- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Hack in the box: Hacking into companies with “warshipping”
by Peter Reutemann 13 Aug '19

13 Aug '19

'Penetration testers have long gone to great lengths to demonstrate the potential chinks in their clients' networks before less friendly attackers exploit them. But in recent tests by IBM's X-Force Red, the penetration testers never had to leave home to get in the door at targeted sites, and the targets weren't aware they were exposed until they got the bad news in report form. That's because the people at X-Force Red put a new spin on sneaking in—something they've dubbed "warshipping." Using less than $100 worth of gear—including a Raspberry Pi Zero W, a small battery, and a cellular modem—the X-Force Red team assembled a mobile attack platform that fit neatly within a cardboard spacer dropped into a shipping box or embedded in objects such as a stuffed animal or plaque. At the Black Hat security conference here last week, Ars got a close look at the hardware that has weaponized cardboard. We've looked at such devices, typically referred to as "drop boxes," before. Ars even used one in our passive surveillance of an NPR reporter, capturing his network traffic and routing a dump of his packets across the country for us to sift through. Covert drop boxes (once a specialty of Pwnie Express) have taken the form of "wall wart" device chargers, Wi-Fi routers, and even power strips. And mobile devices have also been brought to play, allowing "war walking"—attacks launched remotely as a device concealed in a bag, suitcase, or backpack is carried nonchalantly into a bank, corporate lobby, or other targeted location. But unless you're trying to get your daily steps in, IBM X-Force Red Global Managing Partner and Head Charles Henderson told Ars that you can just let a shipping company do the work for you. "There have been people that have shipped cell phones, things like that," Henderson noted. "The thing that's cool about this is, this is the wall of the box. It can be easily built into the cardboard. If you get a phone shipped to you, you're suspicious of it. If you get a box or maybe a plaque that says you're the new [chief information security officer] of the year, you might not." The plaque might just go right up on the wall. "Put a $13 solar charger panel on the plaque, and that makes it a permanent fixture in a CISO's office... a $13 panel that, and actually, by the time it discharges the battery, between times when we check in, that can charge it back up. So technically you could do pretty much infinite, up to the life of the battery, if you set that in the right place." The hardware has also been planted in a stuffed animal and even inside the case of a normal Wi-Fi router.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/08/hack-in-the-box-hack… 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 Paid Contractors To Transcribe Users' Audio Chats
by Peter Reutemann 13 Aug '19

13 Aug '19

'Facebook has been paying hundreds of outside contractors to transcribe clips of audio from users of its services, Bloomberg reported Tuesday, citing people with knowledge of the work. From the report: The work has rattled the contract employees, who are not told where the audio was recorded or how it was obtained -- only to transcribe it, said the people, who requested anonymity for fear of losing their jobs. They're hearing Facebook users' conversations, sometimes with vulgar content, but do not know why Facebook needs them transcribed, the people said. Facebook confirmed that it had been transcribing users' audio and said it will no longer do so, following scrutiny into other companies. "Much like Apple and Google, we paused human review of audio more than a week ago," the company said Tuesday. The company said the users who were affected chose the option in Facebook's Messenger app to have their voice chats transcribed. The contractors were checking whether Facebook's artificial intelligence correctly interpreted the messages, which were anonymized. [...] The social networking giant, which just completed a $5 billion settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission after a probe of its privacy practices, has long denied that it collects audio from users to inform ads or help determine what people see in their news feeds.' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/19/08/13/200217 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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Landmark 2.80 Release of Open Source Blender 3D With Improved UI Now Available
by Peter Reutemann 11 Aug '19

