, a bad actor building a web page can manipulate this faster loading time for visited links by "sniffing," or inferting your browsing history. In essence, sniffing is finding and exploiting proxies that reveal your web history. As outlined in the UC San Diego report, this sniffing could happen in a couple of ways: they could force the browser to reload multiple complex images or image transformations that differ based on whether you've visited a link or not, which would create drastic differences in the loading time for each. With this strategy, actors can test 60 sensitive URLs per second. Bad actors could exploit a "bytecode cache," which speeds up the loading time for revisiting a link that you've already visited. "By embedding a special script in a web page, the actor can test how long it takes for a web page to load and infer whether you've visited it or not," reports Motherboard. "Actors can probe 3,000 URLs per second with this method. When the vulnerability was reported to Google, the company marked the issue as "security-sensitive" but "low-priority."' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/18/11/04/0426252 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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Intel CPUs fall to new hyperthreading exploit that pilfers crypto keys
by Peter Reutemann 04 Nov '18

04 Nov '18

'Over the past 11 months, the processors running our computers, and in some cases phones, have succumbed to a host of attacks. Bearing names such as Meltdown and Spectre, BranchScope, TLBleed, and Foreshadow, the exploits threaten to siphon some of our most sensitive secrets—say passwords or cryptographic keys—out of the silicon microarchitecture in ways that can’t be detected or stopped by traditional security defenses. On Friday, researchers disclosed yet another leak that has already been shown to exist on a wide range of Intel chips and may also affect other makers, too. PortSmash, as the new attack is being called, exploits a largely overlooked side-channel in Intel’s hyperthreading technology. A proprietary implementation of simultaneous multithreading, hyperthreading reduces the amount of time needed to carry out parallel computing tasks, in which large numbers of calculations or executions are carried out simultaneously. The performance boost is the result of two logical processor cores sharing the hardware of a single physical processor. The added logical cores make it easier to divide large tasks into smaller ones that can be completed more quickly.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/11/intel-cpus-fall-to-n… 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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Are Paper Books Still Legal?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 04 Nov '18

04 Nov '18

But how do they charge you the streaming fees? <http://www.dieselsweeties.com/ics/500/>

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Booting a Raspberry-Pi 3B without using a SD-Card
by Ian Stewart 02 Nov '18

02 Nov '18

Hi, If you have a Raspberry Pi Model 3B, then you may be able use it with no micro SD-Card and have it boot Raspbian off a USB flash drive stick. I have found this possible with an Apacer AH356 64GB USB 3.1 Flash Drive<https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/MEMAPC11464/Apacer-AH356-64GB-USB-31-Flash…> stick that I bought from PB-Tech a couple of weeks ago for $21.85. Admittedly you can buy a micro SD-card like the Apacer 64GB microSDXC UHS-I Class10<https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/MEMAPC81064/Apacer-64GB-microSDXC-UHS-I-Cl…> from PB-Tech for $28.75 and put Raspbian onto it. So using the USB flash drive stick only saves a few dollars. However, there may be other advantages over using a USB flash drive vs. a micro SD-Card for the Raspbian OS. For example, you can shutdown the Raspberry Pi and remove the USB stick, take it to another computer, and backup your data. I also installed the Raspbian distro onto WD Elements Portable 2TB 2.5" USB 3.0 External HDD<https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/HDDWDX2621/WD-Elements-Portable-2TB-25-USB…> which PB-Tech sell for $129. The R-Pi (with no SD-Card) would not boot this drive. Possibly because the USB drive is too slow to initialize after power on??? I also found that the R-Pi would not boot up Raspbian on an old 8GB Kingston USB flash drive. Maybe its too slow to initialize??? All the above tests were done using the current latest Raspbian release which is dated 2018_10_09. FYI: Below are details on how to install the Raspbian distro image onto a USB flash drive stick. cheers, Ian. Installing the Raspbian distro onto USB flash drive... Download the latest 1.4GB Raspbian distribution file: 2018-10-09-raspbian-stretch.zip Unzip the file to create a 4.1GB image file: 2018-10-09-raspbian-stretch.img Copy the 4.1GB image to a USB flash drive stick... $ sudo dd bs=4M if=2018-10-09-raspbian-stretch.img of=/dev/sdX status=progress conv=fsync Note: For the device /dev/sdX replace the X with the drive letter of your USB flash drive stick. e.g. /dev/sdc Insert the USB flash drive stick into the R-Pi model 3B. Remove any SD-Card that may be installed in the Raspberry Pi. Power on the R-Pi. After about 10 seconds the colourful POST display will appear, and the USB stick will commence its first boot. It will detect that it is a 4.1GB partition, expand to being a partition that fills the whole of the USB flash drive stick and reboot. The second reboot will be slow and takes about one minute. I assume it is expanding the squashed file system??? Subsequent reboots are faster.

