- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

The Debian usrmerge Package
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 27 Jul '21

27 Jul '21

There is a package in Debian (and no doubt also in its derivatives) called “usrmerge” <https://wiki.debian.org/UsrMerge>. The mere act of installing this will perform a “usr merge” on your system, which means that the contents of /bin are merged with /usr/bin, with the former becoming just a symlink to the latter, and similarly /sbin merged into /usr/sbin, and /lib merged into /usr/lib. Back in the last century, when hard drives were smaller, it was standard practice to put only the minimum core of executables and libraries into /bin, /sbin and /lib that would allow the system to boot into a state where a sysadmin could perform some basic maintenance tasks. All the less crucial, but nice to have stuff, would be in /usr, which would be mounted as a separate disk or partition. This way, I suppose, problems with the /usr volume could be fixed without the entire system becoming unbootable. These days, such a division is considered an anachronism. Debian hasn’t supported booting without /usr available for a long while now. I think some other distros, like Fedora, made the move a long time ago. And if you have problems with your OS partition, it’s easier to boot and fix things with something like SystemRescueCD anyway. Note that the usr merge, once performed, is not (easily) reversible. Also note that new Debian installs have been creating a merged usr system since version 10.

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Microsoft Warns of 'Evolving' LemonDuck Mining Malware Targeting Linux and Windows Machines
by Peter Reutemann 26 Jul '21

26 Jul '21

'The threat intelligence team for Microsoft's 365 Defender security suite recently focused on an example of "modern mining malware infrastructure," describing how "Anything that can gain access to machines — even so-called commodity malware — can bring in more dangerous threats." Specifically, it offered a case study of LemonDuck. The blog post's title? "When coin miners evolve..." Today, beyond using resources for its traditional bot and mining activities, LemonDuck steals credentials, removes security controls, spreads via emails, moves laterally, and ultimately drops more tools for human-operated activity. LemonDuck's threat to enterprises is also in the fact that it's a cross-platform threat. It's one of a few documented bot malware families that targets Linux systems as well as Windows devices. It uses a wide range of spreading mechanisms — phishing emails, exploits, USB devices, brute force, among others — and it has shown that it can quickly take advantage of news, events, or the release of new exploits to run effective campaigns... Notably, LemonDuck removes other attackers from a compromised device by getting rid of competing malware and preventing any new infections by patching the same vulnerabilities it used to gain access... LemonDuck spreads in a variety of ways, but the two main methods are (1) compromises that are either edge-initiated or facilitated by bot implants moving laterally within an organization, or (2) bot-initiated email campaigns. LemonDuck acts as a loader for many other follow-on activities, but one if its main functions is to spread by compromising other systems. Since its first appearance, the LemonDuck operators have leveraged scans against both Windows and Linux devices for open or weakly authenticated SMB, Exchange, SQL, Hadoop, REDIS, RDP, or other edge devices that might be vulnerable to password spray or application vulnerabilities... Other common methods of infection include movement within the compromised environment, as well as through USB and connected drives. These processes are often kicked off automatically and have occurred consistently throughout the entirety of LemonDuck's operation.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/21/07/25/2112228 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/

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Mozilla Stops FTP Support in Firefox 90
by Peter Reutemann 25 Jul '21

25 Jul '21

'A post on Mozilla's security blog calls FTP "by now one of the oldest protocols still in use" — and it's suffering from "a number of serious security issues." The biggest security risk is that FTP transfers data in cleartext, allowing attackers to steal, spoof and even modify the data transmitted. To date, many malware distribution campaigns launch their attacks by compromising FTP servers and downloading malware on an end user's device using the FTP protocol. Aligning with our intent to deprecate non-secure HTTP and increase the percentage of secure connections, we, as well as other major web browsers, decided to discontinue support of the FTP protocol. Removing FTP brings us closer to a fully-secure web which is on a path to becoming HTTPS only and any modern automated upgrading mechanisms such as HSTS or also Firefox's HTTPS-Only Mode, which automatically upgrade any connection to become secure and encrypted do not apply to FTP. The FTP protocol itself has been disabled by default since version 88 and now the time has come to end an era and discontinue the support for this outdated and insecure protocol — Firefox 90 will no longer support the FTP protocol.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/21/07/24/0213220 There is always FileZilla: https://filezilla-project.org/ 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/

