- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Researchers Detail New CPU Side-Channel Attack Named SpectreRSB
by Peter Reutemann 24 Jul '18

24 Jul '18

'"Scientists from the University of California, Riverside (UCR) have published details last week about a new Spectre-class attack that they call SpectreRSB," reports Bleeping Computer. "Just like all 'Spectre-class' attacks, SpectreRSB takes advantage of the process of speculative execution -- a feature found in all modern CPUs that has the role of improving performance by computing operations in advance and later discarding unneeded data. The difference from previous Spectre-like attacks is that SpectreRSB recovers data from the speculative execution process by attacking a different CPU component involved in this 'speculation' routine, namely the Return Stack Buffer (RSB)." In a research paper, academics say they've used SpectreRSB attacks to recover data belonging to other processes, and have even tricked the RSB into spilling SGX secrets. The attack works on Intel, AMD, and ARM processors, known to use RSB. The attack can also bypass all the mitigations put in place for the original Spectre/Meltdown flaws.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/18/07/23/2143259 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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None of Google's 85, 000 Employees Have Been Phished in More Than a Year After Company Required Them to Use Physical Security Keys For 2FA
by Peter Reutemann 24 Jul '18

24 Jul '18

'Google has not had any of its 85,000+ employees successfully phished on their work-related accounts since early 2017, when it began requiring all employees to use physical Security Keys in place of passwords and one-time codes, the company told KrebsOnSecurity. From the report: Security Keys are inexpensive USB-based devices that offer an alternative approach to two-factor authentication (2FA), which requires the user to log in to a Web site using something they know (the password) and something they have (e.g., a mobile device). A Google spokesperson said Security Keys now form the basis of all account access at Google. "We have had no reported or confirmed account takeovers since implementing security keys at Google," the spokesperson said. "Users might be asked to authenticate using their security key for many different apps/reasons. It all depends on the sensitivity of the app and the risk of the user at that point in time." The basic idea behind two-factor authentication is that even if thieves manage to phish or steal your password, they still cannot log in to your account unless they also hack or possess that second factor.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/07/23/1944236 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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Academics Publish New Software-Level Protections Against Spectre and Rowhammer Attacks
by Peter Reutemann 23 Jul '18

23 Jul '18

'Academics from multiple universities have announced fixes for two severe security flaws known as Spectre and Rowhammer. Both these fixes are at the software level, meaning they don't require CPU or RAM vendors to alter products, and could, in theory, be applied as basic software patches. The first of these new mitigation mechanisms was announced on Thursday, last week. A research team from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire says it created a fix for Spectre Variant 1 (CVE-2017-5753), a vulnerability discovered at the start of the year affecting modern CPUs. Their fix uses ELFbac, an in-house-developed Linux kernel patch that brings access control policies to runtime virtual memory accesses of Linux processes, at the level of ELF binary executables. [...] The second fix for a major flaw announced last week came on Saturday from the Systems and Network Security Group at VU Amsterdam. Researchers announced a new technique called ZebRAM that they said is a comprehensive software protection against Rowhammer attacks.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/18/07/23/1613217 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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NetBSD 8.0 Released
by Peter Reutemann 22 Jul '18

22 Jul '18

'The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 8.0, the sixteenth major release of the NetBSD operating system. This release brings stability improvements, hundreds of bug fixes, and many new features. Some highlights of the NetBSD 8.0 release are: — USB stack rework, USB3 support added. — In-kernel audio mixer (audio_system(9)). — Reproducible builds — PaX MPROTECT (W^X) memory protection enforced by default — PaX ASLR enabled by default — Position independent executables by default [...] NetBSD is free. All of the code is under non-restrictive licenses, and may be used without paying royalties to anyone.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/18/07/21/2341255 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 Fifth Undocumented Cisco Backdoor Has Been Discovered
by Peter Reutemann 21 Jul '18