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Blockchain For International Trade
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 01 Nov '18

01 Nov '18

ASB is close to offering a general blockchain-based service for international trading payments, starting with this <https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=121526…>: ... the transaction was a landmark because the blockchain-based service meant digital payment and paperwork for the deal were wrapped up in an hour - compared to the two to four days it would take to process using more traditional means. Also: Trade is currently paperwork-heavy, Beehre says, making it susceptible to fraud or human error. Which is odd, because isn’t it precisely the point of all that paperwork to reduce the chance of fraud or human error? However: ... blockchain also appealed because of[sic] the technology was created to be unhackable. Every time I hear the word “unhackable”, I reach for my ... never mind.

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IBM To Buy Red Hat, the Top Linux Distributor, For $34 Billion
by Peter Reutemann 01 Nov '18

01 Nov '18

'International Business Machines (IBM) is acquiring software maker Red Hat in a deal valued at $34 billion, the companies said Sunday. From a report: The purchase, announced on Sunday afternoon, is the latest competitive step among large business software companies to gain an edge in the fast-growing market for Internet-style cloud computing. In June, Microsoft acquired GitHub, a major code-sharing platform for software developers, for $7.5 billion. IBM said its acquisition of Red Hat was a move to open up software development on computer clouds, in which software developers write applications that run on remote data centers. >From a press release: This acquisition brings together the best-in-class hybrid cloud providers and will enable companies to securely move all business applications to the cloud. Companies today are already using multiple clouds. However, research shows that 80 percent of business workloads have yet to move to the cloud, held back by the proprietary nature of today's cloud market. This prevents portability of data and applications across multiple clouds, data security in a multi-cloud environment and consistent cloud management. IBM and Red Hat will be strongly positioned to address this issue and accelerate hybrid multi-cloud adoption. Together, they will help clients create cloud-native business applications faster, drive greater portability and security of data and applications across multiple public and private clouds, all with consistent cloud management. In doing so, they will draw on their shared leadership in key technologies, such as Linux, containers, Kubernetes, multi-cloud management, and cloud management and automation. IBM's and Red Hat's partnership has spanned 20 years, with IBM serving as an early supporter of Linux, collaborating with Red Hat to help develop and grow enterprise-grade Linux and more recently to bring enterprise Kubernetes and hybrid cloud solutions to customers. These innovations have become core technologies within IBM's $19 billion hybrid cloud business. Between them, IBM and Red Hat have contributed more to the open source community than any other organization.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/18/10/28/1859245 That completely flew under the radar! I still remember from my Unix sysadmin course at uni back in the days (using IBM's AIX), when an IBM guy came in for some guest lectures and mentioned that they are ramping up their investment in Linux and also offer Linux next to their own AIX Unix systems. Well, Linux has definitely come a long way! 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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'Open Source Creators: Red Hat Got $34 Billion and You Got $0. Here's Why.'
by Peter Reutemann 31 Oct '18