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Researchers Found a Malicious NPM Package Using Chrome's Password-Recovery Tools
by Peter Reutemann 25 Jul '21

25 Jul '21

'Threatpost reports on "another vast software supply-chain attack" that was "found lurking in the npm open-source code repository...a credentials-stealing code bomb" that used the password-recovery tools in Google's Chrome web browser. Researchers caught the malware filching credentials from Chrome on Windows systems. The password-stealer is multifunctional: It also listens for incoming commands from the attacker's command-and-control (C2) server and can upload files, record from a victim's screen and camera, and execute shell commands... ReversingLabs researchers, who published their findings in a Wednesday post, said that during an analysis of the code repository, they found an interesting embedded Windows executable file: a credential-stealing threat. Labeled "Win32.Infostealer.Heuristics", it showed up in two packages: nodejs_net_server and temptesttempfile. At least for now, the first, main threat is nodejs_net_server. Some details: nodejs_net_server: A package with 12 published versions and a total of more than 1,300 downloads since it was first published in February 2019...finally upgrading it last December with a script to download the password-stealer, which the developer hosts on a personal website. It was subsequently tweaked to run TeamViewer.exe instead, "probably because the author didn't want to have such an obvious connection between the malware and their website," researchers theorized... ReversingLabs contacted the npm security team on July 2 to give them a heads-up about the nodejs_net_server and tempdownloadtempfile packages and circled back once again last week, on Thursday, since the team still hadn't removed the packages from the repository. When Threatpost reached out to npm Inc., which maintains the repository, a GitHub spokesperson sent this statement: "Both packages were removed following our investigation...."' -- source: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/21/07/24/0152218 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/

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'Reading about Firefox makes it seem a faster web browser than Chrome'
by Matthew Skiffington 25 Jul '21

25 Jul '21

Spotted in New Scientist, who sadly paywall everything. 'Going into the test, people overall tended to view Chrome as faster than Firefox (~39 per cent to ~31 per cent). While the researchers noted that many participants brought their own strong brand preferences, priming participants had an effect that overcame the inertia of that affinity. "When respondents read one of the priming articles, we saw a prevalence of the priming effect over brand preferences, providing support for the hypothesis that Firefox is faster after reading about Firefox improvements," the researchers said.' https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/11/mozilla_google_speed/ https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.06181 <https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/11/mozilla_google_speed/> Cognitive psychology + UX/UI, nifty. Cheers, Matthew *Doctoral Researcher, TAIAO project <https://taiao.ai/>Machine Learning Laboratory, FG.2.01LinkedIn <https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-skiffington>*

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'Update to Windows Defender will delete files Microsoft doesn't want to exist'
by Matthew Skiffington 23 Jul '21

23 Jul '21

Stumbled across something interesting on r/datahoarder, xpost from r/sysadmin. https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/oopz4c/update_to_windows_defe… Cheers, Matthew *Doctoral Researcher, TAIAO project <https://taiao.ai/>Machine Learning Laboratory, FG.2.01LinkedIn <https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-skiffington>*

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Do Software Bugs Really Cost 100× More To Fix In Production Than In Testing?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 23 Jul '21

23 Jul '21

There is an oft-cited claim that if you let a bug get into production code, the cost of fixing it increases a hundredfold, compared to if you had flushed it out during testing. This report <https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/22/bugs_expense_bs/> looks into the basis of that claim, and it seems to originate from a book published in 1987, which gave it a reference “[IBM81]”, which was “course notes at the IBM System Sciences Institute”. Only there was no such “Institute”, it seems it was really just the name for an internal training program for IBM employees. It also seems a related claim, that “defects cost more to fix the later you fix them”, also has weak, if any, empirical support. Nowhere in there is the issue of “technical debt” addressed, though. That is real, and can be very costly, and its costs do increase over time.

