- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Big Surprise: HTTPS Interception Middleboxes Weaken Your Security
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 17 Mar '17

17 Mar '17

Some companies run boxes that intercept outgoing TLS/SSL connections, by using their own certificates that employees’ machines are configured to accept, in order to enforce policies on access to outside sites. Trouble is, many of these boxes introduce their own vulnerabilities into the system, by allowing new kinds of attacks from outside. <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/17/are_you_undermining_your_web_secur…>

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Microsoft Locks Ryzen, Kaby Lake Users Out of Updates On Windows 7, 8.1
by Peter Reutemann 17 Mar '17

17 Mar '17

'In a move that will shock a lot of people, someone at Microsoft decided to deny Windows 7/8.1 updates to the users of the following CPU architectures: Intel seventh (7th)-generation processors (Kaby Lake); AMD "Bristol Ridge" (Zen/Ryzen); Qualcomm "8996." It's impossible to find any justification for this decision to halt support for the x86 architectures listed above because you can perfectly run MS-DOS on them. Perhaps, Microsoft has decided that the process of foisting Windows 10 isn't running at full steam, so the company created this purely artificial limitation. I expect it to be cancelled soon after a wide backlash from corporate customers. KitGuru notes that users may encounter the following error message when they attempt to update their OS: "Your PC uses a processor that isn't supported on this version of Windows." The only resolution is to upgrade to Windows 10.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/17/03/16/2047215 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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Canonical Preps Security Lifeboat, Yells: Ubuntu 12.04 Hold-Outs, Get In
by Peter Reutemann 15 Mar '17

15 Mar '17

'Canonical is extending the deadline for security updates for paying users of its five-year-old Ubuntu 12.04 LTS -- a first. Ubuntu 12.04 LTS will become the first Long Term Support release of Canonical's Linux to get Extended Security Maintenance (ESM). There are six LTS editions. All others have been end-of-lifed -- and given no security reprieve. LTS editions of Ubuntu Linux are released every two years. Desktop support runs for three years and the server edition receives security patches and updates for a period of five years. Security updates for 12.04 were scheduled to run out on April 28, 2017 but that now won't happen for those on Canonical's Ubuntu Advantage programme. They'll now receive important security fixes for the kernel and "most essential" userspace packages on their servers running 12.04. In what's shaping up to be Canonical's Windows XP moment over at Microsoft, the Linux spinner rolled out the lifeline because customers are clinging to 12.04.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/03/15/1754232 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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From DoNotPay To DoNotDeport?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 14 Mar '17

14 Mar '17

Last year, a 19-year-old student named Josh Browder released a chatbot that helped people avoid paying illegal parking fines. Now he is adapting the same technology to areas like compensation for flight delays, the rights of those who are HIV-positive, and refugees trying to cope with foreign legal systems <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170308/10393436870/chatbot-that-helped-…>.

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Debian Update: Stretch Frozen, Bug-Squashing Parties Planned
by Peter Reutemann 12 Mar '17

12 Mar '17

'"Debian project leader Mehdi Dogguy has written a status update concerning the work going on for the first two months of 2017," reports Phoronix. An anonymous reader quotes their report: So far this year Debian 9.0 Stretch has entered its freeze, bug squashing parties are getting underway for Stretch, the DebConf Committee is now an official team within Debian, a broad Debian Project roadmap is in the early stages of talk, and more. Bug-Squashing Parties have been scheduled this week in Germany and Brazil, with at least two more happening in May in Paris and Zurich, and for current Debian contributors, "Debian is willing to reimburse up to $100 (or equivalent in your local currency) for your travel and accommodation expenses for participating in Bug Squashing Parties..." writes Dogguy, adding "If there are no Bug Squashing Parties next to your city, can you organize one?"' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/03/12/2210215 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 'USG' Firewalls Protect USB Drives From Malicious Attacks
by Peter Reutemann 12 Mar '17

