- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

With HTTPS Everywhere, EFF Begins Plans to Eventually Deprecate 'HTTPS Everywhere' Extension
by Peter Reutemann 27 Sep '21

27 Sep '21

'The Record reports: The Electronic Frontier Foundation said it is preparing to retire the famous HTTPS Everywhere browser extension after HTTPS adoption has picked up and after several web browsers have introduced HTTPS-only modes." "After the end of this year, the extension will be in 'maintenance mode' for 2022," said Alexis Hancock, Director of Engineering at the EFF. Maintenance mode means the extension will receive minor bug fixes next year but no new features or further development. No official end-of-life date has been decided, a date after which no updates will be provided for the extension whatsoever. Launched in June 2010, the HTTPS Everywhere browser extension is one of the most successful browser extensions ever released. The extension worked by automatically switching web connections from HTTP to HTTPS if websites had an HTTPS option available. At the time it was released, it helped upgrade site connections to HTTPS when users clicked on HTTP links or typed domains in their browser without specifying the "https://" prefix. The extension reached cult status among privacy advocates and was integrated into the Tor Browser and, after that, in many other privacy-conscious browsers. But since 2010, HTTPS is not a fringe technology anymore. Currently, around 86.6% of all internet sites support HTTPS connections. Browser makers such as Chrome and Mozilla previously reported that HTTPS traffic usually accounts for 90% to 95% of their daily connections. >From EFF's announcement: The goal of HTTPS Everywhere was always to become redundant. That would mean we'd achieved our larger goal: a world where HTTPS is so broadly available and accessible that users no longer need an extra browser extension to get it. Now that world is closer than ever, with mainstream browsers offering native support for an HTTPS-only mode. With these simple settings available, EFF is preparing to deprecate the HTTPS Everywhere web extension as we look to new frontiers of secure protocols like SSL/TLS... We know many different kinds of users have this tool installed, and want to give our partners and users the needed time to transition. The announcement also promises to inform users of browser-native HTTPS-only options before the day when the extension reaches its final sunsetting — and ends with instructions for how to activate the native HTTPS-only features in Firefox, Chrome, Edge, and Safari, "and celebrate with us that HTTPS is truly everywhere for users."' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/21/09/27/008226 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Linus Torvalds Recognizes Linux's 'True' 30th Anniversary Date
by Peter Reutemann 26 Sep '21

26 Sep '21

'While it's been argued that Linux has four different "birthdays," last Friday saw the 30th anniversary of Linux's very, very first release — version 0.01. That special first release "was never publicly announced, and I only emailed a handful of people in private about the upload," Torvalds remembered on the Linux kernel mailing list. He no longer has copies of those announcement emails, "so there's no real record of that. The only record of the date is in the Linux-0.01 tar-file itself, I suspect." "Alas, the dates in that tar-file are for the last modification dates, not the actual creation of the tar-file," Torvalds wrote, "but it does seem to have happened around 7:30pm (Finnish time), so the exact anniversary was technically a couple of hours ago." So when the exact moment arrived for its 30th anniversary, Torvalds couldn't resist sharing the moment on the Linux kernel mailing list. "Just thought I'd mention it, since while unannounced, in many ways this is the true 30th anniversary date of the actual code."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/21/09/25/0333233 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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meeting tomorrow
by Peter Reutemann 26 Sep '21

26 Sep '21

Hi everyone Apologies for the late reminder, things have been a bit hectic at my end... We have a "virtual" meeting tomorrow: "Peter Reutemann will demo Syncthing (https://syncthing.net/) a continuous file synchronization program. It synchronizes files between two or more computers in real time, respecting your privacy. Runs on Linux, Windows, Mac and Android among other platforms." Details: https://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/274861089/ Meeting link will be available to people that RSVP on meetup.com. Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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First RISC-V Computer Chip Lands At the European Processor Initiative
by Peter Reutemann 23 Sep '21

23 Sep '21

'The Register reports: The European Processor Initiative (EPI) has run the successful first test of its RISC-V-based European Processor Accelerator (EPAC), touting it as the initial step towards homegrown supercomputing hardware. EPI, launched back in 2018, aims to increase the independence of Europe's supercomputing industry from foreign technology companies. At its heart is the adoption of the free and open-source RISC-V instruction set architecture for the development and production of high-performance chips within Europe's borders. The project's latest milestone is the delivery of 143 samples of EPAC chips, accelerators designed for high-performance computing applications and built around the free and open-source RISC-V instruction set architecture. Designed to prove the processor's design, the 22nm test chips -- fabbed at GlobalFoundries, the not-terribly-European semiconductor manufacturer spun out of AMD back in 2009 -- have passed initial testing, running a bare-metal "hello, world" program as proof of life. It's a rapid turnaround. The EPAC design was proven on FPGA in March and the project announced silicon tape-out for the test chips in June -- hitting a 26.97mm2 area with 14 million placeable instances, equivalent to 93 million gates, including 991 memory instances. While the FPGA variant, which implemented a subset of the functions of the full EPAC design, was shown booting a Linux operating system, the physical test chips have so far only been tested with basic bare-metal workloads -- leaving plenty of work to be done. Earlier today, the UK government released its 10-year plan to make the country a global "artificial intelligence superpower," seeking to rival the likes of the U.S. and China. "The so-called 'National Artificial Intelligence Strategy' is designed to boost the use of AI among the nation's businesses, attract international investment into British AI companies and develop the next generation of homegrown tech talent," reports CNBC.' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/21/09/22/2057258 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Security audit raises severe warnings on Chinese smartphone model
by Peter Reutemann 23 Sep '21

23 Sep '21

'The Lithuanian National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) recently published a security assessment of three recent-model Chinese-made smartphones—Huawei's P40 5G, Xiaomi's Mi 10T 5G, and OnePlus' 8T 5G. Sufficiently determined US shoppers can find the P40 5G on Amazon and the Mi 10T 5G on Walmart.com—but we will not be providing direct links to those phones, given the results of the NCSC's security audit. The Xiaomi phone includes software modules specifically designed to leak data to Chinese authorities and to censor media related to topics the Chinese government considers sensitive. The Huawei phone replaces the standard Google Play application store with third-party substitutes the NCSC found to harbor sketchy, potentially malicious repackaging of common applications. The OnePlus 8T 5G—arguably, the best-known and most widely marketed phone of the three—was the only one to escape the NCSC's scrutiny without any red flags raised.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/09/security-audit-raise… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Google Finally Shifting To 'Upstream First' Linux Kernel Approach For Android Features
by Peter Reutemann 23 Sep '21