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Say hi to Microsoft's own Linux: CBL-Mariner
by Peter Reutemann 23 Jul '21

23 Jul '21

'Ok, so it's not named MS-Linux or Lindows, but Microsoft now has its very own, honest-to-goodness general-purpose Linux distribution: Common Base Linux, (CBL)-Mariner. And, just like any Linux distro, you can download it and run it yourself. Amazing isn't it? Why the next thing you know Microsoft will let you run Windows applications on Linux! Oh, wait it has!' -- source: https://www.zdnet.com/article/say-hi-to-microsofts-own-linux-cbl-mariner/ 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/

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Google Pushed a One-Character Typo To Production, Bricking Chrome OS Devices
by Peter Reutemann 23 Jul '21

23 Jul '21

'Google says it has fixed a major Chrome OS bug that locked users out of their devices. Google's bulletin says that Chrome OS version 91.0.4472.165, which was briefly available this week, renders users unable to log in to their devices, essentially bricking them. From a report: Chrome OS automatically downloads updates and switches to the new version after a reboot, so users who reboot their devices are suddenly locked out them. The go-to advice while this broken update is out there is to not reboot. The bulletin says that a new build, version 91.0.4472.167, is rolling out now to fix the issue, but it could take a "few days" to hit everyone. Users affected by the bad update can either wait for the device to update again or "powerwash" their device -- meaning wipe all the local data -- to get logged in. Chrome OS is primarily cloud-based, so if you're not doing something advanced like running Linux apps, this solution presents less of an inconvenience than it would on other operating systems. Still, some users are complaining about lost data.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/21/07/22/1955245 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/

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16-Year-Old HP Printer-Driver Bug Impacts Millions of Windows Machines
by Peter Reutemann 22 Jul '21

22 Jul '21

'Researchers have released technical details on a high-severity privilege-escalation flaw in HP printer drivers (also used by Samsung and Xerox), which impacts hundreds of millions of Windows machines. If exploited, cyberattackers could bypass security products; install programs; view, change, encrypt or delete data; or create new accounts with more extensive user rights. The bug (CVE-2021-3438) has lurked in systems for 16 years, researchers at SentinelOne said, but was only uncovered this year. It carries an 8.8 out of 10 rating on the CVSS scale, making it high-severity. According to researchers, the vulnerability exists in a function inside the driver that accepts data sent from User Mode via Input/Output Control (IOCTL); it does so without validating the size parameter. As the name suggests, IOCTL is a system call for device-specific input/output operations. "This function copies a string from the user input using 'strncpy' with a size parameter that is controlled by the user," according to SentinelOne's analysis, released on Tuesday. "Essentially, this allows attackers to overrun the buffer used by the driver." Thus, unprivileged users can elevate themselves into a SYSTEM account, allowing them to run code in kernel mode, since the vulnerable driver is locally available to anyone, according to the firm. The printer-based attack vector is perfect for cybercriminals, according to SentinelOne, since printer drivers are essentially ubiquitous on Windows machines and are automatically loaded on every startup. "Thus, in effect, this driver gets installed and loaded without even asking or notifying the user," explained the researchers. "Whether you are configuring the printer to work wirelessly or via a USB cable, this driver gets loaded. In addition, it will be loaded by Windows on every boot. This makes the driver a perfect candidate to target since it will always be loaded on the machine even if there is no printer connected." -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/21/07/21/2235207 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/

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Adding Custom Entries To A Create-New-Document Menu
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 22 Jul '21