11 Aug '19

'"In the 3D content creation space, where are lot of professional 3D software costs anywhere from 2K to 8K Dollars a license, people have always hoped that the free, open source 3D software Blender would some day be up to the job of replacing expensive commercial 3D software packages," writes Slashdot reader dryriver: This never happened, not because Blender didn't have good 3D features technically, but rather because the Blender Foundation simply did not listen to thousands of 3D artists screaming for a "more standard UI design" in Blender. Blender's eccentric GUI with reversed left-click-right-click conventions, keyboard shortcuts that don't match commercial software and other nastiness just didn't work for a lot of people. After years of screaming, Blender finally got a much better and more familiar UI design in release 2.80, which can be downloaded here. Version 2.80 has many powerful features, but the standout feature is that after nearly 10 years of asking, 3D artists finally get a better, more standard, more sensible User Interface. This effectively means that for the first time, Blender can compete directly with expensive commercial 3D software made by industry leaders like Autodesk, Maxon, NewTek and SideFX. Why the Blender Foundation took nearly a decade to revise the software's UI is anybody's guess.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/08/11/1842258 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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Can Swap Space Solve System Performance Issues?
by Peter Reutemann 11 Aug '19

11 Aug '19

'Earlier this week on the Linux kernel mailing list, Artem S. Tashkinov described a low-memory scenario where "the system will stall hard. You will barely be able to move the mouse pointer. Your disk LED will be flashing incessantly..." "I'm afraid I have bad news for the people snickering at Linux here," wrote Chris Siebenmann, a sys-admin at the University of Toronto's CS lab. "If you're running without swap space, you can probably get any Unix to behave this way under memory pressure..." In the old days, this usually was not very much of an issue because system RAM was generally large compared to the size of programs and thus the amount of file-backed pages that were likely to be in memory. That's no longer the case today; modern large programs such as Firefox and its shared libraries can have significant amounts of file-backed code and data pages (in addition to their often large use of dynamically allocated memory, ie anonymous pages). A production engineer (now on Facebook's Web Foundation team) wrote about experiencing similar issues years ago when another company had disabled swapping when they replaced or reinstalled machines -- leading to lots of pages from hosts that had to be dealt with. This week they wrote: I stand by my original position: have some swap. Not a lot. Just a little. Linux boxes just plain act weirdly without it. This is not permission to beat your machine silly in terms of memory allocation, either... If you allocate all of the RAM on the machine, you have screwed the kernel out of buffer cache it sorely needs. Back off. Put another way, disk I/O that isn't brutally slow costs memory. Network I/O costs memory. All kinds of stuff costs memory. It's not JUST the RSS of your process. Other stuff you do needs space to operate. If you try to fill a 2 GB box with 2 GB of data, something's going to have a bad day! You have to leave room for the actual system to run or it's going to grind to a stop.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/19/08/10/041223 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 Spectre-like CPU Vulnerability Bypasses Existing Defenses
by Peter Reutemann 11 Aug '19

11 Aug '19

'Researchers from security firm Bitdefender discovered and reported a year ago a new CPU vulnerability that 'abuses a system instruction called SWAPGS and can bypass mitigations put in place for previous speculative execution vulnerabilities like Spectre,' writes Lucian Constantin for CSO. There are three attack scenarios involving SWAPGS, the most serious of which 'can allow attackers to leak the contents of arbitrary kernel memory addresses. This is similar to the impact of the Spectre vulnerability.' Microsoft released mitigations for the vulnerability in July's Patch Tuesday, although details were withheld until August 6 when Bitdefender released its whitepaper and Microsoft published a security advisory.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/19/08/10/0523206 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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Remember Autorun.inf Malware In Windows? Turns Out KDE Offers Something Similar
by Peter Reutemann 11 Aug '19

11 Aug '19

'A security researcher has published proof-of-concept (PoC) code for a vulnerability in the KDE software framework. A fix is not available at the time of writing. The bug was discovered by Dominik "zer0pwn" Penner and impacts the KDE Frameworks package 5.60.0 and below. The KDE Frameworks software library is at the base of the KDE desktop environment v4 and v5 (Plasma), currently included with a large number of Linux distributions. The vulnerability occurs because of the way the KDesktopFile class (part of KDE Frameworks) handles .desktop or .directory files. It was discovered that malicious .desktop and .directory files could be created that could be used to run malicious code on a user's computer. When a user opens the KDE file viewer to access the directory where these files are stored, the malicious code contained within the .desktop or .directory files executes without user interaction — such as running the file. Zero user interaction is required to trigger code execution — all you have to do is to browse a directory with a malicious file using any of KDE file system browsing applications like Dolphin. When ZDNet contacted KDE for a comment Tuesday, their spokesperson provided this response. "We would appreciate if people would contact security(a)kde.org before releasing an exploit into the public, rather than the other way around, so that we can decide on a timeline together."' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/19/08/10/2257259 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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Severe local 0-Day escalation exploit found in Steam Client Services
by Peter Reutemann 09 Aug '19