21 Jul '18

'Cisco released 25 security updates Wednesday, including a critical patch removing an undocumented password for "root" accounts of Cisco Policy Suite (sold to ISPs and large corporate clients). "The vulnerability received a rare severity score of 9.8 out of a maximum of 10 on the CVSSv3 scale," reports Bleeping Computer. An anonymous reader quotes Tom's Hardware: Over the past few months, not one, not two, but five different backdoors joined the list of security flaws in Cisco routers.... In March, a hardcoded account with the username "cisco" was revealed. The backdoor would have allowed attackers to access over 8.5 million Cisco routers and switches remotely. That same month, another hardcoded password was found for Cisco's Prime Collaboration Provisioning software, which is used for remote installation of Cisco's video and voice products. Later this May, Cisco found another undocumented backdoor account in Cisco's Digital Network Architecture Center, used by enterprises for the provisioning of devices across a network. In June, yet another backdoor account was found in Cisco's Wide Area Application Services, a software tool for Wide Area Network traffic optimization... Whether or not the backdoor accounts were created in error, Cisco will need to put an end to them before this lack of care for security starts to affect its business.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/07/21/2133202 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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meeting next Monday
by Peter Reutemann 20 Jul '18

20 Jul '18

Hi everyone We have a meeting next Monday: "Tom Butz will bring his RaspberryPi to this meetup. After introducing RISCOS and how the Pi was born, he will give a short demo of RISCOS. He will also use Debian/Raspbian on the Pi and, among other things, demo web-browsing, email-checking, database handling with COBOL, playing games and videos. Instead of using an external display via HDMI, he will also show the use of a pop-on LCD screen." -- details: https://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/246737169/ 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 Is Making the Windows Command Line a Lot Better
by Peter Reutemann 19 Jul '18

19 Jul '18

'Over the last few years, Microsoft has been working to improve the Windows console. Console windows now maximize properly, for example. In the olden days, hitting maximize would make the window taller but not wider. Today, the action will fill the whole screen, just like any other window. Especially motivated by the Windows subsystem for Linux, the console in Windows 10 supports 16 million colors and VT escape sequences, enabling much richer console output than has traditionally been possible on Windows. Microsoft is working to build a better console for Windows, one that we hope will open the door to the same flexibility and capabilities that Unix users have enjoyed for more than 40 years. The APIs seem to be in the latest Windows 10 Insider builds, though documentation is a little scarce for now. The command-line team is publishing a series of blog posts describing the history of the Windows command-line, and how the operating system's console works. The big reveal of the new API is coming soon, and with this, Windows should finally be able to have reliable, effective tabbed consoles, with emoji support, rich Unicode, and all the other things that the Windows console doesn't do... yet.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/07/17/2028206 It's probably gonna get announced as "revolutionary"... 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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PC Sales Grow For A Change
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 13 Jul '18

13 Jul '18

The first year-on-year growth in quarterly PC shipments has happened in 6 years <https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/pc-market-appears-to-have-grown-for…>. Interesting to compare the basis behind the two different figures quoted: excluding Chromebooks, but including tablets (whether running Windows or not), gives a figure of 1.4% increase (Gartner), while the converse gives 2.7% (IDC). In other words, Chromebooks are accounting for something like half that growth, possibly even more.

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Python Creator Steps Down
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 13 Jul '18

13 Jul '18

Guido van Rossum, creator of Python and (up to now) “Benevolent Dictator For Life” over the Python project, has decided to relinquish that role <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/07/13/python_creator_guido_van_rossum_qu…>. The reason may have been building for a while, but the last straw seems to have been the controversy over this <https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0572/> proposed new feature for Python, “assignment expressions”, using a new “:=” operator. Interestingly enough, back in the day, “:=” was the operator used for assignments in what they called “ALGOL-like” languages (which included Pascal). The use of “=” for assignment was a peculiarity of FORTRAN, and also adopted by C, from which it has spread (unfortunately, in my view) to be adopted in most newer, higher-level languages, like Perl and Python. In the “ALGOL-like” languages, “=” kept close to its mathematical meaning, namely a test for equality. But if “:=” becomes valid, how long before these “assignment expressions” become acceptable stand-alone, as assignment statements? Pity that “=” can never become the equality-test operator ... unless Python 4 provides some way to guard against writing expressions as statements that simply discard their value ...