22 Jul '21

If you look at a file/folder view in various of the common GUI file managers, you should see a contextual menu item with a name like “Create New”, showing a submenu of different document types (e.g. “Text File...”, “Spread Sheet Document...”) that you can create in that location. Select an item, it asks you for a name for the new document, and it creates it under that name, as a copy of the template provided for that document type. You can then click to open the newly-created document in the corresponding app and continue working with it in the usual way. This is an alternative to launching the app, creating a new untitled document, then using its “Save-As” function to name the document file. Of course, you can easily create your own templates. On KDE, when I type kde4-config --path templates to find out where a KDE-based file manager like Dolphin finds these templates, it reports /home/ldo/.kde/share/templates/:/usr/share/templates/ The latter contains templates installed systemwide by repo packages, while the former can contain whatever I like. As to the format of these template files? They are just another variation on the ever-popular text-based .desktop file format, which is used for example to define entries in your application menu, and icons on the desktop (for those who like that sort of thing). Oddly, the official spec for this only briefly mentions <https://specifications.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/ar01s06.ht…> “Type=Link”, without explaining this option further (that I can find). But some searching found this useful post <https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=224&t=119342> on the KDE user forums. For example, if I look at /usr/share/templates/Illustration.desktop on my system, besides all the localized versions of the name to show for this option, there are the lines Type=Link URL=.source/Illustration.odg That “URL” is actually a file path relative to the .desktop file itself, referencing a document template to be copied as the initial state of the new document. Looking in the referenced directory, /usr/share/templates/.source/, I do indeed see the file Illustration.odg, along with many others. The association of the file extension with the app, in this case LibreOffice Draw, is handled through a separate spec, the shared MIME database <https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/shared-mime-info-spec/>. This is also widely supported by GUI desktop environments.

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PlasticArm is a 32-bit bendable processor
by Peter Reutemann 22 Jul '21

22 Jul '21

'Wearable electronics, like watches and fitness trackers, represent the next logical step in computing. They've sparked an interest in the development of flexible electronics, which could expand the category to include products like clothing and backpacks. Flexible electronics run into a problem, however: Our processing hardware is anything but flexible. Most efforts to deal with that limitation have involved splitting up processors into a collection of smaller units, linking them with flexible wiring, and then embedding all the components in a flexible polymer. To an extent, the process is a throwback to the early days of computing, when a floating-point unit might reside on a separate chip. But a group within the semiconductor company Arm has now managed to implement one of the company's smaller embedded designs using flexible silicon. The design works and executes all the instructions you'd expect from it, but it also illustrates the compromises we have to make to produce truly flexible electronics.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/07/researchers-build-a-bendable-arm-pr… 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/

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Audacity’s new owner is in another fight with the open source community
by Peter Reutemann 21 Jul '21

21 Jul '21

'Muse Group—owner of the popular audio-editing app Audacity—is in hot water with the open source community again. This time, the controversy isn't over Audacity—it's about MuseScore, an open source application which allows musicians to create, share, and download musical scores (especially, but not only, in the form of sheet music). The MuseScore app itself is licensed GPLv3, which gives developers the right to fork its source and modify it. One such developer, Wenzheng Tang ("Xmader" on GitHub) went considerably further than modifying the app—he also created separate apps designed to bypass MuseScore Pro subscription fees. After thoroughly reviewing the public comments made by both sides at GitHub, Ars spoke at length with Muse Group's Head of Strategy Daniel Ray—known on GitHub by the moniker "workedintheory"—to get to the bottom of the controversy.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/07/audacitys-new-owner-is-in-another-f… 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/

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Nasty Linux Systemd Security Bug Revealed
by Peter Reutemann 21 Jul '21