23 Sep '21

'Phoronix reports: Google's Android had been notorious for all of its downstream patches carried by the mobile operating system as well as various vendor/device kernel trees while in recent years more of that code has been upstreamed. Google has also been shifting to the Android Generic Kernel Image (GKI) as the basis for all their product kernels to further reduce the fragmentation. Looking ahead, Google is now talking of an "upstream first" approach for pushing new kernel features into mainline Linux before deploying them on Android. Google's Todd Kjos talked today during Linux Plumbers Conference (LPC2021) around their Generic Kernel Image initiative. With Android 12 and their Linux 5.10 based GKI image they have further cut down the fragmentation to the extent that it's "nearly eliminated." With the Android 12 GKI, most of the vendor/OEM kernel features have now either been upstreamed into the Linux kernel, isolated to vendor modules/hooks, or merged into the Android Common Kernel. They are making good progress on the GKI front and also ensuring vendors adapt to the new approach to cut down on the kernel mess. But perhaps most exciting is their outlook for 2023 to 2024 for further reducing technical debt. They are going to pursue an "upstream first development model for new features" in making sure new code first lands into the mainline Linux kernel rather than aiming straight for lodging within the Android source tree. ' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/21/09/22/1920258 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Upcoming NAS workshop
by 51miked 22 Sep '21

22 Sep '21

Anyone interested in a NAS workshop can register at: https://www.qnap.com/static/landing/en-us/workshop/workshop-09.html. I’ve found these very informative. Michael -- Kind regards Michael

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Ubuntu 14.04 and 16.04 Each Get a Decade of Support from Canonical
by Peter Reutemann 22 Sep '21

22 Sep '21

'Canonical has announced that it is extending the life of Ubuntu 14.04 and 16.04 to a decade. BetaNews: In other words, Ubuntu 14.04 and 16.04 are getting longer Extended Security Maintenance (ESM) periods as Canonical pushes back their End of Life (EoL) dates. The former will now get security updates until 2024, while the latter will receive them until 2026. "This lifecycle extension enables organizations to balance their infrastructure upgrade costs, by giving them additional time to implement their upgrade plan. The prolonged Extended Security Maintenance (ESM) phase of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and 16.04 LTS enables a secure and low-maintenance infrastructure with security updates and kernel livepatches provided by Canonical. The announcement represents a significant opportunity for the organizations currently implementing their transition to new applications and technologies," says Canonical.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/21/09/21/1443254 That could help IoT devices to stay up to date for longer (at least OS-wise). Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Over-Elaborate Shell Scripting
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 21 Sep '21

21 Sep '21

When using a computer, laziness is a virtue. This is why we have command lines, to help automate the boring and repetitive tasks. This article <https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/09/command-line-wizardry-part-two-vari…> continues the author’s intro to basic command-line concepts. But it repeats a failing I see all too often in shell scripting: doing complex parsing of the output of some command, when the command itself offers an option to produce something closer to the exact output you need. In this case, he is extracting the names of datasets from the “zfs list” command. And while I have zero experience with ZFS, I can look at documentation <https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E18752_01/html/819-5461/gazsu.html>, and discover that the command offers the “-o” option where you can select exactly that information you want it to output. It even has “-H” to simplify the output format right down, specifically to make it easier to parse. Sure, it’s fun to write code. But it can be even more fun to _avoid_ writing code. RTFM helps.

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Linux Foundation Survey Shows Companies Desperate To Hire Open-Source Talent
by Peter Reutemann 21 Sep '21

21 Sep '21

'ZDNet reports: At the Open Source Summit in Seattle, The Linux Foundation, and edX, the leading massive open online course (MOOC) provider released the 2021 Open Source Jobs Report. In this survey of 200 technical hiring managers and 750 open-source pros, the organizations found more demand for top open-source workers than ever. On top of that, 92% of managers are having trouble finding enough talent and many of them are also having fits holding on to their existing senior open-source staffers. In short, if you've got open-source skills, whether you're a developer, a sysadmin, a DevOps expert, or a cloud-native pro, there's a good-paying job waiting for you out there. And, where before the Covid-19 pandemic, you might have been stuck with only jobs in your area, these days, thanks to the rise of working from home, you can still live at the old homestead instead of moving to Silicon Valley or Manhattan. On top of this 50% of employers surveyed stated they are increasing hires this year. The jobs are out there. The difficulty for companies is, as 92% of managers report, finding enough talent and hanging onto existing talent in the face of fierce competition. This is especially true for cloud-native application development and operations skills. Cloud-native tops the list of skills needed with over 46% of hiring managers looking for people with Kubernetes smarts. Indeed, for the first time in the survey's history, cloud and container technology skills are more in demand by hiring managers than Linux. Indeed, cloud and container skills rank far above Linux in this go around with 41% over 32%. [T]he survey also found that DevOps has become the standard method for developing software: Virtually all open-source professionals (88%) report using DevOps practices in their work, a 50% increase from three years ago. In other words, it's all DevOps all the time. "The survey also revealed that a majority of employers, 88%, now say that hiring certified professionals is a priority," the report adds. "That's an 87% increase in only three years, 57% in 2020, and 47% in 2018." Sadly, discrimination has also become more of an issue. "18% of open-source professionals now report they have been discriminated against or made to feel unwelcome in the community," the report says. "That's a 125% increase over the past three years."' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/21/09/20/2031215 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Home Computing Pioneer Sir Clive Sinclair Dies Aged 81
by Peter Reutemann 20 Sep '21

20 Sep '21

'Sir Clive Sinclair, the man behind the Sinclair Spectrum and the first computer to retail for under a hundred dollars (the Sinclair ZX-81, A.K.A. The Timex/Sinclair 1000), died September 15 after battling a long illness. His daughter, Belinda, said he died at home in London on Thursday morning after a long illness. Sinclair invented the pocket calculator but was best known for popularising the home computer, bringing it to British high-street stores at relatively affordable prices. Many modern-day titans of the games industry got their start on one of his ZX models. For a certain generation of gamer, the computer of choice was either the ZX Spectrum 48K or its rival, the Commodore 64. Belinda Sinclair, 57, told the Guardian: "He was a rather amazing person. Of course, he was so clever and he was always interested in everything. My daughter and her husband are engineers so he'd be chatting engineering with them." He left school at 17 and worked for four years as a technical journalist to raise funds to found Sinclair Radionics.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/21/09/16/1936235 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Mozilla Experiment: Set Default Search Engine to Bing for 1% of Firefox Users
by Peter Reutemann 20 Sep '21

