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Firefox Daylight For Android Arrives With Enhanced Tracking Protection, New UI
by Peter Reutemann 26 Aug '20

26 Aug '20

'After more than a year of development, Mozilla today launched Firefox 79 for Android, branded Firefox Daylight. Like with Firefox 57 Quantum, Firefox Daylight gets its own name as it marks "a new beginning for our Android browser." The new version is "an entirely overhauled, faster, and more convenient product." Firefox Daylight includes Enhanced Tracking Protection on by default, a new user interface, Mozilla's own mobile browser engine GeckoView, and a slew of new features. Mozilla is rolling out the new Firefox for Android globally, starting in Germany, France, and the U.K. today, and North America starting August 27.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/08/25/1511257 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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A New Botnet Is Covertly Targeting Millions of Servers
by Peter Reutemann 26 Aug '20

26 Aug '20

'Wired reports: FritzFrog has been used to try and infiltrate government agencies, banks, telecom companies, and universities across the US and Europe. Researchers have found what they believe is a previously undiscovered botnet that uses unusually advanced measures to covertly target millions of servers around the world. The botnet uses proprietary software written from scratch to infect servers and corral them into a peer-to-peer network, researchers from security firm Guardicore Labs reported on Wednesday. Peer-to-peer (P2P) botnets distribute their administration among many infected nodes rather than relying on a control server to send commands and receive pilfered data. With no centralized server, the botnets are generally harder to spot and more difficult to shut down. The botnet, which Guardicore Labs researchers have named FritzFrog, has a host of other advanced features, including: In-memory payloads that never touch the disks of infected servers; At least 20 versions of the software binary since January; A sole focus on infecting secure shell, or SSH, servers that network administrators use to manage machines; The ability to backdoor infected servers; and A list of login credential combinations used to suss out weak login passwords that's more "extensive" than those in previously seen botnets. Taken together, the attributes indicate an above-average operator who has invested considerable resources to build a botnet that's effective, difficult to detect, and resilient to takedowns. The new code base -- combined with rapidly evolving versions and payloads that run only in memory -- make it hard for antivirus and other end-point protection to detect the malware. The botnet has so far succeeded in infecting 500 servers belonging to "well-known universities in the US and Europe, and a railway company."Once installed, the malicious payload can execute 30 commands, including those that run scripts and download databases, logs, or files. To evade firewalls and endpoint protection, attackers pipe commands over SSH to a netcat client on the infected machine. Netcat then connects to a "malware server." (Mention of this server suggests that the FritzFrog peer-to-peer structure may not be absolute. Or it's possible that the "malware server" is hosted on one of the infected machines, and not on a dedicated server. Guardicore Labs researchers weren't immediately available to clarify.)' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/20/08/25/1947246 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 95 Released a Quarter Century Ago
by Peter Reutemann 26 Aug '20

26 Aug '20

'Windows 95 was released a full quarter century ago today, on August 24th, 1995. Long gone, nearly forgotten? I'm surprised to not have come across a retrospective article yet. I've linked to the Wikipedia article. As for me I still haven't grown to re-like The Rolling Stones "Start Me Up" yet. I got so sick of hearing it with all the pre-launch and post-launch hype, as the song was tied heavily to the Win 95 launch event. Microsoft paid the Stones a princely sum to use it. I still remember how exciting it was to see the full-length, full-screen video included on the installation CD-ROM, "Buddy Holly" by Weezer. Mind-blowing to watch a whole music video on your computer. Crappy resolution by our standards today, and a very limited palette to my memory. But as I said, amazing in the day. Windows 95 had many fans and many critics. At the time, I recall it as an exciting OS (or GUI on top of DOS, if you prefer). PC users were riveted to all the magazine and other media coverage pre-launch. I remember it fondly (with all the obligatory respect due Mac OS, the Amiga, and all the other early GUIs of course).' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/08/25/1936234 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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Chrome 85 Arrives With Tab Management, 10% Faster Page Loads, and PDF Improvements
by Peter Reutemann 26 Aug '20