21 Jul '21

'Qualys has discovered a new systemd security bug that enables any unprivileged user to cause a denial of service via a kernel panic. Slashdot reader inode_buddha shares the news via ZDNet's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols: As Bharat Jogi, Qualys's senior manager of Vulnerabilities and Signatures, wrote, "Given the breadth of the attack surface for this vulnerability, Qualys recommends users apply patches for this vulnerability immediately." You can say that again. Systemd is used in almost all modern Linux distributions. This particular security hole arrived in the systemd code in April 2015. It works by enabling attackers to misuse the alloca() function in a way that would result in memory corruption. This, in turn, allows a hacker to crash systemd and hence the entire operating system. Practically speaking, this can be done by a local attacker mounting a filesystem on a very long path. This causes too much memory space to be used in the systemd stack, which results in a system crash. That's the bad news. The good news is that Red Hat Product Security and systemd's developers have immediately patched the hole. ' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/21/07/20/211230 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/

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Experimental Rust Support Patches Submitted to Linux Kernel Mailing List
by Peter Reutemann 21 Jul '21

21 Jul '21

'"The Rust for Linux project, sponsored by Google, has advanced..." reported the Register earlier this week: A new set of patches submitted to the Linux kernel mailing list summarizes the progress of the project to enable Rust to be used alongside C for implementing the Linux kernel. The progress is significant. - ARM and RISC-V architectures are now supported, thanks to work on rustc_codgen_gcc, which is a GCC codegen for rustc. This means that rustc does the initial compilation of Rust code but GCC (the GNU Compiler Collection) does the backend compilation, enabling support for the architectures that GCC supports... - Overall, "the Rust support is still to be considered experimental. However, as noted back in April, support is good enough that kernel developers can start working on the Rust abstractions for subsystems and write drivers and other modules," continued project leader Miguel Ojeda, a computer scientist at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, now working full time on Rust for Linux... There is substantial support for the project across the industry. Google said in April "we feel that Rust is now ready to join C as a practical language for implementing the kernel" and that it would reduce the number of potential bugs and security vulnerabilities. Google is sponsoring Ojeda to work full time on the project for a year, via the ISRG (Internet Security Research Group), which said last month that it is part of "efforts to move the internet's critical software infrastructure to memory safe code," under the project name Prossimo. The ISRG is also the nonprofit organisation behind Let's Encrypt free security certificates. Ojeda also mentioned that Microsoft's Linux Systems Group is contributing and hopes to submit "select Hyper-V drivers written in Rust." Arm is promising assistance with Rust for Linux on ARM-based systems. IBM has contributed Rust kernel support for its PowerPC processor. More detail is promised at the forthcoming Linux Plumber's Conference in September. In the meantime, the project is on GitHub here. "In addition, we would like to announce that we are organizing a new conference that focuses on Rust and the Linux kernel..." Ojeda posted. "Details will be announced soon." And for context, the Register adds: Linus Torvalds has said on several occasions that he welcomes the possibility of using Rust alongside C for kernel development, and told IT Wire in April that it is "getting to the point where maybe it might be mergeable for 5.14 or something like that."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/21/07/10/0447253 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/

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MicroG Project
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 21 Jul '21

21 Jul '21

Came across this <https://microg.org/>, which is an open-source reimplementation of much of Google’s proprietary Play Services for Android. Their repos are on GitHub <https://github.com/microg>. They’ve been getting some funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

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DuckDuckGo Launches New Email Protection Service To Remove Trackers
by Peter Reutemann 21 Jul '21

21 Jul '21

'DuckDuckGo is launching a new email privacy service meant to stop ad companies from spying on your inbox. From a report: The company's new Email Protection feature gives users a free "@duck.com" email address, which will forward emails to your regular inbox after analyzing their contents for trackers and stripping any away. DuckDuckGo is also extending this feature with unique, disposable forwarding addresses, which can be generated easily in DuckDuckGo's mobile browser or through desktop browser extensions. The personal DuckDuckGo email is meant to be given out to friends and contacts you know, while the disposable addresses are better served when signing up for free trials, newsletters, or anywhere you suspect might sell your email address. If the email address is compromised, you can easily deactivate it. These tools are similar to anti-tracking features implemented by Apple in iOS 14 and iOS 15, but DuckDuckGo's approach integrates into iOS, Android, and all major web browsers. DuckDuckGo will also make it easier to spin up disposable email addresses on the fly, for newsletters or anywhere you might share your email.' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/21/07/20/1532258 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/