09 Aug '19

'Earlier today, disgruntled security researcher Vasily Kravets released a zero-day vulnerability in the Windows version of the ubiquitous gaming service Steam. The vulnerability allows any user to run arbitrary code with LOCALSYSTEM privileges using just a very few simple commands. The vulnerability lies within Steam Client Service. The service may be started or stopped by unprivileged users. This becomes a problem because, when run,Steam Client Service automatically sets permissions on a range of registry keys. If a mischievous—or outright malicious—user were to symlink one of these keys to that belonging to another service, it becomes possible for arbitrary users to start or stop that service as well. This becomes even more problematic when you realize that it's possible to pass arguments to services that run under extremely privileged accounts—such as msiserver, the Windows Installer service.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/08/severe-local-0-day-escalation-exploi… 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 Journal Ceases Publication
by Peter Reutemann 09 Aug '19

09 Aug '19

'Not too long after Linus Torvalds wrote his own Unix kernel, which he called Linux, in the summer of 1991, a magazine was founded by enthusiasts to focus on the operating system. For nearly three decades Linux Journal has been an authority magazine on all things Linux, but it is now shuttering doors, it said late Wednesday. The announcement comes about two years after the periodical said it would cease to exist, but it was able to find some backing -- from Privacy Internet Access group -- to resume operations later on. The team said on Wednesday that all staff members had been laid off and the company was left with no operating funds to continue in any capacity. It remains committed to keeping the website afloat for another few weeks.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/08/08/1354211 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 Joins the RISC-V Foundation
by Peter Reutemann 08 Aug '19

08 Aug '19

'Red Hat has joined the RISC-V Foundation to help foster this open-source processor ISA. Phoronix reports: While we're still likely years away from seeing any serious RISC-V powered servers at least that can deliver meaningful performance, Red Hat has been active in promoting RISC-V as an open-source processor instruction set architecture and one of the most promising libre architectures we have seen over the years. Red Hat developers have already helped in working on Fedora's RISC-V support and now the IBM-owned company is helping out more and showing their commitment by joining the RISC-V Foundation. Red Hat joins the likes of Google, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, SiFive, Western Digital, IBM, and Samsung as among the many RISC-V members. ' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/19/08/08/213253 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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WordPress Team Working on Daring Plan To Forcibly Update Old Websites
by Peter Reutemann 08 Aug '19

08 Aug '19

'The developers behind the WordPress open-source content management system (CMS) are working on a plan to forcibly auto-update older versions of the CMS to more recent releases. From a report: The goal of this plan is to improve the security of the WordPress ecosystem, and the internet as a whole, since WordPress installations account for more than 34% of all internet websites. Officially supported versions include only the last six WordPress major releases, which currently are all the versions between v4.7 and v5.2. The plan is to slowly auto-update old WordPress sites, starting with v3.7, to the current minimum supported version, which is the v4.7 release. The WordPress team said it plans to monitor this tiered forced auto-update process for errors and site breakage. If there's something massively wrong, then auto-update can be stopped altogether. If only a few individual sites break, than those site will be rolled back to their previous versions and the owner will be notified via email.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/19/08/08/1523212 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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AMD Lands Google, Twitter as Customers With Newest Server Chip
by Peter Reutemann 08 Aug '19

08 Aug '19

'Advanced Micro Devices on Wednesday released the second generation of its processor chip for data centers and said that it had landed Alphabet's Google and Twitter as customers. From a report: AMD competes against Intel to supply chips for data centers that power internet-based services. Both firms have come to rely on data center chips for growth because personal computer sales have stagnated as users shifted to mobile devices. AMD's newest generation of server chip, called EPYC, uses a new chip-making technology from its contract manufacturers that helps the chips have better performance while consuming less power. Intel, which makes chips in its own factories instead of relying on contractors, is behind schedule delivering chips made with its own newer manufacturing process. It plans to release them next year.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/08/08/1553202 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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Less TV, More Online
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 08 Aug '19