20 Sep '21

'"Mozilla is running an experiment on 1% of the Firefox desktop population currently, which sets the default search engine to Bing in the web browser," reports Ghacks: [I]n most regions, it is Google Search. Mozilla and Google extended the search deal in 2020 for another three years. Google is paying Mozilla "between $400 and $450 million per year" so that its search engine is the default in Firefox in most regions. Google has been Firefox's default search engine since 2017, when Mozilla ended its search deal with Yahoo early. Firefox users may change the default search engine to one of the other engines that are included by default, or an engine that is not included but can be added... The study started on September 6 and it will run until early 2022, likely January 2022. About 1% of Firefox desktop users may notice that the default search engine is changed when the installation of Firefox is picked for the experiment. Tip: load about:studies in the Firefox address bar to list the studies that the browser us currently taking part in and has completed already. Firefox users who don't want to participate in studies can disable the preference "Allow Firefox to install and run studies" on about:preferences#privacy. ' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/21/09/18/1914227 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Is 2021 The Year of the Linux Desktop?
by Peter Reutemann 20 Sep '21

20 Sep '21

'"2021 Is the Year of Linux on the Desktop," writes PC Magazine. "No, really..." Walk into any school now, and you'll see millions of Linux machines. They're called Chromebooks. For a free project launched 30 years ago today by one man in his spare time, it's an amazing feat.... Linux found its real niche — not as a political statement about "free software," but as a practical way to enable capable, low-cost machines for millions... Chrome OS and Android are both based on the Linux kernel. They don't have the extra GNU software that distributions like Ubuntu have, but they're descended from Linus Torvalds' original work. Chromebooks are the fastest growing segment of the traditional PC market, according to Canalys. IDC points out that Canalys' estimates of 12 million Chromebooks shipped in Q1 2021 are only a fraction of the 63 million notebooks sold that quarter, but once again, they're where the growth is. Much of that is driven by schools, where Chromebooks dominate now. Schoolkids don't generally need a million apps' worth of generic computing power. They need inexpensive, rugged ways to log into Google Classroom. Linux came to the rescue, enabling cheap, light, easy-to-manage PCs that don't have the Swiss Army Knife cruft of Windows or the premium price of Macs... One great thing about open-source hacker projects is that they can be taken in unexpected directions. Linux isn't controlled, so it can adapt, Darwinian-style. It was a little scurrying mammal in the time of the dinosaurs, and then the mobile-computing asteroid hit. Linux could evolve. Windows couldn't. When you're building something that fits in your hand and has to sip battery, you can't just keep throwing processors and storage at it. Microsoft had a tough time adapting its monstrous megakernel OS to the new, tiny world. But *nix platforms thrive there: Android (based on Linux) and iOS. "Android and Chrome water down the Linux philosophy," the article argues, "but they are Linux..." Does this make any long-time geeks feel vindicated? In the original submission wiredog (Slashdot reader #43,288) looks back to 1995, remembering that "my first Linux was RedHat 2.0 in the beige box, running the 0.95(?) kernel and the F Virtual Window Manager... "It came with 2 books, a CD, and a boot floppy disk."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/21/09/18/0050255 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Hi, I have parcels going missing. Does anyone know of technology to trace parcels?
by Michelle 18 Sep '21

18 Sep '21

It would presumably use GPS. It would involve a very small device put in the parcel that a thief would very possibly not even see when the parcel is scanned at customs. The icing on the cake would be if the route of the parcel was able to be recorded as evidence. I will give more details later like it going on for 3 months and involving parcels posted in NZ as well. But this is trial run email because I haven't posted in a long time and I want to make sure I am doing it right. I am hoping that if anyone replies to this that there is a convenient reply to button or link that I can reply back to. Oh well, after I send this email I want to go to the site and see if it has posted. Thanks for any help.

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Ransomware Scammers Preying On Krita Users
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 16 Sep '21

16 Sep '21

Some ne’er-do-wells are targeting users of the open-source paint app Krita, purporting to offer payment for advertising the app on their YouTube channels. But when they download the referenced media “asset” pack, they get a ransomware attack instead. <https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/14/krita_users_targeted_by_ransomware/>

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UN Calls For Moratorium On AI That Threatens Human Rights
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 16 Sep '21

16 Sep '21

The UN human rights office has released a report <https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/9/15/warning-of-risk-un-rights-chief…> on the risks of AI technologies to human rights. Its head, Michelle Bachelet, wants safeguards against the abuse of such technologies before they get too widely deployed. Such technologies are increasingly being used for automated decision making by both companies and governments, in ways that can impact people’s lives in a major way: for example, to control access to social security benefits, health, education, or to identify criminal suspects for arrest. When mistakes are made in these areas, the consequences can be catastrophic for the individuals concerned. And the tendency to secrecy on the part of those using such technologies doesn’t help.

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More On The NZ Reserve Bank Breach
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 15 Sep '21

15 Sep '21

Seems hackers broke into a secure file-sharing service called Accellion, based in California. The RBNZ was using that to exchange documents with the likes of banks and insurance companies. <https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/123911764/reserve-bank-reveals-more-detail…>

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Travis CI flaw exposed secrets of thousands of open source projects
by Peter Reutemann 15 Sep '21

15 Sep '21

'A security flaw in Travis CI potentially exposed the secrets of thousands of open source projects that rely on the hosted continuous integration service. Travis CI is a software-testing solution used by over 900,000 open source projects and 600,000 users. A vulnerability in the tool made it possible for secure environment variables—signing keys, access credentials, and API tokens of all public open source projects—to be exfiltrated. Worse, the dev community is upset about the poor handling of the vulnerability disclosure process and the brief "security bulletin" it had to force out of Travis.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/09/travis-ci-flaw-expos… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Another Day, Another DDoS ...
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 14 Sep '21

14 Sep '21

A bunch of NZ banks, also NZ Post and MetService, are currently having online trouble <https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/live-cyber-attack-fears-kiwibank-anz-nz…>. For Kiwibank, this is about the second or third outage this week.