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For years, a backdoor in popular KiwiSDR product gave root to project developer
by Peter Reutemann 20 Jul '21

20 Jul '21

'KiwiSDR is hardware that uses a software-defined radio to monitor transmissions in a local area and stream them over the Internet. A largely hobbyist base of users does all kinds of cool things with the playing-card-sized devices. For instance, a user in Manhattan could connect one to the Internet so that people in Madrid, Spain, or Sydney, Australia, could listen to AM radio broadcasts, CB radio conversations, or even watch lightning storms in Manhattan. On Wednesday, users learned that for years, their devices had been equipped with a backdoor that allowed the KiwiSDR creator—and possibly others—to log in to the devices with administrative system rights. The remote admin could then make configuration changes and access data not just for the KiwiSDR but in many cases to the Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone Black, or other computing devices the SDR hardware is connected to.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/07/for-years-a-backdoor-in-popular-kiw… 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/

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Hackers got past Windows Hello by tricking a webcam
by Peter Reutemann 20 Jul '21

20 Jul '21

'Biometric authentication is a key piece of the tech industry's plans to make the world password-less. But a new method for duping Microsoft's Windows Hello facial-recognition system shows that a little hardware fiddling can trick the system into unlocking when it shouldn't. Services like Apple's FaceID have made facial-recognition authentication more commonplace in recent years, with Windows Hello driving adoption even farther. Apple only lets you use FaceID with the cameras embedded in recent iPhones and iPads, and it's still not supported on Macs at all. But because Windows hardware is so diverse, Hello facial recognition works with an array of third-party webcams. Where some might see ease of adoption, though, researchers from the security firm CyberArk saw potential vulnerability. That's because you can't trust any old webcam to offer robust protections in how it collects and transmits data. Windows Hello facial recognition works only with webcams that have an infrared sensor in addition to the regular RGB sensor. But the system, it turns out, doesn't even look at RGB data. Which means that with one straight-on infrared image of a target's face and one black frame, the researchers found that they could unlock the victim's Windows Hello–protected device. By manipulating a USB webcam to deliver an attacker-chosen image, the researchers could trick Windows Hello into thinking the device owner’s face was present and unlocking.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/07/hackers-got-past-win… 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/

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The Case Against SQL
by Peter Reutemann 19 Jul '21

19 Jul '21

'Long-time Slashdot reader RoccamOccam shares "an interesting take on SQL and its issues from Jamie Brandon (who describes himself as an independent researcher who's built database engines, query planners, compilers, developer tools and interfaces). It's title? "Against SQL." The relational model is great... But SQL is the only widely-used implementation of the relational model, and it is: Inexpressive, Incompressible, Non-porous. This isn't just a matter of some constant programmer overhead, like SQL queries taking 20% longer to write. The fact that these issues exist in our dominant model for accessing data has dramatic downstream effects for the entire industry: - Complexity is a massive drag on quality and innovation in runtime and tooling - The need for an application layer with hand-written coordination between database and client renders useless most of the best features of relational databases The core message that I want people to take away is that there is potentially a huge amount of value to be unlocked by replacing SQL, and more generally in rethinking where and how we draw the lines between databases, query languages and programming languages... I'd like to finish with this quote from Michael Stonebraker, one of the most prominent figures in the history of relational databases: "My biggest complaint about System R is that the team never stopped to clean up SQL... All the annoying features of the language have endured to this day. SQL will be the COBOL of 2020..." It's been interesting to follow the discussion on Twitter, where the post's author tweeted screenshots of actual SQL code to illustrate various shortcomings. But he also notes that "The SQL spec (part 2 = 1732) pages is more than twice the length of the Javascript 2021 spec (879 pages), almost matches the C++ 2020 spec (1853) pages and contains 411 occurrences of 'implementation-defined', occurrences which include type inference and error propagation." His Twitter feed also includes a supportive retweet from Rust creator Graydon Hoare, and from a Tetrane developer who says "The Rust of SQL remains to be invented. I would like to see it come."' -- source: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/21/07/18/1844225 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/