26 Aug '20

'Google today launched Chrome 85 for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS. Chrome 85 brings tab management changes, 10% faster page loads, PDF improvements, and a slew of developer features. From a report: Google is promising under-the-hood performance improvements with Chrome 85. You can expect two types of speed gains: Profile Guided Optimization, which delivers up to 10% faster page loads, and Tab Throttling, which helps reduce the impact of idle background tabs. The latter, however, is coming to the Beta channel meaning it's not yet ready. Profile Guided Optimization is a compiler optimization technique where the most performance-critical parts of the code can run faster. Profile Guided Optimization prioritizes the most common tasks using real usage scenarios that match the workflows of Chrome users around the world.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/20/08/25/1741206 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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Chinese-Made Smartphones Are Secretly Stealing Money From People Around the World
by Peter Reutemann 25 Aug '20

25 Aug '20

'When Mxolosi saw a Tecno W2 smartphone in a store in Johannesburg, South Africa, he was attracted to its looks and functionality. But what really drew him in was the price, roughly $30 -- far less than comparable models from Samsung, Nokia, or Huawei, Africa's other top brands. It was another sale for Transsion, the Chinese company that makes Tecno and other low-priced smartphones, as well as basic handsets, for the developing world. Since releasing its first smartphone in 2014, the upstart has grown to become Africa's top handset seller, beating out longtime market leaders Samsung and Nokia. But its success can come at a price. Mxolosi, an unemployed 41-year-old, became frustrated with his Tecno W2. Pop-up ads interrupted his calls and chats. He'd wake up to find his prepaid data mysteriously used up and messages about paid subscriptions to apps he'd never asked for. He thought it might be his fault, but according to an investigation by Secure-D, a mobile security service, and BuzzFeed News, software embedded in his phone right out of the box was draining his data while trying to steal his money. Mxolosi's Tecno W2 was infected with xHelper and Triada, malware that secretly downloaded apps and attempted to subscribe him to paid services without his knowledge. Secure-D's system, which mobile carriers use to protect their networks and customers against fraudulent transactions, blocked 844,000 transactions connected to preinstalled malware on Transsion phones between March and December 2019. Secure-D Managing Director Geoffrey Cleaves told BuzzFeed News that Mxolosi's data was used up by the malware as it attempted to subscribe him to paid services. Along with South Africa, Tecno W2 phones in Ethiopia, Cameroon, Egypt, Ghana, Indonesia, and Myanmar were infected.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/20/08/24/2139209 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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Bridgefy, the Messenger Promoted For Mass Protests, Is a Privacy Disaster
by Peter Reutemann 25 Aug '20

25 Aug '20

'Bridgefy, a popular messaging app for conversing with one another when internet connections are heavily congested or completely shut down, is a privacy disaster that can allow moderately-skilled hackers to take a host of nefarious actions against users, according to a paper published on Monday. The findings come after the company has for months touted the app as a safe and reliable way for activists to communicate in large gatherings. Ars Technica reports: By using Bluetooth and mesh network routing, Bridgefy lets users within a few hundred meters -- and much further as long as there are intermediary nodes -- to send and receive both direct and group texts with no reliance on the Internet at all. Bridgefy cofounder and CEO Jorge Rios has said he originally envisioned the app as a way for people to communicate in rural areas or other places where Internet connections were scarce. And with the past year's upswell of large protests around the world -- often in places with hostile or authoritarian governments -- company representatives began telling journalists that the app's use of end-to-end encryption (reiterated here, here, and here) protected activists against governments and counter protesters trying to intercept texts or shut down communications. [R]esearchers said that the app's design for use at concerts, sports events, or during natural disasters makes it woefully unsuitable for more threatening settings such as mass protests. They wrote: "Though it is advertised as 'safe' and 'private' and its creators claimed it was secured by end-to-end encryption, none of aforementioned use cases can be considered as taking place in adversarial environments such as situations of civil unrest where attempts to subvert the application's security are not merely possible, but to be expected, and where such attacks can have harsh consequences for its users. Despite this, the Bridgefy developers advertise the app for such scenarios and media reports suggest the application is indeed relied upon." The researchers are: Martin R. Albrecht, Jorge Blasco, Rikke Bjerg Jensen, and Lenka Marekova from Royal Holloway, University of London. After reverse engineering the app, they devised a series of devastating attacks that allow hackers -- in many cases with only modest resources and moderate skill levels -- to take a host of nefarious actions against users. The attacks allow for: deanonymizing users; building social graphs of users' interactions, both in real time and after the fact; decrypting and reading direct messages; impersonating users to anyone else on the network; completely shutting down the network; and performing active man-in-the-middle attacks, which allow an adversary not only to read messages, but to tamper with them as well. "The key shortcoming that makes many of these attacks possible is that Bridgefy offers no means of cryptographic authentication, which one person uses to prove she's who she claims to be," the report adds. "Instead, the app relies on a user ID that's transmitted in plaintext to identify each person. Attackers can exploit this by sniffing the ID over the air and using it to spoof another user." The app also uses PKCS #1, an outdated way of encoding and formatting messages so that they can be encrypted with the RSA cryptographic algorithm. "This encoding method, which was deprecated in 1998, allows attackers to perform what's known as a padding oracle attack to derive contents of an encrypted message," reports Ars.' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/08/24/2228219 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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Apple Apologizes To WordPress, Won't Force the Free App To Add Purchases After All
by Peter Reutemann 25 Aug '20