08 Aug '19

In Britain, at least <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/07/punters_switching_off_telly_boxes_…>, people are spending less time watching conventional broadcast TV and more time watching vids on YouTube and Netflix. In related news, famed (and feared) US ratings agency Nielsen <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190805/08212442723/after-missing-cord-c…> has fallen on hard times as its broadcast (FTA and cable) company customers suffer a similar trend. The irony was that they were the ones forcing it not to make any measurements of the “cord-cutting” phenomenon, because it made them look bad; and as a result its service has now declined into irrelevance.

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What all the stuff in email headers means—and how to sniff out spoofing
by Peter Reutemann 07 Aug '19

07 Aug '19

'I pretty frequently get requests for help from someone who has been impersonated—or whose child has been impersonated—via email. Even when you know how to "view headers" or "view source" in your email client, the spew of diagnostic wharrgarbl can be pretty overwhelming if you don't know what you're looking at. Today, we're going to step through a real-world set of (anonymized) email headers and describe the process of figuring out what's what. Before we get started with the actual headers, though, we're going to take a quick detour through an overview of what the overall path of an email message looks like in the first place. (More experienced sysadmin types who already know what stuff like "MTA" and "SPF" stand for can skip a bit ahead to the fun part!)' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/08/ars-forensic-files-h… 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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Skype, Slack, other Electron-based apps can be easily backdoored
by Peter Reutemann 07 Aug '19

07 Aug '19

'The Electron development platform is a key part of many applications, thanks to its cross-platform capabilities. Based on JavaScript and Node.js, Electron has been used to create client applications for Internet communications tools (including Skype, WhatsApp, and Slack) and even Microsoft's Visual Studio Code development tool. But Electron can also pose a significant security risk because of how easily Electron-based applications can be modified without triggering warnings. At the BSides LV security conference on Tuesday, Pavel Tsakalidis demonstrated a tool he created called BEEMKA, a Python-based tool that allows someone to unpack Electron ASAR archive files and inject new code into Electron's JavaScript libraries and built-in Chrome browser extensions. The vulnerability is not part of the applications themselves but of the underlying Electron framework—and that vulnerability allows malicious activities to be hidden within processes that appear to be benign. Tsakalidis said that he had contacted Electron about the vulnerability but that he had gotten no response—and the vulnerability remains. While making these changes required administrator access on Linux and MacOS, it only requires local access on Windows. Those modifications can create new event-based "features" that can access the file system, activate a Web cam, and exfiltrate information from systems using the functionality of trusted applications—including user credentials and sensitive data. In his demonstration, Tsakalidis showed a backdoored version of Microsoft Visual Studio Code that sent the contents of every code tab opened to a remote website.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/08/skype-slack-other-el… 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 releases the 6th and final beta for Android Q
by Peter Reutemann 07 Aug '19

07 Aug '19

'We are quickly approaching launch day for Android Q, Google's 29th release of Android. At some point in the near future we should see a statue-unveiling, official confirmation that this is "Android 10," and the highly anticipated "Q" snack name [Editor's suggestion]. First though, we have to see the sixth-and-final beta release out the door, which is happening today. Android Q Beta 6 is rolling out to Pixel phones now and participating third-party devices in the coming weeks. Final APIs for developers were locked down in Beta 4, so Beta 5 and 6 are mostly about squishing bugs and polishing up the final interface. Fully gestural navigation is a major feature of Android Q, and with the Beta 5 launch came the announcement that gesture navigation would not work with third-party home apps at launch, presumably due to a lack of time to work out the pile of bugs that have been reported. Even with third-party home screen compatibility off the table, it seems like Google will be working on gesture navigation down to the wire. Beta 5 came with a new gesture for the Google Assistant and new rules for developers. In Beta 6, Google says it has "made further refinements to Gesture Navigation in Beta 6 based on user feedback" and now has a sensitivity setting for the back gesture. The back gesture involves swiping in from the edge of the screen, which can interfere with apps that require horizontal scrolling. Newly updated apps are supposed to design around the new back gesture; the sensitivity setting should help find a balance for older apps with conflicting swipe areas.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/08/google-releases-the-6th-and-final-b… 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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Microsoft Contractors Are Listening To Some Skype Calls
by Peter Reutemann 07 Aug '19