12 Mar '17

'A developer has created the USG, "a small, portable hardware USB firewall...to prevent malicious USB sticks and devices laden with malware from infecting your computer." An anonymous reader quotes ZDNet: The problem is that most computers automatically trust every USB device that's plugged in, which means malicious code can run without warning... Cars, cash registers, and some ATMs also come with USB ports, all of which can be vulnerable to cyberattacks from a single USB stick. That's where the USG firewall comes in...a simple hardware serial link that only accepts a very few select number of safe commands, which prevents the device from executing system commands or intercepting network traffic. That means the data can flow from the USB device, but [it] effectively blocks other USB exploits. The firmware has been open sourced, and the technical specifications have also been released online "to allow anyone to build their own from readily available development boards."' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/03/11/1658238 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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Munich's IT Lead: 'No Compelling Reason' To Switch Back To Windows From Linux
by Peter Reutemann 12 Mar '17

12 Mar '17

'"The man who runs Munich's central IT says there is no practical reason for the city to write off millions of euros and years of work to ditch its Linux-based OS for Windows," reports TechRepublic. Long-time Slashdot reader Qbertino summarizes a German-language article: Karl-Heinz Schneider, lead of Munich's local system house company IT(a)M, goes on to claim, "We do not see pressing technical reasons to switch to MS and MS Office... The council [in their recent plans] didn't even follow the analysts' suggestion to stick with using LibreOffice." Furthermore, Schneider stated that "System failures that angered citizens in recent years never were related to the LiMux project, but due to new bureaucratic procedures..." and apparently decisions by unqualified personnel at the administrative level, as Munich's administration itself states.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/03/11/0142247 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 Foundation Chief: Businesses 'Will Fail' If They Don't Use Open Source Code
by Peter Reutemann 12 Mar '17

12 Mar '17

'First Vint Cert said there's a "thread of openness" that runs throughout the internet, adding that "the internet, itself, has open characteristics" and thrives on "permissionless innovation." And Eric Brewer, vice president of infrastructure at Google, touched on the same themes, according to Tech Republic. "Linux, Brewer said, won some of the early internet wars because it was open, but also because it was the most innovative of its time. He also said that companies should work with open source for the value of the ecosystem and community, not just the value of the code." Then Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin told the audience that business models were already changing to include open source, and ultimately made the argument that organizations that "don't harvest the shared innovation" of open source "will fail." ' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/03/12/0317215 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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Netflix access using Linux
by Roderick Aldridge 11 Mar '17

11 Mar '17

Does Spark prevent clients using Netflix under Linux? If so is there a work-around? Thanks for any info. Rod

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Sensible Password Rules
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 11 Mar '17

11 Mar '17

NIST came out last year with some guidelines on how to choose passwords <https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2016/08/18/nists-new-password-rules-what-y…>. The “dos” should not be too surprising, but it is worth mentioning the “don’ts”: * No restrictions on what characters are allowed * No password hints * No knowledge-based authentication * No expiration without some good reason Also, they are no longer recommending the use of SMS for two-factor authentication. I wonder what you should use instead?

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Look before you paste from a website to terminal
by Peter Reutemann 11 Mar '17

11 Mar '17

'Most of the time when we see a code snippet online to do something, we often blindly copy paste it to the terminal. Even the tech savy ones just see it on the website before copy pasting. Here is why you shouldn't do this.' -- source: https://lifepluslinux.blogspot.co.nz/2017/01/look-before-you-paste-from-web… Hint: hidden commands thanks to HTML/CSS. 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 Continues Porting Visual C++ To Linux
by Peter Reutemann 11 Mar '17

11 Mar '17

'Long-time Slashdot reader Billly Gates shared some news from Microsoft's Visual C++ blog: Visual Studio 2017 now lets developers write C++ code for Linux desktops, servers, and other devices without an extension, targeting specific architectures, including ARM: Visual Studio will automatically copy and remotely build your sources and can launch your application with the debugger... Today Visual Studio only supports building remotely on the Linux target machine. It is not limited to specific Linux distros, but we do have dependencies on the presence of some tools. Specifically, we need openssh-server, g++, gdb and gdbserver. ' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/03/11/0431252 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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US ISP Verizon Wireless To Stop Giving Out Static IPv4 Addresses
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 10 Mar '17

10 Mar '17

New business customers with Verizon Wireless will no longer get static IPv4 addresses. Instead, they will get “persistent prefix” IPv6 addresses <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/10/verizon_running_out_of_ipv4_addres…>. I assume “persistent prefix” means they get a fixed value for the top 48 bits, and they can do what they like with the bottom 80 bits. This /48 subnet allocation seems to be the common thing for IPv6.

