- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Coffee Run--Blender Open Movie
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 08 Jun '20

08 Jun '20

The latest annual short-feature project from the Blender Animation Studio came out week before last <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVGeM40dABA>. At just about 3 minutes long, this one is done in the style of a 2D-rendered video game. But beware: there are some less-than-lighthearted elements behind the surface.

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Brave Browser Mistake Adds Its Referrer Code For Cryptocurrency Sites
by Peter Reutemann 08 Jun '20

08 Jun '20

'The following report appeared on Yahoo! Finance: Privacy-focused browser Brave was found to autocomplete several websites and keywords in its address bar with an affiliate code. Shortly after a user published his findings, Brave CEO and co-founder Brendan Eich addressed the incident and called it "a mistake we're correcting." Eich said that while Brave is a Binance affiliate [a cryptocurrency exchange], the browser's autocompleting feature should not have added any new affiliate codes. "The autocomplete default was inspired by search query clientid attribution that all browsers do, but unlike keyword queries, a typed-in URL should go to the domain named, without any additions," Eich wrote in the thread. "Sorry for this mistake — we are clearly not perfect, but we correct course quickly," he added. Android Police reports the mistake occured more than 10 weeks ago — and that referrer codes were also included for other cryptocurrency-related sites: The browser's GitHub repository reveals the functionality was first added on March 25th, and the current list of sites includes Binance, Coinbase, Ledger, and Trezor. Brave Software receives a kickback for purchases/accounts made with those services — for example, Coinbase says that when you refer a new customer to the service, you can earn 50% of their fees for the first three months. The nature of these affiliate programs also allows the referrer — in this case, Brave Software — to view some amount of data about the customers who sign up with the code. Coinbase's program provides "direct access to your campaign's performance data," while Trezor offers a "detailed overview of purchases." Brave CEO and co-founder Brendan Eich (who also created the JavaScript programming language) tweeted, "For what it's worth there's a setting to disable the autocomplete defaults that add affiliate codes, in brave://settings first page. Current plan is to flip default to off as shown here. You can disable ahead of our release schedule if you want to. "Good to hear from supporters who'll enable it."' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/20/06/07/2217224 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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Ars Technica: We put Western Digital’s dreaded SMR Red drive to the test
by Peter Reutemann 08 Jun '20

08 Jun '20

'Western Digital has been receiving a storm of bad press—and even lawsuits—concerning their attempt to sneak SMR disk technology into their "Red" line of NAS disks. To get a better handle on the situation, Ars purchased a Western Digital 4TB Red EFAX model SMR drive and put it to the test ourselves.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/06/western-digitals-smr-disks-arent-gr… 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 Java-Based Ransomware Targets Linux and Windows Systems
by Peter Reutemann 08 Jun '20

08 Jun '20

'"A newly uncovered form of ransomware is going after Windows and Linux systems," reports ZDNet, "in what appears to be a targeted campaign." Named Tycoon after references in the code, this ransomware has been active since December 2019 and looks to be the work of cyber criminals who are highly selective in their targeting. The malware also uses an uncommon deployment technique that helps stay hidden on compromised networks. The main targets of Tycoon are organisations in the education and software industries. Tycoon has been uncovered and detailed by researchers at BlackBerry working with security analysts at KPMG. It's an unusual form of ransomware because it's written in Java, deployed as a trojanised Java Runtime Environment and is compiled in a Java image file (Jimage) to hide the malicious intentions... [T]he first stage of Tycoon ransomware attacks is less uncommon, with the initial intrusion coming via insecure internet-facing Remote Desktop Protocol servers. This is a common attack vector for malware campaigns and it often exploits servers with weak or previously compromised passwords. Once inside the network, the attackers maintain persistence by using Image File Execution Options (IFEO) injection settings that more often provide developers with the ability to debug software. The attackers also use privileges to disable anti-malware software using ProcessHacker in order to stop removal of their attack... After execution, the ransomware encrypts the network with files encrypted by Tycoon given extensions including .redrum, .grinch and .thanos — and the attackers demand a ransom in exchange for the decryption key. The attackers ask for payment in bitcoin and claim the price depends on how quickly the victim gets in touch via email. The fact the campaign is still ongoing suggests that those behind it are finding success extorting payments from victims. ' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/20/06/06/0445235 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 Dropped for Open Source Again in Germany: Hamburg Follows Munich's Lead
by Peter Reutemann 08 Jun '20