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PHP maintains an enormous lead in server-side programming languages
by Peter Reutemann 14 Sep '21

14 Sep '21

'The venerable web programming language PHP is a source of frequent complaints and frustration, but according to a report W3Techs released today, it doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon. W3Techs' web server survey looks for technologies in use by sites in Alexa's top 10 million list; today's report includes a year-on-year chart beginning with January 2010, running all the way through 2021. The survey only includes top sites not out of elitism, but as one part of its effort to avoid data-skewing returns from domain-parking services and spammers, which would otherwise dominate legitimate websites through sheer volume. Within that dataset, the story told is clear. Apart from PHP—which held a 72.5 percent share in 2010 and holds a 78.9 percent share as of today—only one other server-side language ever broke a 10 percent share. That one competitor is ASP.NET, which held an impressive 24.4 percent share in 2010 but was down to 9.3 percent in January and 8.3 percent this month. Amongst the small fry, the only truly impressive growth to be seen is in Ruby—which at 5.2 percent this month is still seeing continued, uninterrupted growth in W3Techs' survey. This might come as a shock if you're mostly familiar with Ruby on Rails, which itself remains viable but seems to be on the decline in popularity.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/09/php-maintains-an-enormous-lead-in-s… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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EU Study On Impact Of Open Source
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 14 Sep '21

14 Sep '21

The European Commission’s Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology has released a report <https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/13/eu_open_source_study_highlights/> on the economic impact of open source, both software and hardware, within the EU. The report’s authors talked to companies and developers, looked at existing research, surveyed repos on GitHub and ran economic analyses, among other things. Conclusion: there is economic value in open source, but corresponding business investment in it is lacking (though smaller companies tend to be better at this). Also adoption in the public sector can be quite difficult. Further conclusion: if businesses are happy to take but not so keen to give back, then it may be up to Government to give them a nudge in the right direction. One of the authors offered this encouragement: "There are companies that do see the value of contributing back, and some less so… those companies that contribute a lot and are very active in communities see that as an advantage, because when you contribute to it, you can also steer it, know how to fix it… if you have standing in that community, you are more likely to have the community respond to your need."

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Facebook’s Special Rules For VIPs
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 14 Sep '21

14 Sep '21

A report on some leaked documents <https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/09/leaked-documents-reveal-the-spe…> detailing Facebook’s “XCheck” system for exempting certain user accounts from its normal content-moderation rules. The sole reason for the exemption is that, regardless of the rights and wrongs of what they are saying, such users (e.g. politicians, celebrities) can raise a PR storm that can make Facebook look bad, and of course the company wants to avoid that. Except that the list of such special users has now grown to about 5.8 million accounts, which is getting a bit unwieldy. Note this: In the meantime, Facebook plans to assume “good intent” on the part of high-profile users in the program and take an approach of “innocent until proven guilty,” a product manager on Facebook’s Mistakes Prevention Team wrote. Does that sound like basic fairness, rather than arbitrary treatment, to you? If only all their users were treated that way ...

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Mozilla Has Defeated Microsoft's Default Browser Protections in Windows
by Peter Reutemann 14 Sep '21

14 Sep '21

'Mozilla has quietly made it easier to switch to Firefox on Windows recently. From a report: While Microsoft offers a method to switch default browsers on Windows 10, it's more cumbersome than the simple one-click process to switch to Edge. This one-click process isn't officially available for anyone other than Microsoft, and Mozilla appears to have grown tired of the situation. In version 91 of Firefox, released on August 10th, Mozilla has reverse engineered the way Microsoft sets Edge as default in Windows 10, and enabled Firefox to quickly make itself the default. Before this change, Firefox users would be sent to the Settings part of Windows 10 to then have to select Firefox as a default browser and ignore Microsoft's plea to keep Edge. Mozilla's reverse engineering means you can now set Firefox as the default from within the browser, and it does all the work in the background with no additional prompts. This circumvents Microsoft's anti-hijacking protections that the company built into Windows 10 to ensure malware couldn't hijack default apps. Microsoft tells us this is not supported in Windows.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/21/09/13/1527222 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Torvalds Merges Support for Microsoft's NTFS File System, Complains GitHub 'Creates Absolutely Useless Garbage Merges'
by Peter Reutemann 13 Sep '21

13 Sep '21

'"Linux creator Linus Torvalds has agreed to include Paragon Software's NTFS3 kernel driver, giving the Linux kernel 5.15 release improved support for Microsoft's NTFS file system..." reports ZDNet, adding that the driver "will make working with Windows' NTFS drives in Linux an easier task — ending decades of difficulties with Microsoft's proprietary file system that succeeded FAT...." "But he also had some process and security lessons to offer developers about how to code submissions to the kernel should be made." "I notice that you have a GitHub merge commit in there," wrote Torvalds. He continued: "That's another of those things that I *really* don't want to see — GitHub creates absolutely useless garbage merges, and you should never ever use the GitHub interfaces to merge anything...GitHub is a perfectly fine hosting site, and it does a number of other things well too, but merges are not one of those things." Torvalds' chief problem with it was that merges need "proper commit messages with information about [what] is being merged and *why* you merge something." He continued: "But it also means proper authorship and committer information etc. All of which GitHub entirely screws up." TechRadar supplies some more context: One of the shortcomings Torvalds highlighted are GitHub's concise, factually correct, but functionally useless, commit messages. For instance, GitHub's commit message for Paragon's merge read "Merge branch 'torvalds:master' into master", which didn't impress Torvalds one bit... Torvalds also had some pertinent security advice, perhaps useful in light of recent software supply chain cyberattacks that the Linux Foundation wants to address by improving supply chain integrity through tools that make it easier to sign software cryptographically. As Torvalds points out, this is particularly important for new contributors to the Linux kernel. "For GitHub accounts (or really, anything but kernel.org where I can just trust the account management), I really want the pull request to be a signed tag, not just a plain branch," Torvalds explains... Torvalds suggests Paragon do future merges from the command-line.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/21/09/11/2316216 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Linux For Apple Silicon Macs Gets Closer To Reality
by Peter Reutemann 13 Sep '21

13 Sep '21

'"Asahi Linux for Apple M1 Macs is moving closer to reality," writes Slashdot reader TroysBucket. An Asahi developer posted a detailed status update on Twitter. Linux enthusiast Bryan Lunduke offers this succinct summary: - The Asahi Linux team has Linux (Debian, in this case) booting and usable with network support. - They now have (very early) display drivers which "take full advantage of the display hardware." - They have at least two base distributions — both Arch and Debian — working and functional (to some extent). They also have, according to their latest update, "boot picker" support so that you can manually select which OS / Drive to boot from on the M1 Macs... I, for one, can't wait to see the first public, functional release of Asahi Linux — and will be following it extremely closely.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/21/09/12/0044227 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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The Strange Tale of the Freedom Phone
by Peter Reutemann 08 Sep '21