25 Aug '20

'On Friday, the internet erupted in a small way to learn that Apple had successfully forced WordPress to monetize its free app -- forcing it to sell premium plans and custom domain names seemingly just so that Apple could get its traditional 30 percent cut. But one afternoon and evening of surprise and outrage later, Apple is backing off. The company is issuing a rare on-the-record apology, and it says that WordPress will no longer have to add in-app purchases now that all is said and done. Here's Apple's full statement: "We believe the issue with the WordPress app has been resolved. Since the developer removed the display of their service payment options from the app, it is now a free stand-alone app and does not have to offer in-app purchases. We have informed the developer and apologize for any confusion that we have caused." You'll notice that Apple is positioning this as the developer -- WordPress -- having done the right thing and removed the "display of their service payment options from the app," and to my knowledge that is technically true. But as far as I'm aware, that didn't happen today: it happened weeks or months ago.' -- source: https://apple.slashdot.org/story/20/08/24/204211 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Open Source Sustainability is Really a People Problem
by Peter Reutemann 24 Aug '20

24 Aug '20

'Matt Asay, a former COO of Canonical now working at AWS, argues that the question of open source sustainability "is really a people problem." But to make the case, he cites comments by Tobie Langel, formerly W3C's testing lead (and a former member of Facebook's Open Source and Web Standards Team) who's now founded an open-source strategies consulting firm whose clients include Mozilla, Intell, Google, and Microsoft. Much of the "open source sustainability" discussion has focused on the one thing that really needs no help being sustained: software. As Tobie Langel rightly points out, "Open source code isn't a scarce resource. It's the exact opposite, actually: It's infinitely reproducible at zero cost to the user and to the ecosystem." Nor is sustainability really a matter of funding, though this gets closer to the truth. No, open source sustainability is really a people problem. Or, as Langel highlights, "In open source, the maintainers working on the source code are the scarce resource that needs to be protected and nurtured." Over the past several weeks, I've interviewed a number of maintainers for popular open source projects. In every case, they talked about how they contribute because it's fun, but also acknowledged that some aspects of open source development can make it decidedly "un-fun" (e.g., demanding users who complain about missing features or existing bugs but don't contribute code or fixes). Most have found ways to turn their passion into financial independence, but Langel stresses that cash is critical to keeping open source humming along... "Without revenue, there is no maintenance, and without maintenance, the commons becomes toxic very quickly... As new security issues are discovered, open source code that isn't updated becomes a security risk..." Langel is absolutely correct to argue, "In an ecosystem with infinite resources, the attention needs to be on the people taking care of and maintaining that resource, because that's where the bottleneck is." Again, that's partly a question of money, but it's even more a question of treating people with dignity and respect, while making open source communities a fun, welcoming place.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/08/23/0447224 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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Virtual Influencers: Who Needs Real People?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 23 Aug '20

23 Aug '20

You probably know that celebrities can earn a lot by promoting products to their followers on social media. Some of these don’t actually have a flesh-and-blood job: they are famous for nothing more than being such “influencers”. Some advertisers have now decided to shortcut the process by creating their own “virtual influencers”: essentially, animated CG characters that they can control totally and much more easily than managing real people <https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/21/virtual_instagram_influencers/>. If all their interactions happen online, why do they need to be real?

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Chrome/Chromium Now Accounting For Half Of All DNS Root Server Traffic
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 23 Aug '20

23 Aug '20

Google’s Chrome (and its Chromium-based offshoots) include some elaborate workarounds to detect ISPs hijacking “no such domain” responses to advertise their own DNS services. Unfortunately, these workarounds lead to the generation of a lot of traffic to the DNS root servers <https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/21/chromiums_dns_network/>. Firefox is able to implement something similar, but with less impact on the Internet at large.

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