08 Jun '20

'"The trend towards open-source software on government computers is gathering pace in Germany," reports ZDNet: In the latest development, during coalition negotiations in the city-state of Hamburg, politicians have declared they are ready to start moving its civil service software away from Microsoft and towards open-source alternatives. The declaration comes as part of a 200-page coalition agreement between the Social Democratic and Green parties, which will define how Hamburg is run for the next five years. It was presented on Tuesday but has yet to be signed off. The political parties in charge in Hamburg are the same as those in Munich, who recently agreed to revert back to that city's own open-source software. "With this decision, Hamburg joins a growing number of German states and municipalities that have already embarked on this path," said Peter Ganten, chairman of the Open Source Business Alliance, or OSBA, based in Stuttgart. He's referring to similar decisions made in Schleswig-Holstein, Thuringia, Bremen, Dortmund, and Munich. But, he adds: "The Hamburg decision is nevertheless remarkable because the city has always been more aggressively oriented towards Microsoft. "In the future we will aim to have more open-source software in digital management [systems] and we also want to develop our own code, which will remain open," the head of the local Hamburg-Mitte branch of the Greens, Farid Mueller, wrote on his website. Hamburg wants to be a leading example of digital independence, he stated. The article also adds a final interesting detail. A Microsoft spokeperson told a Germany technology site "that the company didn't see the desire for more open-source software as an attack on itself. Microsoft now also uses and develops a lot of open source and welcomed fair competition, the spokesperson added."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/20/06/07/0147255 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Mozilla Eyes Decentralized Web-Based Videoconferencing Platform 'Meething'
by Peter Reutemann 08 Jun '20

08 Jun '20

'Last month Techcrunch reported that Mozilla had gone "full incubator" by holding a startup lab called Fix the Internet, followed by "a formal program dangling $75,000 investments in front of early-stage companies..." Fix the Internet had many key themes, including collaboration and decentralization (as well as user-controlled data and privacy-protecting social networks). That event "drew the interest of some 1,500 people in 520 projects, and 25 were chosen to receive the full package and stipend during the development of their minimum viable product (MVP). Below that, as far as pecuniary commitment goes, is the 'MVP Lab,' similar to the spring program but offering a total of $16,000 per team." And one of those MVP Lab teams is Meething, a new video conferencing and collaboration platform from the innovation lab ERA. Meething "aims to be more secure than existing video conferencing tools and run on a decentralized database engine and leverage peer-to-peer networking" according to ZDNet. In their video interview with CEO Mark Nadal, he outlined the following selling points: - Browser based video conferencing gives customers better options for security as well as branding. - Open source architecture is a win and the peer-to-peer networking is more efficient on compute costs. - Meething doesn't require downloads or apps that increase the security attack surface. The total addressable market for video conferencing is large and can support multiple players. Their press release quotes Mark Mayo, a former Chief Product Officer at Mozilla who served as Meething's mentor, arguing that video conferencing on the web "has long promised to enable a whole new world of online collaboration. Frankly, it hasn't delivered. It's been way too hard to build cool products with video and Meething aims to be the zero-barrier-to-entry platform that realizes this future. Soon, video conferencing won't suck!"' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/06/07/1739228 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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How SpaceX Uses Linux, Chromium, C++ and Open Source Libraries
by Peter Reutemann 07 Jun '20