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Engineering Around Social Media Border Searches
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 08 Mar '17

08 Mar '17

In the wake of the plan floated by the US Government to demand passwords to social media accounts from people wanting to enter the country, here <http://freedom-to-tinker.com/2017/02/10/engineering-around-social-media-bor…> is a discussion of some likely countermeasures that should still give the cover of plausible deniability.

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Quote Of The Week
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 08 Mar '17

08 Mar '17

“One of the reasons society hasn't destroyed itself is that people with intelligence and skills tend to not be criminals for a living. If it ever became a viable career path, we're doomed.” -- Bruce Schneier <https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/03/building_smarte.html>

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Litebook launches a $249 linux laptop
by Ron Dean 07 Mar '17

07 Mar '17

Presumably this is in $US -- Ron Dean Unit 61 Village Gardens 16 Rototuna Road Hamilton 3210 New Zealand Home 64 7 8493904 Mob 02102259172

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The City of Munich Might Stick With Linux
by Peter Reutemann 06 Mar '17

06 Mar '17

'Munich's "LiMux" project brought FOSS software to their city's IT administration -- until a vote last month on whether to abandon Linux and return to Windows. "Since this decision was reached, the majority of media have reported that a final call was made to halt LiMux and switch back to Microsoft software," reports the Free Software Foundation Europe. "This is, however, not an accurate representation of the outcome of the city council meeting." An anonymous reader quotes their report: The opposing parties were overruled, but the decision was amended such that the strategy document must specify which LiMux-applications will no longer be needed, the extent in which prior investments must be written off, and a rough calculation of the overall costs of the desired unification... [Only then will the city council make their final decision...] We succeeded thus far in forcing the mayor Dieter Reiter to postpone the final decision, and this was possible through the unwavering pressure created by joint efforts between The Document Foundation, KDE, OSBA, and the FSFE together with all the individuals who wrote to city council members and took the issue to the media. Although the mandate is highly suggestive in that it suggests that the existing vendor-neutral approach is to be replaced with a proprietary solution, it leaves the door open... The new mandate buys us some time. And we will keep going. Some politicians said they'd never received this much input from the public before, and the Free Software Foundation Europe says the city's issues were caused "from organizational problems, including lack of clear structures and responsibilities," which should not be attributed to the Linux operating system. "LiMux as such is still one of the best examples of how to create a vendor-neutral administration based on Free Software."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/03/04/0532214 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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Litebook Launches A $249 Linux Laptop
by Peter Reutemann 06 Mar '17

06 Mar '17

'It's "like a Chromebook for Linux users on a budget," reports ZDNet. The new 2.9-pound Litebook uses Intel's Celeron N3150 processor and ships with a 14.1-inch display and a 512-gigabyte hard drive with full HD resolution (1,920 x 1,080). For $20 more they'll throw in a 32-gigabyte SSD to speed up your boot time. "Unlike Windows laptops, Litebooks are highly optimized, come without performance hogging bloatware, [are] designed to ensure your privacy, and are entirely free of malware and viruses," writes the company's web site. They also add that their new devices "are affordable, customizable, and are backwards compatible with Windows software."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/03/06/0050203 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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Tim Berners-Lee Endorses DRM In HTML5, Offers Depressingly Weak Defense Of His Decision
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 02 Mar '17

02 Mar '17

Has the godfather of the Web just sold it down the river? <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170301/03062936815/tim-berners-lee-endo…>

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Researchers find “severe” flaw in WordPress plugin with 1 million installs
by Peter Reutemann 01 Mar '17

01 Mar '17

'More than 1 million websites running the WordPress content management system may be vulnerable to hacks that allow visitors to snatch password data and secret keys out of databases, at least under certain conditions. The vulnerability stems from a "severe" SQL injection bug in NextGEN Gallery, a WordPress plugin with more than 1 million installations. Until the flaw was recently fixed, NextGEN Gallery allowed input from untrusted visitors to be included in WordPress-prepared SQL queries. Under certain conditions, attackers can exploit the weakness to pipe powerful commands to a Web server's backend database.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/02/severe-vulnerability-in-wordpress-… 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 $10 Raspberry Pi Zero comes with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
by Peter Reutemann 01 Mar '17