08 Sep '21

'A 22-year-old Bitcoin millionaire wants Republicans to ditch their iPhones for a low-end handset that he hopes to turn into a political tool. From a report: It was a pitch tuned for a politically polarized audience. Erik Finman, a 22-year-old who called himself the world's youngest Bitcoin millionaire, posted a video on Twitter for a new kind of smartphone that he said would liberate Americans from their "Big Tech overlords." His splashy video, posted in July, had stirring music, American flags and references to former Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Donald J. Trump. Conservative pundits hawked Mr. Finman's Freedom Phone, and his video amassed 1.8 million views. Mr. Finman soon had thousands of orders for the $500 device. Then came the hard part: Building and delivering the phones. First, he received bad early reviews for a plan to simply put his software on a cheap Chinese phone. And then there was the unglamorous work of shipping phones, hiring customer-service agents, collecting sales taxes and dealing with regulators. "I feel like practically I was prepared for anything," he said in a recent interview. "But I guess it's kind of like how you hope for world peace, in the sense you don't think it's going to happen." For even the most lavishly funded start-ups, it is hard to compete with tech industry giants that have a death grip on their markets and are valued in the trillions of dollars. Mr. Finman was part of a growing right-wing tech industry taking on the challenge nonetheless, relying more on their conservative customers' distaste for Silicon Valley than expertise or experience. [...] To make a smartphone, however, he had to rely on Google. The company's Android software already works with millions of apps, and Google makes a free, open version of the software for developers to modify. So Mr. Finman hired engineers to strip it of any sign of Google and load it with apps from conservative social networks and news outlets. Then he uploaded the software on phones he bought from China. To unveil the phone, he recorded an infomercial in which he cast the tech companies as enemies of the American way. "Imagine if Mark Zuckerberg banned MLK or Abraham Lincoln," he said in the video. "The course of history would have been altered forever." [...] Thousands of people bought the $500 phone. Others, including some conservatives, quickly panned the animated pitch. Quickly, news outlets reported that the Freedom Phone was based on a low-cost handset from Umidigi, a Chinese manufacturer that had used chips shown to be vulnerable to hacks. Mr. Finman, who marketed the device as "the best phone in the world," was on the defensive. In an interview in July, Mr. Finman admitted that Umidigi made the phone but still said he was "100 percent" sure it was more secure than the latest iPhone. Apple has tens of thousands of engineers. Mr. Finman said he employed 15 people in Utah and Idaho.' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/21/09/07/1450242 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Ghostscript Zero-Day Allows Full Server Compromises
by Peter Reutemann 08 Sep '21

08 Sep '21

'Proof-of-concept exploit code was published online over the weekend for an unpatched Ghostscript vulnerability that puts all servers that rely on the component at risk of attacks. From a report: Published by Vietnamese security researcher Nguyen The Duc, the proof-of-concept code is available on GitHub and was confirmed to work by several of today's leading security researchers. Released back in 1988, Ghostscript is a small library that allows applications to process PDF documents and PostScript-based files. While its primary use is for desktop software, Ghostscript is also used server-side, where it is typically included with image conversion and file upload processing toolkits, such as the popular ImageMagick. The proof-of-concept code released by Nguyen on Sunday exploits this latter scenario, allowing an attacker to upload a malformed SVG file that escapes the image processing pipeline and runs malicious code on the underlying operating system. While Nguyen released the public exploit for this bug, he is not the one who discovered the vulnerability.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/21/09/07/1532205 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Linus Torvalds Jokes About Celebrations for Linux's 30th Anniversary
by Peter Reutemann 05 Sep '21

05 Sep '21

'Despite Linux reaching its 30th anniversary, "most outside the tech industry will be unaware that Linux has reached such a milestone," writes ZDNet, "even though the project has had a huge impact on everything from smartphones to cloud computing." They add that Linus Torvalds "poked fun at that lack of recognition in his usual Sunday release note for a new stable version of the Linux kernel." "So I realize you must all still be busy with all the galas and fancy balls and all the other 30th anniversary events, but at some point you must be getting tired of the constant glitz, the fireworks, and the champagne," Torvalds said. "That ball gown or tailcoat isn't the most comfortable thing, either. The celebrations will go on for a few more weeks yet, but you all may just need a breather from them." Linux 5.14 includes additional features for Intel's Alder Lake mobile-ready CPUs, extra AMD support and better support for the Raspberry Pi 400 PC. "Because 5.14 is out there, just waiting for you to kick the tires and remind yourself what all the festivities are about," notes Torvalds... Torvalds is upbeat about Linux's future, predicting decades more work for the kernel's several thousand contributors who help shape the Linux kernel and drivers. "Of course, the poor tireless kernel maintainers won't have time for the festivities, because for them, this just means that the merge window will start tomorrow. We have another 30 years to look forward to, after all. But for the rest of you, take a breather, build a kernel, test it out, and then you can go back to the seemingly endless party that I'm sure you just crawled out of," he wrote.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/21/09/04/2037241 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Vocus DDoS
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 04 Sep '21

04 Sep '21

Vocus, which owns Orcon, Slingshot, Flip and Stuff Fibre (totalling 15% of NZ broadband users), has suffered a DDoS attack, possibly still ongoing <https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/widespread-internet-outages-across-nz-vocus-h…>. Users in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch were affected from 1:30pm, though some reported services returning by 2:10pm. This has also hit EFTPOS payments.

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Cloudflare Says Intel is Not Inside Its Next-Gen Servers
by Peter Reutemann 02 Sep '21

02 Sep '21

'Internet-grooming company Cloudflare has revealed that it was unable to put Intel inside its new home-brew servers, because they just used too much energy. A Tuesday post by platform operations engineer Chris Howells reveals that Cloudflare has been working on designs for an eleventh-generation server since mid-2020. jaa101 writes: "We evaluated Intel's latest generation of 'Ice Lake' Xeon processors," Howells wrote. "Although Intel's chips were able to compete with AMD in terms of raw performance, the power consumption was several hundred watts higher per server -- that's enormous." Fatally enormous -- Cloudflare's evaluation saw it adopt AMD's 64-core Epyc 7713 for the servers it deploys to over 200 edge locations around the world. Power savings also influenced a decision to go from three disks to two in the new design. A pair of 1.92TB Samsung drives replaced the three of the Korean giant's 960GB units found in previous designs. The net gain was a terabyte of capacity, and six fewer watts of power consumption. Howellls's post also reveals that testing produced data showing that equipping its servers with 512GB of RAM did not produce enough of a performance boost to justify the expense. The company has therefore settled on 384GB of memory, but did jump from DDR4-2933 to DDR4-3200 as the slight cost increase delivered a justifiable performance boost.' -- source: https://slashdot.org/story/21/09/01/1917257 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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On-Prem Windows Server: Are Its Days Numbered?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 31 Aug '21

31 Aug '21

Microsoft has released yet another typically confusing update on the future of its family of Windows Server products <https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/28/windows_server_2022_sac/>. What’s clear from the details is that development is primarily going into the cloudy versions of Windows Server, with those who prefer to manage their own instances on their own hardware being increasingly left behind: At a high level, it seems that Microsoft is investing in Azure and [Azure Kubernetes Service], and that on-premises Windows Server users are in some respects being left behind. It is notable, for example, that Active Directory's functional level has not changed since Windows Server 2016, and this remains the case in Server 2022. ... SMB over QUIC, which promises secure access to Windows file shares from anywhere, is another key feature which will be available only in Windows Server Azure Edition. The article notes that on-prem Windows Server being slowly moved to the back burner in this way “will not go down well with on-premises users, nor perhaps with rival clouds running Windows Server”. But then again, given that Microsoft’s own cloud offerings are predominantly Linux-based, I can’t see other cloud services doing any better with Windows.