07 Jun '20

'Long-time Slashdot reader mrflash818 ("Linux geek since 1999") shared a ZDNet article pointing out that SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket has an onboard operating system that's "a stripped-down Linux running on three ordinary dual-core x86 processors. The flight software itself runs separately on each processor and is written in C/C++." Interestingly, back in 2018 a Slashdot headline asked whether C++ was "a really terrible language," and Elon Musk replied on Twitter with his single-word answer. "Yes." ZDNet points out that "ordinary" processors are often needed because of the multi-year development time for the spacecraft they power. Their article notes that the International Space Station actually runs on 1988-vintage 20 MHz Intel 80386SX CPUs: Of course, while those ancient chips work for the station's command and control multiplexer/demultiplexer, they're not much good for anything else. For ordinary day-in and day-out work, astronauts use HP ZBook 15s running Debian Linux, Scientific Linux, and Windows 10. The Linux systems act as remote terminals to the control multiplexer/demultiplexer, while the Windows systems are used for email, the web, and fun. Usually, though, chips that go into space aren't ordinary chips. CPUs that stay in space must be radiation-hardened. Otherwise, they tend to fail due to the effects of ionizing radiation and cosmic rays. These customized processors undergo years of design work and then more years of testing before they are certified for spaceflight. For instance, NASA expects its next-generation, general-purpose processor, an ARM A53 variant you may know from the Raspberry Pi 3, to be ready to run in 2021... The Dragon spacecraft's touchscreen interface is rendered using Chromium and JavaScript. If something were to go wrong with the interface, the astronauts have physical buttons to control the spacecraft. Today the SpaceX software team answered questions on Reddit, revealing they use Chromium with a reactive library developed in-house, and that "All of our on-board computers either run Linux (with the PREEMPT_RT patch) or are microcontrollers that run bare-metal code...." Later they emphasized that for the Falcon 9 and Dragon software, "All of the application-level autonomous software is written in C++. We generally use object oriented programming techniques from C++, although we like to keep things as simple as possible. "We do use open source libraries, primarily the standard C++ library, plus some others. However, we limit our use of open source libraries to only extremely high quality ones, and often will opt to develop our own libraries when it is feasible so that we can control the code quality ourselves."' -- source: https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/06/06/2023249 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 Mint Dumps Ubuntu Snap
by Peter Reutemann 07 Jun '20

07 Jun '20

'ZDNet reports: Mint's programmers, led by lead developer, Clement "Clem" Lefebvre, has dropped support for Ubuntu's Snap software packing system. [...] So, what's not to like? Well, a lot, thinks Clem. As he wrote in July 2019, the idea is fine: "When snap was announced it was supposed to be a solution, not a problem. It was supposed to make it possible to run newer apps on top of older libraries and to let third-party editors publish their software easily towards multiple distributions, just like Flatpak and AppImage." But, he said, "What we didn't want it to be was for Canonical to control the distribution of software between distributions and third-party editors, to prevent direct distribution from editors, to make it so software worked better in Ubuntu than anywhere else and to make its store a requirement." Clem was worried then that Canonical was moving in that direction because: "Ubuntu is planning to replace the Chromium [Google's open-source browser and foundation for Chrome] repository package with an empty package, which installs the Chromium snap. In other words, as you install APT [Debian's program for installing and managing DEB files] updates, Snap becomes a requirement for you to continue to use Chromium and installs itself behind your back. This breaks one of the major worries many people had when Snap was announced and a promise from its developers that it would never replace APT. A self-installing Snap Store which overwrites part of our APT package base is a complete NO-NO. It's something we have to stop and it could mean the end of Chromium updates and access to the snap store in Linux Mint." Fast forward to now, and that's still the case with Chromium, and Clem has had enough: "In the Ubuntu 20.04 package base, the Chromium package is indeed empty and acting, without your consent, as a backdoor by connecting your computer to the Ubuntu Store. Applications in this store cannot be patched, or pinned. You can't audit them, hold them, modify them, or even point snap to a different store. You've as much empowerment with this as if you were using proprietary software, i.e. none. This is in effect similar to a commercial proprietary solution, but with two major differences: It runs as root, and it installs itself without asking you." ' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/06/05/2148219 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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Lenovo Will Pre-load Ubuntu and Red Hat on All Its Workstations
by Peter Reutemann 07 Jun '20