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AV1 is Well On Its Way To Becoming a Viable Alternative To Patented Video Codecs, Mozilla Says
by Peter Reutemann 12 Jul '18

12 Jul '18

'Here's a surprising fact: It costs money to watch video online, even on free sites like YouTube. That's because about 4 in 5 videos on the web today rely on a patented technology called the H.264 video codec. >From a report: It took years for companies to put this complex, global set of legal and business agreements in place, so H.264 web video works everywhere. Now, as the industry shifts to using more efficient video codecs, those businesses are picking and choosing which next-generation technologies they will support. The fragmentation in the market is raising concerns about whether our favorite web past-time, watching videos, will continue to be accessible and affordable to all. Over the last decade, several companies started building viable alternatives to patented video codecs. Mozilla worked on the Daala Project, Google released VP9, and Cisco created Thor for low-complexity videoconferencing. All these efforts had the same goal: to create a next-generation video compression technology that would make sharing high-quality video over the internet faster, more reliable, and less expensive. In 2015, Mozilla, Google, Cisco, and others joined with Amazon and Netflix and hardware vendors AMD, ARM, Intel, and NVIDIA to form AOMedia. As AOMedia grew, efforts to create an open video format coalesced around a new codec: AV1. AV1 is based largely on Google's VP9 code and incorporates tools and technologies from Daala, Thor, and VP10. Mozilla loves AV1 for two reasons: AV1 is royalty-free, so anyone can use it free of charge. Software companies can use it to build video streaming into their applications. Web developers can build their own video players for their sites. The second reason we love AV1 is that it delivers better compression technology than even high-efficiency codecs -- about 30% better, according to a Moscow State University study.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/18/07/11/2246221 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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Typeform Data Breach Hits A Little Close To Home
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 12 Jul '18

12 Jul '18

A few days ago, Typeform, a company which specializes in online survey forms, reported <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/07/02/typeform_breach/> that someone had gained unauthorized access to one of its backups. This turned out to impact a remarkable variety of institutions using its services <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/07/03/hotel_chain_and_uk_political_party…> <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/07/04/typeform_breach_continued/>, though the listed ones all seem to be in the UK and Australia. Now, I read today in the Hamilton Press (issue of 11th July, i.e. today), on page 6, that the affected customers include the Hamilton City Council, Waikato District Council, and Waipā District Council. “About 2800 Waikato people” may have used the Typeform service to express views to these local bodies. Information that could have been leaked was “names, email addresses, and in some cases, phone numbers”. Hamilton City used the service to run 10 surveys between November 2014 and February 2018, and a total of 1941 people “may have been affected”; it has contacted them about the breach, and it doesn’t use Typeform any more. Waipā District has similarly contacted 125 participants in its surveys. (No mention of what action Waikato District is taking...)

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Year-old router bug exploited to steal sensitive DOD drone, tank documents
by Peter Reutemann 11 Jul '18

11 Jul '18

'In May, a hacker perusing vulnerable systems with the Shodan search engine found a Netgear router with a known vulnerability—and came away with the contents of a US Air Force captain's computer. The purloined files from the captain—the officer in charge (OIC) of the 432d Aircraft Maintenance Squadron's MQ-9 Reaper Aircraft Maintenance Unit (AMU)at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada—included export-controlled information regarding Reaper drone maintenance. The hacker took the documents to a Dark Web marketplace, where he planned on selling them for a few hundred dollars. And it's there that analysts from Recorded Future, an information security threat intelligence company, discovered them. The vulnerability, which makes it possible for an attacker to remotely execute commands and gain access to the root directory of the router via FTP, was disclosed by Netgear over a year ago. Discoverable by searching Shodan for devices with Internet Protocol port 21 open and response text including "214-ADMIN_LOGIN," the vulnerability allowed attackers to compromise routers and then gain access to the local network. They could then either grab files passing over the network or gain access to devices on it.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/07/year-old-router-bug-… 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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Malware Found in Arch Linux AUR Package Repository
by Peter Reutemann 11 Jul '18