31 Oct '18

'Donald Fischer, who served as a product manager for Red Hat Enterprise Linux during its creation and early years of growth, writes: Red Hat saw, earlier than most, that the ascendance of open source made the need to pay for code go away, but the need for support and maintenance grew larger than ever. Thus Red Hat was never in the business of selling software, rather it was in the business of addressing the practical challenges that have always come along for the ride with software. [...] As an open source developer, you created that software. You can keep your package secure, legally documented, and maintained; who could possibly do it better? So why does Red Hat make the fat profits, and not you? Unfortunately, doing business with large companies requires a lot of bureaucratic toil. That's doubly true for organizations that require security, legal, and operational standards for every product they bring in the door. Working with these organizations requires a sales and marketing team, a customer support organization, a finance back-office, and lots of other "business stuff" in addition to technology. Red Hat has had that stuff, but you haven't. And just like you don't have time to sell to large companies, they don't have time to buy from you alongside a thousand other open source creators, one at a time. Sure, big companies know how to install and use your software. (And good news! They already do.) But they can't afford to put each of 1100 npm packages through a procurement process that costs $20k per iteration. Red Hat solved this problem for one corner of open source by collecting 2,000+ open source projects together, adding assurances on top, and selling it as one subscription product. That worked for them, to the tune of billions. But did you get paid for your contributions?' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/18/10/31/1520256 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 CAP Theorem Strikes Again
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 31 Oct '18

31 Oct '18

There is a fundamental rule with distributed databases: you can pick any two of: * Maintaining data Consistency across the entire network * Maintaining data Availability across the entire network * Being able to deal with a Partitioning of the network into two or more disconnected pieces but you can never have all three. An example of this is the outage at GitHub earlier this month <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/31/github_lost_a_network_link_for_43_…>. A link broke between the east-coast and west-coast halves of their network, and in an effort to maintain ongoing service availability on both sides of the partition, they ended up sacrificing consistency of the data. Which came back to bite them when the link was re-established, and the inconsistency could not easily be resolved.

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The DNS Encryption Controversy
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 31 Oct '18

31 Oct '18

There is a rather acrimonious argument currently going on among the Internet technorati over two different competing protocols for implementing encryption of domain name (DNS) queries <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/30/doh-contorversy/>. One of them is called “DNS-over-TLS” and the other is “DNS-over-HTTPS”. The former passes the DNS queries over its own TLS-encrypted connection, while the latter piggybacks on good old HTTP, using the latter’s TLS capability instead. The former is clearly simpler, and one might say “purer”, but the latter is deliberately designed to make it hard to tell what DNS queries a user might be making, since they become indistinguishable from regular HTTPS connections. So the question becomes, do you see this obfuscation as a good thing or a bad thing? It is intended to prevent snoops (both Governmental and non-Governmental) from invading the privacy of users, but it also blocks “legitimate” analysis of traffic by network admins trying to manage their systems as well. Clearly, you can’t do one without the other. So is the price worth paying?

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Fedora 29 Released
by Peter Reutemann 30 Oct '18

30 Oct '18

'Fedora 29 is released today. Among the new features are the ability to allow parallel installation of packages such as Node.js. Fedora 29 also supports ZRAM (formerly called compcache) for ARMv7 and v8. In addition to the more efficient use of RAM, it also increases the lifespan of microSD cards on the Raspberry Pi as well as other SBCs. "Additionally, UEFI for ARMv7 is now supported in Fedora 29, which also benefits Raspberry Pi users," reports TechRepublic. "Fedora already supported UEFI on 64-bit ARM devices."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/18/10/30/229249 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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You Can Play Over 2, 600 Windows Games on Linux Via Steam Play
by Peter Reutemann 29 Oct '18

29 Oct '18

'At the end of August, Valve announced a new version of Steam Play for Linux that included Proton, a WINE fork that made many Windows games, including more recent ones ,such as Witcher 3, Dark Souls 3 and Dishonored, playable on Linux. Just two months later, ProtonDB says there are over 2,600 Windows games that users can play on Linux, and the number is rapidly growing daily. From a report: When Valve Software launched Steam Play with Proton, it made it easier for gamers to play Windows games that hadn't yet been ported to Linux with the click of a button. Not all games may run perfectly on Linux, but that's also often the case with Windows 10, which can not play older games as well as previous versions of Windows did, even under Compatibility Mode. In only two months, the database of games that work with Proton has increased to over 2,600 -- more than half of the 5,000 Linux-native games that can be obtained through the Steam store.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/18/10/29/1721258 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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Easy-to-exploit privilege escalation bug bites OpenBSD and other big name OSes
by Peter Reutemann 29 Oct '18