07 Jun '20

'TechRepublic calls it "a tectonic shift in the landscape... a massive company showing serious support for both Ubuntu Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Linux." Forbes reports: Beginning this month, Lenovo will certify its ThinkStation PCs and ThinkPad P Series laptops for both Ubuntu LTS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Every single model, every single configuration across the entire workstation portfolio. [ZDNet adds that the two Linux distros will also be preloaded.] And it doesn't end there. "Going beyond the box, this also includes full web support, dedicated Linux forums, configuration guidance and more," says Rob Herman, General Manager, Executive Director Workstation & Client AI Group at Lenovo. We're not talking about just hardware certification, either. Lenovo will offer both Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ubuntu LTS distributions pre-installed... "What's more, Lenovo will also upstream device drivers directly to the Linux kernel, to help maintain stability and compatibility throughout the life of the workstation," says Herman. Lenovo and Fedora are already working together to enable fingerprint sensor support on select ThinkPads, and send that support upstream to benefit all Linux distributions (including firmware being available through LVFS). When I spoke to Mark Pearson, the Senior Linux Software Engineer even mentioned porting certain Windows-only PC management tools to Linux to aid in the overall effort. TechRepublic notes the news "comes on the heels of a number of new Linux desktop support news. This year we've seen the rise of Purism, Tuxedo Computers, Pine64, Juno Computers, Vikings, Dell's continued support with the XPS Dev edition laptop and the Precision line, and now Lenovo." They also argue for continued support for the smaller vendors of Linux hardware. "Companies like System76 are a big reason why desktop Linux continued climbing up that steep mountain called 'Acceptance.'" But their article concludes that "No matter which path you take, you now (as a Linux user) have more options."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/20/06/06/0113250 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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Will The Transition To IPv6 Take 5 to 10 Years?
by Peter Reutemann 07 Jun '20

07 Jun '20

'The Register: IPv4 is here to stay with us for a good few years yet, reckons the the Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre's (RIPE NCC) public policy manager, eight years after IPv6 was supposed to replace it. Marco Hogewoning, public policy for the Amsterdam, Netherlands-based European regional internet registry, told The Register that despite the best efforts of IPv6 proponents over the last eight years, it might take "five to 10 years" before the world starts to truly abandon the IPv4 address space. IPv6 was first defined in 1996, but with Friday marking the 8th anniversary of (the second) IPv6 "Launch" Day, RIPE NCC was keen to talk up the tech, whose chief benefit is that it provides a much greater pile of internet addresses for all the stuff humanity has dumped online in the last few decades...Musing that "little pockets of IPv4" and some government services hosted on IPv4 are two of the things holding the world back, Hogewoning told The Register: "It's impossible for me to file my taxes over IPv6. As much as I want, I can't get rid of IPv4 in the end because I need to file my taxes. That's a dialogue we try to have with the governments... It's an important step to go to, enabling IPv6 [instead of] IPv4 to make sure we don't force people to have that backwards compatibility."' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/06/06/0245248 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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one week of arch
by Peter Reutemann 07 Jun '20

07 Jun '20

Hi everyone At last month's meeting, we also had a look at Manjaro, an Arch-based Linux distribution: https://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/266792009/ While preparing for the presentation, I played around with Manjaro and quite liked the arch package manager "pacman". Since then, Angus came across EndeavourOS, another Arch Linux distribution, which is a bit more up-to-date than Manjaro: https://endeavouros.com/ So, last weekend, I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade the aging LinuxMint 18.3 installation on my laptop at home. The EndeavourOS installer seemed less polished (showing lots of Space Shuttle Endeavour related imagery) than the likes of Mint or Ubuntu, but it did the job. Always glad that my home directory is on a separate partition. Makes the installation so much easier... :-) I've been using it now for a week and I must say, I quite like it. The MATE desktop, in contrast to Linux Mint, is far less polished, but it works absolutely fine. It feels really, really snappy (and that on a spinning drive!) and it doesn't seem to suffer from the same performance degradation over time like my old Mint installation did: as the days went by, the login screen would take longer and longer to show up after resuming from sleep, the Caja file browser would take longer to start up and everything just felt more and more sluggish. Last night, I flashed an old Samsung S4 with LineageOS (Android 9) and I didn't have to resort to compiling Heimdall myself, the Arch repositories already had packages built on the latest code from the repository. Nice! Only problem so far are the proprietary Brother printer drivers. Haven't been able to get printing working yet (the package for the printer in the arch repositories didn't do anything). Something to figure out on a rainy day... Anyway, looks like I'm sort of an Arch convert now. ;-) 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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Windows 10 Is Hostile To Open Source
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 06 Jun '20

06 Jun '20

From <https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/05/windows_10_microsoft_defender_smarts…>: A developer of a Windows utility has protested that "Microsoft Defender SmartScreen is hurting independent developers" because of the number of warnings and obstacles placed in front of users who download installers that are not signed or sufficiently well known. In the absence of a “Let’s Encrypt” equivalent for them, code-signing certificates cost money. And on top of that, SmartScreen’s warnings will not go away until that certificate has built up some (unspecified) minimum level of “reputation”. Because of this, many projects, like Ardour and Inkscape, don’t bother with signing, and rely on their users to negotiate the obstacle course of download and installation warnings.