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ESR On GitHub
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 29 Aug '21

29 Aug '21

NZ’s Institute of Environmental Science and Research (more commonly known as ESR) has a GitHub area at <https://github.com/ESR-NZ>. There are a few repos related to the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. The data repo <https://github.com/ESR-NZ/NZ_COVID19_Data> in particular shows a nice attitude to openness: the data files are in CSV format, and the licence is CC-BY. I see quite a lot of use of Python and Jupyter there. Also some mention of .xlsx files ... hmmm ...

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Software Microsoft Trusts To Run As Admin
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 27 Aug '21

27 Aug '21

You may have heard of this security bug involving Razer gaming mice <https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/08/need-to-get-root-on-…>. Basically, when you plug such a mouse into a Windows system, it automatically downloads and runs an installer “wizard”, which opens a File Explorer window to let you choose where to actually put the additional software. However, this File Explorer instance is running with full admin privileges, without the user’s prior knowledge or consent. How does this happen? Because the buggy version of the installer has been accepted as part of Microsoft’s “Windows Catalog”, which means your Windows installation trusts it with extra privileges purely on Microsoft’s say so. As if we needed another reminder that, with a proprietary OS, you are never really in control of your own systems ...

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Happy Birthday, Linux: From a Bedroom Project To Billions of Devices in 30 Years
by Peter Reutemann 26 Aug '21

26 Aug '21

'On August 25, 1991, Linus Torvalds, then a student at the University of Helsinki in Finland, sent a message to the comp.os.minix newsgroup soliciting feature suggestions for a free Unix-like operating system he was developing as a hobby. Thirty years later, that software, now known as Linux, is everywhere. From a report: It dominates the supercomputer world, with 100 per cent market share. According to Google, the Linux kernel is at the heart of more than three billion active devices running Android, the most-used operating system in the world. Linux also powers the vast majority of web-facing servers Netcraft surveyed. It is even used more than Microsoft Windows on Microsoft's own Azure cloud. And then there are the embedded electronics and Internet-of-Things spaces, and other areas. Linux has failed to gain traction among mainstream desktop users, where it has a market share of about 2.38 per cent, or 3.59 per cent if you include ChromeOS, compared to Windows (73.04 per cent) and macOS (15.43 per cent). But the importance of Linux has more to do with the triumph of an idea: of free, open-source software. "It cannot be overstated how critical Linux is to today's internet ecosystem," Kees Cook, security and Linux kernel engineer at Google, told The Register via email. "Linux currently runs on everything from the smartphone we rely on everyday to the International Space Station. To rely on the internet is to rely on Linux." The next 30 years of Linux, Cook contends, will require the tech industry to work together on security and to provide more resources for maintenance and testing.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/21/08/25/1751220 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Software For Estimating Fertilizer, Effluent Leaches From Farmland Is Flawed
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 23 Aug '21

23 Aug '21

In a report in this evening’s TV1 news, NZ farmers have been using a piece of software to help them estimate their environmental groundwater impact that, according to some reports, is giving wildly inaccurate results <https://1news.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/software-estimating-much-fertilise…>. The minister is looking into whether it can be fixed, or whether it needs to be replaced. Given its taxpayer funding (at least in part), why isn’t it open-sourced? Stick it on GitHub, and watch the hordes of would-be fixers descend. ;)

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Level 4
by Peter Reutemann 22 Aug '21

22 Aug '21

Hi everyone With NZ going into level 4 at midnight, we will follow the guidelines that the government and university implement next week. If we shouldn't be able to meet in person, we can fall back on a virtual meeting via BigBlueButton. Well keep you posted. Stay safe everyone! Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/.

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Musings On Symlinks And Security
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 19 Aug '21

19 Aug '21

I published a Blender addon <https://github.com/ldo/blendgit/> that lets you use Git to track versions of Blender documents and associated files. This addon makes heavy use of both hard links and symlinks in order to set up the directory tree snapshots correctly. Every now and then a Windows user tries to run it, and it fails for them with the peculiar error “symbolic link privilege not held”. It seems Microsoft added the ability to create symlinks in Windows back around the time of Windows Vista or 7 or so. But it puts a major obstacle in the way of users attempting to use this facility: you need to enter yourself into a special privilege group <https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/cf9d0948-b80e-436e-b5c4-8ca8…>. Or take the standard Windows lazy way out, and simply “run as administrator”. On Linux and other POSIXy systems, creating links is just a routine operation; why does Windows treat it as such a sensitive issue? In fact, even in the POSIX world, symbolic links can be a source of security problems <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symlink_race>. Symlinks were invented at the University of California at Berkeley way back in the early days of their BSD work, and the security implications only became apparent later. By that time, I think, they had become so useful and commonplace that no one wanted to get rid of them. So the workarounds were created, as the holes were uncovered. These days, the techniques have become commonplace, embedded in various library/system routines that will work securely without you having to give them a second thought. But on Windows, the whole concept is still new and untried (even after over a decade!). Very few people know how to use them, because when they try, they encounter the privilege restrictions, and that puts them off. And so the application developers hardly ever encounter the need to deal with them. And so they never become a commonplace facility that application software can be trusted to deal with.

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SerenityOS: Homage To The 1990s
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 19 Aug '21

19 Aug '21

Here <https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/not-a-linux-distro-review-serenityo…> is a review of SerenityOS, a complete open-source POSIXy OS that does not use any GNU, Linux or BSD code. The review spends a lot of time on the GUI, which is consciously designed around a 1990s aesthetic. As usual, this sort of thing leaves me wondering “you could implement that whole look and feel on top of a Linux kernel, so why make your own?”. Then, further down, we get to this: Some of the paradigm shifts Kling and fellow contributors have introduced are neither weird nor trivial, though. SerenityOS's kernel, for example, exposes its internals as JSON rather than unstructured text. System utilities consuming kernel information therefore have a much simpler time of formatting it for display and/or internal decisions. Aha! Now there is something which could very well have a point. Though the Linux approach is to have the information exposed in these kernel pseudo-files in a simple (not unstructured!) text format that is both easy to parse and also somewhat comprehensible to a human viewer (which is harder to say of JSON). If you want to pass around object streams in a Linux command line, jq <https://github.com/stedolan/jq> is available as a standard Debian package, for doing precisely this sort of manipulation of JSON-formatted data. (Is that someone in Microsoft’s PowerShell group saying “I told you so!” ... ?)