29 Oct '18

'Several big-name Linux and BSD operating systems are vulnerable to an exploit that gives untrusted users powerful root privileges. The critical flaw in the X.org server—the open-source implementation of the X11 system that helps manage graphics displays—affects OpenBSD, widely considered to be among the most secure OSes. It also impacts some versions of the Red Hat, Ubuntu, Debian, and CentOS distributions of Linux. An advisory X.org developers published Thursday disclosed the 23-month-old bug that, depending on how OS developers configure it, lets hackers or untrusted users elevate very limited system rights to unfettered root. The vulnerability, which is active when OSes run X.org in privileged (setuid) mode, allows files to be overwritten using the -logfile and -modulepath parameters. It also makes it trivial for low-privilege users to escalate system rights. A variety of nuances are leading to widely divergent assessments of the bug's severity. “Depending on whom you talk to, the reported severity will vary greatly,” Louis Dion-Marcil, a security researcher at GoSecure, told Ars. “I think most people will tell you it is very severe, and I would agree with them. The bug allows you to write arbitrary data to arbitrary files, which might seem trivial and not that dangerous, but it effectively allows regular, unprivileged users to elevate their privileges to the one of complete administrator of the system.”' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/10/x-org-bug-that-gives… 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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New Zealand Chooses Google Chromebooks Over Microsoft Windows 10 For Education
by Peter Reutemann 28 Oct '18

28 Oct '18

'Google announced this week that it has signed an agreement with New Zealand's Ministry of Education to provide all state and state integrated schools in the country with Chrome Education licenses. The three-year agreement goes into effect on November 1 next month. From a report: "Starting on November 1, as part of an agreement with Google and the New Zealand Ministry of Education, all state and state-integrated schools across New Zealand will be able to start claiming Ministry-funded Chrome Education licenses to manage new and existing unmanaged Chromebooks. The Chrome Education license was developed to make device management in schools a breeze, so that teachers and students can focus on what's most important -- teaching and learning. Equipped with the Chrome Education license, schools can utilize essential education features to better support the many ways Chromebooks are used in the classroom," says Suan Ye, Head of Google for Education, Australia and New Zealand.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/18/10/28/2214209 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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Linus Torvalds and Greg K-H Talk About Linux Community, Dealing with Hardware Bugs, Chromebooks Gaining Traction, Microsoft, Companies Gleaning Data and More
by Peter Reutemann 28 Oct '18

28 Oct '18

'Swapnil Bhartiya, who runs the blog TFIR, had a chance to interview Linus Torvalds at Open Source Summit in the second half of August this year. (Some context: The interview, which was published this week, took place before Mr. Torvalds said he needs to take a step back to reflect on how he has dealt with the community over the years. Since then, we have learned that Mr. Torvalds is returning to his position.) In the wide-ranging interview, Mr. Torvalds has touched a wide-range of subjects, including formulating workarounds for the problematic hardware bugs (Meltdown, Spectre), and Chromebooks gaining traction (though it is still not a machine that he could use for his work yet). He also talked about companies gleaning a lot of data about their users, regulations, (a tad bit of politics), Linux community. Greg Kroah-Hartman (aka Greg K-H) joined Mr. Bhartiya and Mr. Torvalds for the second half of the interview. On Sunday, Mr. Bhartiya published an additional interview of Mr. Kroah-Hartman.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/18/10/28/1437239 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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New SystemD Vulnerability Discovered
by Peter Reutemann 28 Oct '18