01 Mar '17

'The newest member of the Raspberry Pi product line costs just $10 plus tax and includes Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capability. The "Raspberry Pi Zero W" is an updated version of the Raspberry Pi Zero. While it lacks some niceties, like Ethernet and full-sized USB-A ports, it's smaller than the flagship Pi and a fraction of the cost. The original Raspberry Pi Zero was released in November 2015 at a price of just $5/£4. The new Pi Zero W is almost identical to the original, but doubles the price to $10 and adds a wireless chip that supports 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi (2.4GHz-only) and Bluetooth 4.0.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/02/new-10-raspberry-pi-… 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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CSS font-size parameter
by Ian Stewart 27 Feb '17

27 Feb '17

Hi All, There was discussion at last nights meeting regarding the CSS "font-size" property and which units to use. E.g. px (pixels), % (percentage), pt (point), or em (a unit in the field of typography originally based on the width of an "M"), . Note that there are more than just these four units, see here<https://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/007/units.en.html>. If you buy-off on the statements from w3schools.com, then this<http://%20https://www.w3schools.com/TAgs/ref_pxtoemconversion.asp> web-page provides a pixel to em converter, and to quote from their CSS page<https://www.w3schools.com/css/css_font.asp>... "Note: If you do not specify a font size, the default size for normal text, like paragraphs, is 16px (16px=1em)." "The em size unit is recommended by the W3C. 1em is equal to the current font size. The default text size in browsers is 16px. So, the default size of 1em is 16px. The size can be calculated from pixels to em using this formula: pixels/16=em." Although admitting there is much debate over which is the better approach, Kyle Schaeffer, on his website<http://kyleschaeffer.com/development/css-font-size-em-vs-px-vs-pt-vs/>, adds in an addendum from 2011... "Generally, when I create a new design, I will use percent on the body element (body { font-size: 62.5%; }), and then use the em unit to size it from there." Or, for some quotes from wikipedia...<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Em_(typography)> "One em was traditionally defined as the width of the capital M in the current typeface and point size..." "In Cascading Style Sheets, the em unit is the height of the font in nominal points or inches." ...And finally there is one "rem" to save us all... "To make style rules that depend only on the default font size, another unit was developed: the rem. The rem, or root em, is the font size of the root element of the document. Unlike the em, which may be different for each element, the rem is constant throughout the document." More on rem's here<https://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/007/units.en.html#future> cheers, Ian.

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Running Emacs As A Daemon With systemd
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 26 Feb '17

26 Feb '17

Some instructions here <http://blog.refu.co/?p=1296> for creating a systemd “.service” file for running Emacs. Initially he did it as a privileged systemwide service, then he figured out how to make it per-user without needing special privileges. (Found in a user comment to this article <http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=systemd-233>.)

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Image-To-Image Translation In TensorFlow
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 24 Feb '17

24 Feb '17

This page <http://affinelayer.com/pixsrv/index.html> lets you create schematic renditions of various kinds of objects, and then synthesize corresponding photorealistic representations of those objects, based on pieces of images taken from the training databases. You can draw your own outlines, or just click the “Random” buttons to see what it does. Results range from entertaining to disturbing.

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“Smart Contracts” May Not Be So Smart
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 23 Feb '17

23 Feb '17

To review, “smart contracts” are a feature of some blockchain-based systems, which allow an interaction between multiple parties to be encoded as a set of rules which will be executed automatically by the system, so that neither the parties nor anyone else can prevent those rules from being enforced. ... To give just one example, a legal contract need not try to anticipate absolutely every relevant event that might occur. If some weird thing happens that is not envisioned in a regular legal contract, the parties can work out a modification to the contract that seems reasonable to them, and failing that, a judge might decide the outcome, subject to established legal principles. Similarly, a single error or “bug” in writing a regular contract, causing its literal meaning to differ from what the parties intended, is unlikely to lead to extreme results because the legal system will often resolve such a problem by trying to be reasonable. Contrast this with “smart contracts” where a bug in a “contract’s” code can lead to a perverse result that may allow one party to exploit the bug, extracting much of the value out of the arrangement with no recourse for the other parties. That’s what happened with the DAO in Ethereum, leading to a controversial attempt to unwind a legal-according-to-the-rules set of transactions, and dividing the Ethereum community. <http://freedom-to-tinker.com/2017/02/20/smart-contracts-neither-smart-not-c…>

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