11 Jul '18

'Malware has been discovered in at least three Arch Linux packages available on AUR (Arch User Repository), the official Arch Linux repository of user-submitted packages. The malicious code has been removed thanks to the quick intervention of the AUR team. The incident happened because AUR allows anyone to take over "orphaned" repositories that have been abandoned by their original authors. On Saturday, a user going by the pseudonym of "xeactor" took over one such orphaned package named "acroread" that allows Arch Linux users to view PDF files. According to a Git commit to the packag's source code, xeactor added malicious code that would download a file named "~x" from ptpb [dot] pw, a lightweight site mimicking Pastebin that allows users to share small pieces of texts.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/18/07/10/2136251 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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Stolen certificates from D-Link used to sign password-stealing malware
by Peter Reutemann 10 Jul '18

10 Jul '18

'Criminals recently stole code-signing certificates from router and camera maker D-Link and another Taiwanese company and used them to pass off malware that steals passwords and backdoors PCs, a researcher said Monday. The certificates were used to cryptographically verify that legitimate software was issued by D-Link and Changing Information Technology. Microsoft Windows, Apple’s macOS, and most other operating systems rely on the cryptographic signatures produced by such certificates to help users ensure that executable files attached to emails or downloaded on websites were developed by trusted companies rather than malicious actors masquerading as those trusted companies. Somehow, members of an advanced persistent-threat hacking group known as BlackTech obtained the certificates belonging to D-Link and Changing Information Technology, the researcher with antivirus provider Eset said in a blog post. The attackers then used the certificates to sign two pieces of malware, one a remotely controlled backdoor and the other a related password stealer. Both pieces of malware are referred to as Plead and are used in espionage campaigns against targets located in East Asia. The Japan Computer Emergency Response team recently documented the Plead malware here. AV provider Trend Micro recently wrote about BlackTech here. “The ability to compromise several Taiwan-based technology companies and reuse their code-signing certificates in future attacks shows that this group is highly skilled and focused on that region,” Eset researcher Anton Cherepanov wrote in Monday’s post.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/07/stolen-certificates-… 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 attack uses speculative execution to overflow buffers
by Peter Reutemann 10 Jul '18

10 Jul '18

'When the Spectre and Meltdown attacks were disclosed earlier this year, the expectation was that these attacks would be the first of many, as researchers took a closer look at the way that the speculative execution in modern processors could be used to leak sensitive information and undermine the security of software running on those processors. In May, we saw the speculative store bypass, and today we have a new variant on this theme: speculative buffer overflows, discovered by Vladimir Kiriansky at MIT and independent researcher Carl Waldspurger.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/new-spectre-like-attack-uses-specul… 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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With So Many Eyeballs, Is Open Source Security Better?
by Peter Reutemann 10 Jul '18

10 Jul '18

'Back in 1999, Eric Raymond coined the term "Linus' Law," which stipulates that given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow. Linus' Law, named in honor of Linux creator Linus Torvalds, has for nearly two decades been used by some as a doctrine to explain why open source software should have better security. In recent years, open source projects and code have experienced multiple security issues, but does that mean Linus' Law isn't valid? According to Dirk Hohndel, VP and Chief Open Source Officer at VMware, Linus' Law still works, but there are larger software development issues that impact both open source as well as closed source code that are of equal or greater importance. "I think that in every development model, security is always a challenge," Hohndel said. Hohndel said developers are typically motivated by innovation and figuring out how to make something work, and security isn't always the priority that it should be. "I think security is not something we should think of as an open source versus closed source concept, but as an industry," Hohndel said.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/18/07/10/1642226 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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Hacker Breaches Chrome Extension of Popular VPN Service Hola, Directs Users To Compromised Cryptocurrency Website
by Peter Reutemann 10 Jul '18

10 Jul '18

'A hacker has breached a Hola VPN developer account and has replaced the official Chrome extension with one that redirected users of the MyEtherWallet.com website to a phishing page controlled by the attacker. The compromise took place yesterday and only lasted for five hours the MyEtherWallet (MEW) team said in a tweet. The Hola VPN team admitted to the hack. "The attack was programmed to inject a JavaScript tag in to the MEW site to 'phish' information about MEW accounts that are logging in without being in 'incognito mode', by re-directing the MEW users to the hacker's website," the Hola VPN team said.' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/18/07/10/1720243 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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ARM’s Anti-RISC-V FUD
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 10 Jul '18