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Follow-up to the EFF .ORG petition
by Ian Stewart 06 Jun '20

06 Jun '20

You may remember, from over a month ago, there was circulation on WLUG email of a request to sign a petition<https://act.eff.org/action/help-stop-the-sale-of-public-interest-registry-t…> of Electronic Frontier Foundation to "Help Stop the Sale of Public Interest Registry to a Private Equity Firm"... "This month [November 2019] it was suddenly announced that the nonprofit that owns the .ORG domain registry was planning to sell it to a private equity firm, Ethos Capital. This could impact the millions of individuals and organizations that have a .ORG website, subjecting them to potential censorship and leaving the door open for price increases on domain registration and renewals." You may be wondering what happened. I've just looked at the wikipedia entry for .ORG, and it contains the following paragraph based on this article from the The Verge<https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/30/21241946/icann-dot-org-isoc-ethos-capita…>: "In November 2019, the Public Interest Registry (PIR) was to be sold by the Internet Society to shell company Ethos Capital for US$1.135 billion. The PIR also announced it would abandon its non-profit status to become a B Corporation. However, this move was criticized by non-profits and various digital rights groups on concerns that Ethos Capital, a private equity firm, would raise fees or censor the domain. The sale was blocked by Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in April 2020 on the basis that transfer of control of the domain to the private equity firm would create "unacceptable uncertainty" for non-profits that relied on the .org domain." While Wikipedia's entry on .ORG<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.org> has a brief history section, more details can be found at Wikipedias Public Interest Registry webpage<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Interest_Registry>. In case you find its TL;DR here are some snippets... the Internet Society proposed creating the Public Interest Registry as a separate 501(c)3 non-profit to manage .ORG when the Public Interest Registry was established, “our aim was to promote the non-commercial use of the internet" Public Interest Registry released an open letter on 1 May 2019, stating, “The .ORG Community always is considered in every decision we make here at Public Interest Registry. Rest assured, we will not raise prices unreasonably. In fact, we currently have no specific plans for any price increases for .ORG.” On 13 May 2019, ICANN announced that they would remove the price cap on .ORG registrations. ...former ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé registered the domain name EthosCapital.com. On 14 May 2019, Ethos Capital was incorporated in Delaware On 13 November 2019 the Internet Society announced that it was divesting of the Public Interest Registry, and that Ethos Capital would be acquiring its assets Ethos Capital stated on their website, "Our plan is to live within the spirit of historic practice when it comes to pricing," which they later clarified to mean raising prices by an average of 10% per year. People who came out in opposition to the sale included Tim Berners-Lee... On 29 November 2019, it was revealed that the purchase price is $1.135 billion. On 30 April 2020, the ICANN Board, saying it was "the right thing to do," withheld its consent to the transfer of control of the Public Internet Registry to Ethos Capital, effectively killing the proposed deal. In Summary The .ORG remains in the hands of the "Public Interest Registry" which seems to sometimes get called the "Public Internet Registry"? The "Public Interest Registry" pir.org link takes you to https://thenew.org/org-people/ where, among other things, you can download the PIR 2018 Annual Report<https://thenew.org/app/uploads/2019/09/PIR-2018-Annual-Report.pdf> or their 2018 Form 990<https://thenew.org/app/uploads/2019/09/PIR-2017_2018-990.zip> "Return of Organization Exempt From Tax". For 2018 you will see their total revenue was $93 million. cheers, Ian.

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Linux not Windows: Why Munich is shifting back from Microsoft to open source – again
by Peter Reutemann 05 Jun '20

05 Jun '20

'In a notable U-turn for the city, newly elected politicians in Munich have decided that its administration needs to use open-source software, instead of proprietary products like Microsoft Office. "Where it is technologically and financially possible, the city will put emphasis on open standards and free open-source licensed software," a new coalition agreement negotiated between the recently elected Green party and the Social Democrats says. The agreement was finalized Sunday and the parties will be in power until 2026. "We will adhere to the principle of 'public money, public code'. That means that as long as there is no confidential or personal data involved, the source code of the city's software will also be made public," the agreement states.' -- source: https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-not-windows-why-munich-is-shifting-back… 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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Signal Launches Face-Blurring Tool as US Protesters Embrace Encrypted Messaging
by Peter Reutemann 05 Jun '20