07 Aug '19

'Contractors working for Microsoft are listening to personal conversations of Skype users conducted through the app's translation service, according to a cache of internal documents, screenshots, and audio recordings obtained by Motherboard. From a report: Although Skype's website says that the company may analyze audio of phone calls that a user wants to translate in order to improve the chat platform's services, it does not say some of this analysis will be done by humans. The Skype audio obtained by Motherboard includes conversations from people talking intimately to loved ones, some chatting about personal issues such as their weight loss, and others seemingly discussing relationship problems. Other files obtained by Motherboard show that Microsoft contractors are also listening to voice commands that users speak to Cortana, the company's voice assistant.' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/19/08/07/1432204 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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FFmpeg 4.2, Open-Source Multimedia Framework Released
by Peter Reutemann 07 Aug '19

07 Aug '19

'Dubbed "Ada," the FFMpeg 4.2 series introduces some exciting new features and improvements, among which we can mention support for decoding AV1 files via the libdav1d library, support for ARIB STD-B24 caption (profiles A and C) based on the libaribb24 library, and support for decoding HEVC 4:4:4 content in nvdec and cuviddec. FFmpeg 4.2 also comes with support for decoding HEVC 4:4:4 content in VDPAU (Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix), support for using Clang to compile CUDA kernels, the ability for the mov muxer to write tracks with unspecified language instead of English by default, a GIF parser, as well as the removal of the libndi-newtek component.' -- source: https://news.softpedia.com/news/ffmpeg-4-2-ada-open-source-multimedia-frame… 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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Microsoft Catches Russian State Hackers Using IoT Devices To Breach Networks
by Peter Reutemann 06 Aug '19

06 Aug '19

'Hackers working for the Russian government have been using printers, video decoders, and other so-called Internet-of-things devices as a beachhead to penetrate targeted computer networks, Microsoft officials warned on Monday. "These devices became points of ingress from which the actor established a presence on the network and continued looking for further access," officials with the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center wrote in a post. "Once the actor had successfully established access to the network, a simple network scan to look for other insecure devices allowed them to discover and move across the network in search of higher-privileged accounts that would grant access to higher-value data." Microsoft researchers discovered the attacks in April, when a voice-over-IP phone, an office printer, and a video decoder in multiple customer locations were communicating with servers belonging to "Strontium," a Russian government hacking group better known as Fancy Bear or APT28. In two cases, the passwords for the devices were the easily guessable default ones they shipped with. In the third instance, the device was running an old firmware version with a known vulnerability. While Microsoft officials concluded that Strontium was behind the attacks, they said they weren't able to determine what the group's ultimate objectives were. Microsoft says they have notified the makers of the targeted IoT devices so they can add new protections. "Monday's report also provided IP addresses and scripts organizations can use to detect if they have also been targeted or infected," adds Ars Technica. "Beyond that, Monday's report reminded people that, despite Strontium's above-average hacking abilities, an IoT device is often all it needs to gain access to a targeted network."' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/19/08/06/0115233 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 Performs Poorly In Low RAM / Memory Pressure Situations On The Desktop
by Peter Reutemann 06 Aug '19