10 Jul '18

ARM put up a site attacking the open-source RISC-V processor architecture a few days ago, then had to take it down as a result of objections from its own staff <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/07/10/arm_riscv_website/>. Seems ARM is feeling the heat from the increasing traction that RISC-V is getting. Even though the original site is gone, it is still accessible via the Wayback Machine. And also one of the commenters points out that this graphic <https://www.arm.com/-/media/global/company/arm-risc-v-infographic.png> is still on ARM’s own site.

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Firefox and Chrome Pull Popular Browser Extension Stylish From Their Stores After Report Claimed It Logs and Shares Browsing History, Credentials
by Peter Reutemann 05 Jul '18

05 Jul '18

'Stylish, a popular extension available for Chrome and Firefox which allows for easy customization of any website, now phones home and shares its users' browser history with its corporate parent, according to blogger Robert Heaton. This prompted Firefox to ban the extension from its addons site and prompt all users to disable it. The discussion can be seen in the relevant bug report. In Heaton's words: Stylish is no longer a well-meaning product with your best interests at heart. If you use and like Stylish, please uninstall it and switch to an alternative like Stylus, an offshoot from the good old version of Stylish that works in much the same way, minus the spyware. Google too has pulled the extension from its extension store. This is not the first time Stylish is at the centre of a privacy debacle' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/18/07/04/218234 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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Download Bomb Trick Returns in Chrome -- Also Affects Firefox, Opera, Vivaldi and Brave
by Peter Reutemann 03 Jul '18

03 Jul '18

'The release of Google Chrome 67 has reopened a "download bomb" bug that was exploited by tech support scammers last winter, and which had been fixed with the release of Chrome 65 in March 2018. Furthermore, the issue also appears to affect other browsers as well, such as Firefox, Vilvadi, Opera, and Brave, according to tests carried out by Bleeping Computer. The "download bomb" trick is a technique that involves initiating hundreds or thousands of downloads to freeze a browser on a specific page. Across the years, there have been multiple variations of download bombs, and they have often been used by tech support scammers to trap users on shady sites that tried to lure victims into calling a tech support number to have their browser unlocked. Over the winter, security researchers from Malwarebytes noticed a tech support scam campaign that employed a new "download bomb" technique to trap users on its shady sites.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/18/07/03/1416208 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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Study Finds That a Large Number of Popular Android Apps Secretly Cast the Screen To Third Parties, But They Don't Listen To Conversations
by Peter Reutemann 03 Jul '18

03 Jul '18

'It's the smartphone conspiracy theory that just won't go away: Many, many people are convinced that their phones are listening to their conversations to target them with ads. [...] Some computer science academics at Northeastern University had heard enough people talking about this technological myth that they decided to do a rigorous study to tackle it. For the last year, Elleen Pan, Jingjing Ren, Martina Lindorfer, Christo Wilson, and David Choffnes ran an experiment involving more than 17,000 of the most popular apps on Android to find out whether any of them were secretly using the phone's mic to capture audio. The apps included those belonging to Facebook, as well as over 8,000 apps that send information to Facebook. Sorry, conspiracy theorists: They found no evidence of an app unexpectedly activating the microphone or sending audio out when not prompted to do so. Like good scientists, they refuse to say that their study definitively proves that your phone isn't secretly listening to you, but they didn't find a single instance of it happening. Instead, they discovered a different disturbing practice: apps recording a phone's screen and sending that information out to third parties.' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/18/07/03/1822250 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 Allows Outside App Developers To Read People's Gmails, Says Report
by Peter Reutemann 03 Jul '18