05 Jun '20

'Law enforcement officials across the U.S. have already revealed that they will leverage facial recognition technology to retroactively target protesters following the killing of George Floyd, with police asking the public for footage and photos. Against this backdrop, Signal is introducing a new feature that can automatically obfuscate faces shared within the encrypted messaging app, as the company says it's "working hard to keep up with the increased traffic" from protesters. From a report: Moving forward, Signal users will be able to activate a feature in the main photo editing toolbox that will automatically blur all faces it identifies in an image. As with many automated computer vision tools, Signal doesn't claim that its face-blurring smarts are 100% effective. It may not identify all faces in a photo, which is why users can manually obscure faces by drawing the blur brush across each face with their finger.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/20/06/04/1621201 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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Does Ringing Room Use BBB?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 04 Jun '20

04 Jun '20

Came across this site <https://ringingroom.com/> mentioned on the TV news this evening. It’s a “virtual bell tower” where fans of bell-ringing can gather to scratch their itch during lockdown in the UK and US. The thing that strikes me is, it look remarkably similar, at least in concept, to Web conferencing software BigBlueButton <https://bigbluebutton.org/>. I wonder if it’s an application/customization of the latter?

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Zoom Won't Encrypt Free Calls Because it Wants To Comply With Law Enforcement
by Peter Reutemann 04 Jun '20

04 Jun '20

'If you're a free Zoom user, and waiting for the company to roll out end-to-end encryption for better protection of your calls, you're out of luck. From a report: Free calls won't be encrypted, and law enforcement will be able to access your information in case of 'misuse' of the platform. Zoom CEO Eric Yuan today said that the video conferencing app's upcoming end-to-end encryption feature will be available to only paid users.' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/06/03/1150245 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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TrueNAS isn’t abandoning BSD—but it is adopting Linux
by Peter Reutemann 04 Jun '20

04 Jun '20

'To the surprise—and likely consternation—of BSD fans everywhere, FreeNAS vendor iXsystems is building a new version of its core product, TrueNAS, on top of Debian Linux. This week's TrueNAS Scale announcement builds on the company's March announcement that its commercial project TrueNAS and its community project FreeNAS would be merging into a common base. Effectively, all the NAS projects from iXsystems will be TrueNAS variants moving forward, with the free-to-use version being TrueNAS Core, the new Debian-based project becoming TrueNAS Scale, and the commercial project remaining simply TrueNAS.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/06/truenas-isnt-abandoning-bsd-but-it-… 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 Cold Boot Attack Affects Seven Years of LG Android Smartphones
by Peter Reutemann 04 Jun '20

04 Jun '20

'South Korean phone manufacturer LG has released a security update last month to fix a vulnerability that impacts its Android smartphones sold over the past seven years. From a report: The vulnerability, tracked under the identifier of CVE-2020-12753, impacts the bootloader component that ships with LG smartphones. In March this year, US software engineer Max Thomas discovered a vulnerability in the bootloader component that had been added to LG smartphones starting with the LG Nexus 5 series. In a technical breakdown of the vulnerability published on Tuesday, Thomas says the bootloader component's graphics package contains a bug that lets attackers sneak in their own code to run alongside the bootloader's graphics under certain conditions, such as when the battery dies out and when the device is in the bootloader's Download Mode. Thomas says that threat actors who perfectly time an attack can gain the ability to run their own custom code, which could allow them to take over the bootloader, and inherently the entire device.' -- source: https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/20/06/03/1830216 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 fixes Android flaws that allow code execution with high system rights
by Peter Reutemann 03 Jun '20

03 Jun '20

'Google has shipped security patches for dozens of vulnerabilities in its Android mobile operating system, two of which could allow hackers to remotely execute malicious code with extremely high system rights. In some cases, the malware could run with highly elevated privileges, a possibility that raises the severity of the bugs. That’s because the bugs, located in the Android System component, could enable a specially crafted transmission to execute arbitrary code within the context of a privileged process. In all, Google released patches for at least 34 security flaws, although some of the vulnerabilities were present only in devices available from manufacturer Qualcomm.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/06/google-fixes-android… 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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DOD's Third Attempt To Implement IPv6 Isn't Going Well
by Peter Reutemann 03 Jun '20