06 Aug '19

'It's been a gripe for many running Linux on low RAM systems especially is that when the Linux desktop is under memory pressure the performance can be quite brutal with the system barely being responsive. The discussion over that behavior has been reignited this week. From a report: Developer Artem S Tashkinov took to the kernel mailing list over the weekend to express his frustration with the kernel's inability to handle low memory pressure in a graceful manner. If booting a system with just 4GB of RAM available, disabling SWAP to accelerate the impact/behavior, and launching a web browser and opening new web pages / tabs can in a matter of minutes bring the system down to its knees. Artem elaborated on the kernel mailing list, "Once you hit a situation when opening a new tab requires more RAM than is currently available, the system will stall hard. You will barely be able to move the mouse pointer. Your disk LED will be flashing incessantly (I'm not entirely sure why). You will not be able to run new applications or close currently running ones. This little crisis may continue for minutes or even longer. I think that's not how the system should behave in this situation. I believe something must be done about that to avoid this stall."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/19/08/06/1839206 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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Final Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Version Released
by Peter Reutemann 06 Aug '19

06 Aug '19

'The last RHEL release, RHEL 7.7, is now available for current Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscribers via the Red Hat Customer Portal. ZDNet reports on what's new: RHEL 7.7's most important updates are support for the latest generation of enterprise hardware and remediation for the recently disclosed ZombieLoad vulnerabilities. The latest RHEL 7 also includes network stack performance enhancements. With this release, you can offload virtual switching operations to network interface card (NIC) hardware. What that means for you is, if you're using virtual switching and network function virtualization (NFV), you'll see better network performance on cloud and container platforms such as Red Hat OpenStack Platform and Red Hat OpenShift. RHEL 7.7 users can also use Red Hat's new predictive problem shooter: Red Hat Insights. This uses a software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based predictive analytics approach to spot, assess, and mitigate potential problems to their systems before they can cause trouble. For developers, RHEL 7.7 comes with Python 3.6 interpreter, and the pip and setup tools utilities. Previously, Python 3 versions were available only as a part of Red Hat Software Collections. Moving on to the cloud, RHEL 7.7 Red Hat Image Builder is now supported. This feature, which is also in RHEL 8, enables you to easily create custom RHEL system images for cloud and virtualization platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), VMware vSphere, and OpenStack. To help cloud-native developers, RHEL 7.7 includes full support for Red Hat's distributed-container toolkit -- buildah, podman, and skopeo -- on RHEL workstations. After building on the desktop, programmers can use Red Hat Universal Base Image to build, run, and manage containerized applications across the hybrid cloud.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/19/08/06/208202 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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Half of All Google Chrome Extensions Have Fewer Than 16 Installs
by Peter Reutemann 05 Aug '19

05 Aug '19

'There are 188,620 extensions available on the Chrome Web Store, and while you might think this provides a wide variety of choices for Chrome users, in reality, most of these extensions are dead or dwindling, with very few having active installations. From a report: All in all, about 50% of all Chrome extensions have fewer than 16 installs, meaning that half of the Chrome extension ecosystem is actually more of a ghost town, according to a recent scan of the entire Chrome Web Store conducted by Extension Monitor. Further, 19,379 extensions (just over 10%) have zero installs, and 25,540 extensions (13% of the total) have just one user. The scan found that there are very few Chrome extensions that managed to establish a dedicated userbase. According to Extension Monitor, around 87% of all extensions have fewer than 1,000 installs.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/08/05/144246 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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Huawei Tests Smartphone With Own OS, Could Potentially Start Selling Them Later This Year
by Peter Reutemann 05 Aug '19

05 Aug '19

'Huawei is testing a smartphone equipped with Hongmeng, the company's self-developed operating system, which could potentially go on sale by the end of this year, Chinese state-media outlet Global Times reported. From a report: The release of a Hongmeng-powered smartphone would mark a major step for China's Huawei, the world's second-biggest maker of smartphones, as U.S. government actions threaten its access to Google's Android operating system. The device will be priced at around 2,000 yuan ($288), the Global Times said on Sunday, citing unnamed sources. That will place the device toward the low-end segment of the smartphone market. Huawei executives have previously described Hongmeng as an operating system designed for internet-of-things products. Last month the company said the first major devices powered by Hongmeng would be its upcoming line of Honor-brand smart TVs.' -- source: https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/19/08/05/1515218 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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GNOME and KDE Join Forces To Co-Host Linux App Summit
by Peter Reutemann 05 Aug '19