28 Oct '18

'The Register reports that a new security bug in systemd "can be exploited over the network to, at best, potentially crash a vulnerable Linux machine, or, at worst, execute malicious code on the box" by a malicious host on the same network segment as the victim. According to one Red Hat security engineer, "An attacker could exploit this via malicious DHCP server to corrupt heap memory on client machines, resulting in a denial of service or potential code execution." According to the bug description, systemd-networkd "contains a DHCPv6 client which is written from scratch and can be spawned automatically on managed interfaces when IPv6 router advertisements are received." OneHundredAndTen shared this article from the Register: In addition to Ubuntu and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, systemd has been adopted as a service manager for Debian, Fedora, CoreOS, Mint, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. We're told RHEL 7, at least, does not use the vulnerable component by default. Systemd creator Leonard Poettering has already published a security fix for the vulnerable component -- this should be weaving its way into distros as we type. If you run a systemd-based Linux system, and rely on systemd-networkd, update your operating system as soon as you can to pick up the fix when available and as necessary.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/18/10/27/196227 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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Firefox and Google Drive: random download locations?
by Peter Reutemann 25 Oct '18

25 Oct '18

Hi everyone In case you're using Google Drive frequently in conjunction with Firefox and always wondered about the random download locations (when "always ask" is enabled), I just found the reason for this... Firefox has a boolean setting "browser.download.lastDir.savePerSite" (not defined by default) that defines whether to remember the download location per site. However, with Google Drive, you will get a random URL serving the file, turning the last known download directory into a useless feature unfortunately. So, just go into "about:config", and create the above mentioned boolean setting and use "false" as the value. Now you have a "global" last known download location. -- source: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/925960 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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New Study Claims Data Harvesting Among Android Apps Is 'Out of Control'
by Peter Reutemann 25 Oct '18

25 Oct '18

'A new study from Oxford University revealed that almost 90 percent of free apps on the Google Play store share data with Alphabet. "The researchers, who analyzed 959,000 apps from the U.S. and UK Google Play stores, said data harvesting and sharing by mobile apps was now 'out of control,'" reports TechSpot. "'We find that most apps contain third party tracking, and the distribution of trackers is long-tailed with several highly dominant trackers accounting for a large portion of the coverage,' reads the report." From the report: It's revealed that most of the apps, 88.4 percent, could share data with companies owned by Google parent Alphabet. Next came a firm that's no stranger to data sharing controversies, Facebook (42.5 percent), followed by Twitter (33.8 percent), Verizon (26.27 percent), Microsoft (22.75 percent), and Amazon (17.91 percent). [I]nformation shared by these third-party apps can include age, gender, location, and information about a user's other installed apps. The data "enables construction of detailed profiles about individuals, which could include inferences about shopping habits, socio-economic class or likely political opinions." Big firms then use the data for a variety of purposes, such as credit scoring and for targeting political messages, but its main use is often ad targeting. Not surprising, given that revenue from online advertising is now over $59 billion per year. According to the research, the average app transfers data to five tracker companies, which pass the data on to larger firms. The biggest culprits are news apps and those aimed at children, both of which tend to have the most third-party trackers associated with them.' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/18/10/24/2340207 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 World’s First Video Game?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 24 Oct '18

24 Oct '18

Tennis For Two, almost certainly the first computer-controlled real-time video game, 60 years old this month <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/22/tennis_for_two_at_60/>. Note this was an analog computer, which would have been faster at simulating the physics than the digital ones available in 1958.

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Google News App Bug Is Using Up Gigabytes of Background Data Without Users' Knowledge
by Peter Reutemann 23 Oct '18

23 Oct '18

'A bug in the Google News app for Android is reportedly causing the app to use up excessive amounts of background data, leading to overage charges. "According to dozens of posts on the Google News Help Forum, users have been experiencing this issue as early as June," reports The Verge. "The issue was verified and addressed by a Google News community manager in September, stating that the company was investigating and working toward a fix, but the issue is still ongoing." From the report: Verge reader Zach Dowdle emailed in with his experience, and screenshots of his app and Wi-Fi data usage: "The Google News app is randomly using a ridiculous amount of background data without users' knowledge. The app burned through over 12 gigs of data on my phone while I slept and my Wi-Fi had disconnected. It lead to $75 in overage charges." According to several users, the app burned through mobile data despite having "Download via Wi-Fi" turned on in the settings. In some extreme cases, the Google News app used up to 24GB of data, leading to overage charges of up to $385, users reported. So far, the only solutions seem to be disabling background data, and deleting the app altogether. ' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/10/23/0340211 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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