03 Jul '18

'According to The Wall Street Journal, hundreds of app developers have access to millions of inboxes belonging to Gmail users (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source). The developers reportedly receive access to messages from Gmail users who signed up for things like price-comparison services or automated travel-itinerary planners. Some of these companies train software to scan the email, while others enable their workers to pore over private messages. INSIDER reports: It's not news that Google and many top email providers enable outside developers to access users' inboxes. In most cases, the people who signed up for the price-comparison deals or other programs agreed to provide access to their inboxes as part of the opt-in process. In Google's case, outside developers must pass a vetting process, and as part of that, Google ensures they have an acceptable privacy agreement, The Journal reported, citing a Google representative. What is unclear is how closely these outside developers adhere to their agreements and whether Google does anything to ensure they do, as well as whether Gmail users are fully aware that individual employees may be reading their emails, as opposed to an automated system, the report says. It's interesting to note that, judging from The Journal's story, very little indicates that Google is doing anything different from Microsoft or other top email providers. According to the newspaper, nothing in Microsoft or Yahoo's policy agreements explicitly allows people to read others' emails. ' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/18/07/02/2057256 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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Micro Focus Sells SUSE
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 02 Jul '18

02 Jul '18

<https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/07/02/linux_makes_suse_sold_for_a_cool_2…>: Micro Focus CEO Chris Hsu subsequently decided that spending time with his family seemed more fun than piloting a juggernaut made of more offcuts than a cut-and-shut Ford Fiesta from Honest Bob's Motors. ... However, SUSE was a bright spot in the gloom, showing revenues of $164.4m and a solid, if unexciting, growth rate of 13.1 per cent in the six months to October 2017. ... For its part, SUSE is pretty happy with the deal. It will retain its CEO, Nils Brauckman, who seemed pleased to be free of Micro Focus ...

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Metric-Compatible Fonts
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 02 Jul '18

02 Jul '18

I was idly doing some web searches the other day (as you do), and stumbled across this page <https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Metric-compatible_fonts> at the ever-dependable Arch Wiki. My specific question was, what had happened to the “URW Palladio” font? Up until recently, this was the one that Fontconfig would offer up when I used the old “Palatino” name from Adobe PostScript days. (I used to like the way the curve of the “P” didn’t quite join up with the stem, but left a little gap with a pointy bit on the end. Ahem...) Turns out it’s still there, just under another name; it’s now called “P052” for some unfathomable reason. Anyway, that page gives a bunch of handy alternatives if you are looking for Free alternatives to proprietary fonts that preserve the metrics (widths, spacing etc), so substituting them won’t stuff up the formatting of a document.

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'Why You Should Not Use Google Cloud'
by Peter Reutemann 02 Jul '18

02 Jul '18

'A user on Medium named "Punch a Server" says you should not use Google Cloud due to the "'no-warnings-given, abrupt way' they pull the plug on your entire system if they (or the machines) believe something is wrong." The user has a project running in production on Google Cloud (GCP) that is used to monitor hundreds of wind turbines and scores of solar plants scattered across 8 countries. When their project goes down, money is lost. An anonymous Slashdot reader shares the report: Early today morning (June 28, 2018) I receive an alert from Uptime Robot telling me my entire site is down. I receive a barrage of emails from Google saying there is some "potential suspicious activity" and all my systems have been turned off. EVERYTHING IS OFF. THE MACHINE HAS PULLED THE PLUG WITH NO WARNING. The site is down, app engine, databases are unreachable, multiple Firebases say I've been downgraded and therefore exceeded limits. Customer service chat is off. There's no phone to call. I have an email asking me to fill in a form and upload a picture of the credit card and a government issued photo id of the card holder. Great, let's wake up the CFO who happens to be the card holder. What if the card holder is on leave and is unreachable for three days? We would have lost everything -- years of work -- millions of dollars in lost revenue. I fill in the form with the details and thankfully within 20 minutes all the services started coming alive. The first time this happened, we were down for a few hours. In all we lost everything for about an hour. An automated email arrives apologizing for "inconvenience" caused. Unfortunately The Machine has no understanding of the "quantum of inconvenience" caused.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/18/07/01/0354200 The cloud is convenient, as you don't have to look after your own hardware and it allows you to add more processing power as needed. But this is a good example of why your own hardware might not be a bad idea... 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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