05 Aug '19

'GNOME and KDE are co-hosting this year's Linux App Summit (LAS) in Barcelona from November 12th to 15th. An anonymous reader shared the big announcement: LAS is the first collaborative event co-hosted by the two organizations since the Desktop Summit in 2009. Both organizations are eager to bring their communities together in building an application ecosystem that transcends individual distros and broadens the market for everyone involved. KDE and GNOME will no longer be taking a passive role in the free desktop sector. With the joint influence of the two desktop projects, LAS will shepherd the growth of the FOSS desktop by encouraging the creation of quality applications, seeking opportunities for compensation for FOSS developers, and fostering a vibrant market for the Linux operating system. * "I am excited to see GNOME and KDE working together on LAS, and I believe that the event will help lay down strong foundations for collaborative cross-project development that would benefit Linux users across all distributions and on any compatible device." -- Christel Dahlskjaer, Private Internet Access and freenode Project Lead. * "Together with GNOME, counting with the collaboration of many distributions and application developers, we'll have the opportunity to work side by side, share our perspectives and offer the platform that the next generation of solutions will be built on." -- Aleix Pol Gonzalez, KDE e.V Vice-President says about the inaugural effort about LAS. * "By partnering with KDE we show the desire to build the kind of application ecosystem that demonstrates that Open Source and Free Software are important; the technology and organization we build to achieve this is valuable and necessary." -- GNOME executive director, Neil McGovern * "The desktop wars is not really a thing any more. It makes more sense to work together and pool resources." -- Paul Brown, a KDE Communications Specialist (quoted by ZDNet) ZDNet called the collaboration "a major step forward," giving their story the headline "GNOME and KDE work together on the Linux desktop." But the Twitter feed for the KDE community quickly clarified that KDE "is working with GNOME to create a common, fair, sustainable and open app ecosystem, not a desktop." "The GNOME and KDE communities want to provide users with free and open applications that will respect their privacy and rights. That is what Linux App Summit is about."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/19/08/03/0240209 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 Just Stopped Displaying 'www' and 'https' In Chrome's Address Bar
by Peter Reutemann 04 Aug '19

04 Aug '19

'"Google has finally chopped the 'www' from Chrome's address bar after delaying the controversial move due to a backlash," reports TechRepublic: The move to remove 'www' was initially planned for last year, when Google announced it would cut "trivial subdomains" from the address bar in Chrome 69. Now Google has begun truncating the visible URL in Chrome for desktop and Android, rolling out the change in version 76 of the browser, released this week. By default sites in Chrome now no longer display the "https" scheme or the "www" subdomain, with the visible address starting after this point. To view the full URL, users now have to click the address bar twice on desktop and once on mobile. Google has argued the move is driven by a desire for greater simplicity and usability of Chrome... However the announcement provoked a fresh wave of criticism, from those who say the move will confuse users and even potentially make it easier for them to inadvertently connect to fake sites... There are also some who claim Google's motivation in changing how the URL is displayed may be to make it harder for users to tell whether they are on a page hosted on Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages subdomain... Google says it has also built a Chrome extension that doesn't obfuscate the URL to "help power users recognize suspicious sites and report them to Safe Browsing". Despite the backlash from some online, Chrome isn't the first browser to truncate the URL in this way, with Apple's Safari similarly hiding the full address. ' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/08/03/0317238 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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Amazon Quietly Gives Alexa's Voice Recordings a 'No Human Review' Option
by Peter Reutemann 04 Aug '19

04 Aug '19

'"Amazon Alexa users can now choose whether human reviewers listen to recordings of their exchanges with the AI assistant," reports VentureBeat, citing an Amazon spokesperson. To ensure people don't listen to voice recordings collected following each exchange with Alexa, go to Settings, tap the Alexa Privacy link, then choose Manage How Your Data Improves Alexa. Users can also delete their voice recordings via the Alexa app or Amazon website. The news follows Amazon's introduction of an "Alexa, delete what I said today" voice command in May... Earlier this week, Google and Apple both pledged to suspend some of their voice data review by people. ' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/19/08/04/0159227 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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