03 Jun '20

'The US Department of Defense is woefully behind on its plan to upgrade its IT infrastructure to support the newer IPv6 protocol, according to a government report published on Monday. From a report: This current effort is the third time the DOD attempts to upgrade its infrastructure to support IPv6 over in the past 17 years. The first two attempts took place in 2003 and 2010, respectively. The 2003 effort was abandoned with the DOD citing security risks and a lack of personnel trained in IPv6, while the second attempt was also abandoned, similarly on the grounds that IPv6 was not yet secure enough for the DOD's sensitive networks. On Monday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the auditing agency of the US government, said that the DOD's third attempt isn't doing any better either. GAO officials said the DOD failed to follow four basic requirements that were set out by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in 2006. The four requirements were part of an OMB guideline sent to all federal agencies detailing the proper procedure for upgrading networks from IPv4 to IPv6. "For its current [third] initiative, DOD has not completed three of four longstanding OMB requirements," GAO auditors said in a report published on Monday.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/06/02/1447254 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Firefox 77 Arrives With Faster JavaScript Debugging and Optional Permissions
by Peter Reutemann 03 Jun '20

03 Jun '20

'Mozilla today launched Firefox 77 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Firefox 77 includes faster JavaScript debugging, optional permissions for extensions, and Pocket recommendations in the U.K. You can download Firefox 77 for desktop now from Firefox.com, and all existing users should be able to upgrade to it automatically. According to Mozilla, Firefox has about 250 million active users, making it a major platform for web developers to consider. [...] Other than Pocket recommendations arriving in the U.K. (they've been in Canada, Germany, and the U.S. since April 2018), this is primarily a developer release. Firefox's Debugger is now better at handling large web apps with all their bundling, live reloading, and dependencies. Mozilla is promising performance improvements that speed up pausing and stepping, as well as cutting down on memory usage over time. Source maps should also see performance boosts -- some inline source maps load 10 times faster -- and improved reliability for many configurations. The debugger will now also respect the currently selected stack when stepping, which is useful when you've stepped into a function call or paused in a library method further down in the stack.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/06/02/1530214 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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Wallpaper crash explained: Here’s how a simple image can soft-brick phones
by Peter Reutemann 02 Jun '20

02 Jun '20

'How can a simple image crash an Android phone to the point that it becomes unusable? It’s a question that came out frequently over the past 24 hours, as news of a “cursed wallpaper” spread around the web. Here’s a recap: Setting a particular image as wallpaper can send some phones into a loop of crashes that makes them unusable. There are a few solutions, depending on how hard the phone is hit. Some users were able to change the wallpaper in the short interval between crashes. Others had success deleting the wallpaper using the recovery tool TWRP. But in most cases, the only solution was to reset the phone to factory settings, losing any data that’s not backed up. The issue was brought to light by Ice Universe, the Chinese Twitter users known for leaks. Based on user reports, many models from Samsung and Google are affected, while we’ve also seen some reports from users of OnePlus, Nokia, and Xiaomi devices (it’s not clear if these latter devices ran stock software or custom ROMs). From our own testing and looking at user reports, Huawei devices seem to be less exposed to the wallpaper crash issue.' -- source: https://www.androidauthority.com/android-wallpaper-crash-1124577/ 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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Programmers Use 80 Characters Per Line!?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 02 Jun '20

02 Jun '20

Are there still people writing their code to the constraints of 80-column CRT terminals which vanished into museums decades ago? Seems there are enough such around to rile Linus Torvalds <https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/01/linux_5_7/>. Even back in the days of those terminals, the printers you used for hard-copy listings could almost always do 132-column lines. And some of the terminals could be put into a mode with such a line length, by using a much narrower font (I remember it hurt my eyes to do much work in this mode). Nowadays I typically have my text-editor windows set to a width of 100 columns. And there is still enough room on my screen for two such views side-by-side.

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Lawsuit Over Online Book Lending Could Bankrupt Internet Archive
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 02 Jun '20

02 Jun '20

A group of book publishers is suing the Internet Archive over its recent loosening of restrictions on lending out copyrighted books <https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/publishers-sue-internet-archive…>. Choice description of the founder of the Internet Archive: "Brewster Kahle is what the Russians might call a holy fool—someone who acts without real regard for himself or the worldly things in the service of a higher calling," [copyright scholar James] Grimmelmann said.

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