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Google's Fuchsia OS Is Rolling Out Widely To 1st-Gen Nest Hubs
by Peter Reutemann 19 Aug '21

19 Aug '21

'More owners of the first-generation Nest Hub are receiving the update to Google's Fuchsia operating system as it expands beyond the Preview program. 9to5Google reports: Back in May, Google formally released Fuchsia, its effort to develop a "not Linux" operating system from scratch, which has been years in the making. The first device to receive the new OS was Google's 2018 smart display, the Nest Hub -- not to be confused with the second generation Nest Hub with sleep tracking released earlier this year -- taking it permanently off of the existing Linux based "Cast OS" without negatively affecting the UI or experience. At the time, the rollout of Fuchsia was limited to a select few devices that were enrolled in the "Preview program" available to all devices via the Google Home app. Over time, the number of Nest Hubs running Fuchsia was expanded, with Google no doubt watching carefully for any issues with the upgrade. Late last week, Google updated a support page to reflect that the Nest Hub has received a new firmware update for both the Preview program and all other devices. Specifically, the first-gen Nest Hub is now receiving firmware version 1.52.260996. Google confirmed to us that this update does indeed include the upgrade to Fuchsia. All goes well, this means in a matter of days, all first-gen Nest Hub devices in households around the world should be running Fuchsia. ' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/21/08/18/2056255 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Firewalls and Middleboxes Can Be Weaponized For Gigantic DDoS Attacks
by Peter Reutemann 18 Aug '21

18 Aug '21

'In an award-winning paper last week, academics said they discovered a way to abuse the TCP protocol, firewalls, and other network middleboxes to launch giant distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against any target on the internet. Authored by computer scientists from the University of Maryland and the University of Colorado Boulder, the research is the first of its kind to describe a method to carry out DDoS reflective amplification attacks via the TCP protocol, previously thought to be unusable for such operations. Making matters worse, researchers said the amplification factor for these TCP-based attacks is also far larger than UDP protocols, making TCP protocol abuse one of the most dangerous forms of carrying out a DDoS attack known to date and very likely to be abused in the future.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/21/08/17/1941202 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Linux Glibc Security Fix Created a Nastier Linux Bug
by Peter Reutemann 17 Aug '21

17 Aug '21

'A fix that was made in early June to the GNU C Library (glibc) introduced a new and nastier problem. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes via ZDNet: The first problem wasn't that bad. As Siddhesh Poyarekar, a Red Hat principal software engineer wrote, "In order to mount a minimal attack using this flaw, an attacker needs many pre-requisites to be able to even crash a program using this mq_notify bug." Still, it needed patching and so it was fixed. Alas, the fix contained an even nastier bug. While checking the patch, Nikita Popov, a member of the CloudLinux TuxCare Team, found the problem. It turns out that it is possible to cause a situation where a segmentation fault could be triggered within the library. This can lead to any application using the library crashing. This, of course, would cause a Denial-of-Service (DoS) issue. This problem, unlike the earlier one, would be much easier to trigger. Whoops. Red Hat gives the problem in its Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) a score of 7.5, which is "high." An attack using it would be easy to build and requires no privileges to be made. In short, it's bad news. Popov himself thinks "every Linux application including interpreters of other languages (python, PHP) is linked with glibc. It's the second important thing after the kernel itself, so the impact is quite high." [...] The good news is both the vulnerability and code fix have been submitted to the glibc development team. It has already been incorporated into upstream glibc. In addition, a new test has been submitted to glibc's automated test suite to pick up this situation and prevent it from happening in the future. The bottom line is sometimes changed in unrelated code paths can lead to behaviors changing elsewhere without the programmer realizing what's going on. This test will catch this situation. The Linux distributors are still working out the best way to deploy the fix. In the meantime, if you want to be extra careful -- and I think you should be -- you should upgrade to the newest stable version of glibc 2.34 or higher. ' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/21/08/16/2131221 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Debian 11 'Bullseye' Released As Stable
by Peter Reutemann 16 Aug '21

16 Aug '21

'"One of the oldest and most renowned distributions of Linux has been released!" âwrites Slashdot reader Washuu2. Phoronix reports it took "just over two years in development." Debian 11 brings many new features as outlined this morning with the big upgrade to Linux 5.10 LTS, exFAT file-system support, control groups v2, yescrypt for password hashing, and a plethora of updated packages. GNOME 3.38, KDE Plasma 5.20, and Xfce 4.16 are among the desktop options for Debian 11. Debian.org adds: Do you want to celebrate the release? We provide some bullseye artwork that you can share or use as base for your own creations. Follow the conversation about bullseye in social media via the #ReleasingDebianBullseye and #Debian11Bullseye hashtags... Around the world, there were even several in-person and online release parties — with a few more upcoming!' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/21/08/15/171228 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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meeting this month
by Peter Reutemann 16 Aug '21

16 Aug '21

Hi everyone At this stage, we don't have any talk(s) lined up for our meeting this month. Anybody feeling like a quick show and tell about some software or project that they've been working on lately? Or another topic that they'd like to discuss? Thanks! Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

1 1

“Androids”: A History Of The Development Of The Android Operating System
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 15 Aug '21

15 Aug '21

Chet Haase, one of the Android engineers, has published a book called “Androids”, giving an account of the early development of the mobile OS. A review is here <https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/review-androids-is-a-developer-comm…>, and an excerpt is here <https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/08/excerpt-the-history-…>. Before Android the company got acquired by Google, they were shopping themselves around to various groups of venture capitalists. From the beginning, the platform was going to be built on Open Source components like the Linux kernel. So how were they going to make money, if the main part of the platform was being given away for free? The initial answer was to offer paid-for services that would be resold by the carriers. This whole idea went away after the Google acquisition. Interesting to review the state of play at the time Android Inc were pitching their new OS: Symbian had some support from different vendors, but surprisingly (to me, at least), it left the whole UI layer up to the device maker, with no attempt at standardization between vendors. How were you to write portable apps in that situation? No wonder it had limited uptake. Sun were offering Java ME for mobile devices, but again, this was subject to differing, not-quite-compatible “profiles” for different devices, further complicating the headache of writing code to run across those devices. As I understand it, it also ran just a single Java VM on the device which had to be shared across all applications, which made it totally unsuited to a modern multitasking OS. The Hiptop device from Danger, Inc also gets a mention. Not a few people considered it probably the best mobile device to come out up to that point. Not mentioned in the above is that Microsoft acquired Danger. But because its platform was built on Java, which Microsoft had an allergy to, they wasted 18 months of product development time excising the Java dependency, totally losing the window of opportunity for releasing a new device. When the Kin finally came out, it probably held the world record for some product category for the shortest time on the market before being heavily discounted in clearance sales (about a month). One key point is that, when Google acquired Android, they continued to let it run like an independent company, at least for the first few years. This allowed the innovation to continue to flourish ... at least for a while.

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Fwd: [NZLUG] Call for Proposals - Sysadmin Miniconf at Linux.conf.au 2022
by Peter Reutemann 13 Aug '21

13 Aug '21

Apologies for cross-posting, but you might be interested in the call for papers outlined below. Cheers, Peter ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Simon Lyall <simon(a)darkmere.gen.nz> Date: Thu, Aug 12, 2021 at 11:29 PM Subject: [NZLUG] Call for Proposals - Sysadmin Miniconf at Linux.conf.au 2022 To: NZ Linux Users Group <nzlug(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz> The Call for Proposals is now up for the Sysadmin Miniconf at Linux.conf.au 2022. The Miniconf is on January 14th and the rest of the conference is the 2 days afterwards. All events are online. We are looking for 30 minute long Operations-related talks. We'd particularly love your War Stories about responding to the global pandemic and general work for home, or how you avoided earning war stories. The good news is that all talks accepted to the Miniconf get a free ticket for the whole of the conference! The bad news is that the CFP closes in just over 3 weeks from now on September 5th. So don't delay getting your proposal in. See our long CFP for more details: https://sysadmin.miniconf.org/cfp22.html Then Register and Login the the Conference dashboard to submit a proposal: https://linux.conf.au/dashboard -- Simon Lyall | Very Busy | Web: http://www.simonlyall.com/ "To stay awake all night adds a day to your life" - Stilgar _______________________________________________ NZLUG mailing list NZLUG(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz http://lists.nzoss.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/nzlug -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Centralization Versus Decentralization On The Internet
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 12 Aug '21

12 Aug '21

A thoughtful, at times somewhat technical article <https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/11/decentralized_internet/> on the original philosophy of the designers of the Internet that nothing should be centralized, and how that was modified somewhat with the concept of “Software-Defined Networking”, without compromising the robustness of a decentralized underlying framework. The World-Wide Web, on the other hand, is a very different matter: rampant centralization, not just at the level of social-media networks and cloud services, but also at the lower layer of “Content-Delivery Networks” (CDNs) has led to the creation of way too many of what the engineers call SPOFs (“Single Points Of Failure”), where a breakdown in any of these can lead to a complete failure of any number of services that have become crucially dependent on them. Is the pendulum swinging away from centralization now? The author seems to think so; but I suspect the fat profit margins are still driving things in the wrong direction.

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Firefox 91 Pushes Privacy With Stronger New Cookie-clearing Option
by Peter Reutemann 11 Aug '21

11 Aug '21

'WIth the release of Firefox 91 on Tuesday, Mozilla has introduced a bigger hammer for smashing the cookies that websites, advertisers and tracking companies can use to record your online behavior. From a report: The new feature, called enhanced cookie clearing, is designed to block tracking not just from a website, but also from third parties whose code appears on the site. The technology is designed to let you clear cookies for a particular website but also the more aggressive "supercookies" designed to evade lesser privacy protections. The feature is an option if you enable Firefox's strict mode for cookie handling, which partitions website data into separate storage containers. "You can easily recognize and remove all data a website has stored on your computer, without having to worry about leftover data from third parties embedded in that website," Mozilla said in a blog post. ' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/21/08/10/1637219 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Re: DMARC enforced
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 09 Aug '21

09 Aug '21

On Mon, 9 Aug 2021 13:09:11 +1200, Peter Reutemann via wlug wrote: > "The university will be changing the DMARC action for the domain space > waikato.ac.nz from quarantine to reject on Monday 16th August." Just been looking at the DMARC overview <https://dmarc.org/overview/>, and I think there is some confusion here. What the University is doing is changing the recommended action for other MTAs receiving mail purporting to come _from_ the waikato.ac.nz domain, not the action it takes on receiving mail sent _to_ the waikato.ac.nz domain. In other words, this shouldn’t really make any difference to members of this list. If the systems that pick up their mail do DMARC checks, this shouldn’t matter (assuming the Uni sysadmins haven’t misconfigured anything ;)); if they don’t, it doesn’t matter anyway.

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Re: DMARC enforced
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 09 Aug '21

09 Aug '21

On Mon, 9 Aug 2021 13:09:11 +1200, Peter Reutemann via wlug wrote: > Just received an email from the IT department: > "The university will be changing the DMARC action for the domain space > waikato.ac.nz from quarantine to reject on Monday 16th August." What was the effect of “quarantine” before? Would it have been causing delays in posts getting through? (Because I don’t think I noticed any on mine.) On a further look, I found the following header line in the echo of my last posting back to myself: spf=pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of ldo(a)geek-central.gen.nz designates 72.249.182.57 as permitted sender) So it seems like Google’s algorithms are smart enough to figure out that my mail is coming from an address associated with that domain.

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Re: DMARC enforced
by David McNab 09 Aug '21

09 Aug '21

And for added 'fun' (as opposed to fun), we just need outside senders' mailservers to quietly drop the resulting NDR messages :P On Mon, 9 Aug 2021 at 13:09, Peter Reutemann via wlug < wlug(a)list.waikato.ac.nz> wrote: > > > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Peter Reutemann <fracpete(a)waikato.ac.nz> > To: wlug List <wlug(a)list.waikato.ac.nz> > Cc: > Bcc: > Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2021 13:09:11 +1200 > Subject: [wlug] DMARC enforced > Hi everyone > > Just received an email from the IT department: > "The university will be changing the DMARC action for the domain space > waikato.ac.nz from quarantine to reject on Monday 16th August." > > However, for mailing lists they put some mitigation options in place. > > Please let me know if you encounter any problems posting to the WLUG > list (starting next week). > > Cheers, Peter > -- > Peter Reutemann > Dept. of Computer Science > University of Waikato, NZ > +64 (7) 577-5304 > http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ > http://www.data-mining.co.nz/ > > > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Peter Reutemann via wlug <wlug(a)list.waikato.ac.nz> > To: wlug List <wlug(a)list.waikato.ac.nz> > Cc: Peter Reutemann <fracpete(a)waikato.ac.nz> > Bcc: > Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2021 13:09:11 +1200 > Subject: [wlug] DMARC enforced > _______________________________________________ > wlug mailing list -- wlug(a)list.waikato.ac.nz | To unsubscribe send an > email to wlug-leave(a)list.waikato.ac.nz > Unsubscribe: > https://list.waikato.ac.nz/postorius/lists/wlug.list.waikato.ac.nz >

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