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meeting next Monday (July 26th)
by Peter Reutemann 19 Jul '21

19 Jul '21

Hi everyone We have a WLUG meeting coming up next Monday (July 26th): 'Looking for a replacement of Dropbox or Google Drive that respects your privacy? Then come to our meeting, as Glenn will show you how to install, run and use the open-source solution Nextcloud (https://nextcloud.com/) on a Raspberry Pi and check out the various clients that you can use with it.' Details: https://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/274861069/ 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/

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1.4 Million Cubans Bypass Censorship Using US Government-Funded Software Psiphon
by Peter Reutemann 19 Jul '21

19 Jul '21

'"Cuban officials rallied tens of thousands of supporters in the streets on Saturday — nearly a week after they were stunned by the most widespread protests in decades," the Associated Press reports. President Miguel Díaz-Canel — accompanied by 90-year-old former President Raul Castro — "made an impassioned speech blaming unrest on the U.S. and its economic embargo, 'the blockade, aggression and terror... The enemy has returned to throw all it has at destroying the sacred unity and tranquility of the citizens.'" "I think the government is just trying to signal to people that it understands their desperation and that it's going to try to alleviate some of the misery that they're experiencing. The problem is that the government just doesn't have much in the way of resources that it can devote to doing that," said William LeoGrande, an expert on Cuba at the American University in the United States. Meanwhile, Reuters reports: Psiphon Inc's freely available internet censorship circumvention tool has helped nearly 1.4 million Cubans this week gain access to websites, the company said on Friday, after Cuba's government curbed access to popular social media and messaging platforms... Thousands of Cubans joined nationwide protests over shortages of basic goods, limits on civil liberties and the government's handling of a surge in COVID-19 infections on Sunday, the most significant unrest in decades in the communist-run country. Psiphon said 1.389 million users accessed the open web from Cuba through its network on Thursday, as well as 1.238 million as noon EDT (1600 GMT) on Friday. "Internet is ON; circumvention tools ARE working," Psiphon said in a statement. Psiphon said the roughly 1.4 million represents about 20% of Cuban internet users. Its open source circumvention tool can be downloaded from app stores like Google Play or Apple to "maximize your chances of bypassing censorship," according to the company. Canadian university researchers developed the software in 2007 to let users evade governmental internet firewalls. The censorship-circumvention tool — which combines VPN, SSH, and HTTP Proxy tools — has also been used in Iran, China, Belarus, Myanmar, according to recent news reports. Bloomberg notes that the Toronto-based nonprofit Psiphon "has received funding from the Open Technology Fund, a U.S. government nonprofit that aims to support global internet freedom technologies... "On Thursday, President Biden said the U.S. is examining whether it's able to restore internet access shut down by the Cuban government."' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/21/07/18/009221 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/

1 0

Amazon's Elasticsearch Fork 'OpenSearch' Reaches General Availability 1.0 Milestone
by Peter Reutemann 19 Jul '21

19 Jul '21

'Mike Melanson's "This Week in Programming" column shares an update on Amazon's ongoing battle with scalable data search solution ElasticSearch: Earlier this year, AWS completed its fork of ElasticSearch with the first release of OpenSearch. If you haven't followed along, the whole affair was a bit of a tug of war between AWS and Elastic, with AWS eventually coming out seemingly on top. After Elastic changed the licensing on ElasticSearch in an attempt to prevent AWS from selling a service based on the then-open-source project, AWS forked the project to release OpenSearch under Apache 2.0, effectively preserving its open source status. Now, OpenSearch has reached 1.0, which AWS says not only "marks the first production-ready version of OpenSearch," but also introduces "multiple new enhancements," such as data streams, trace analytics span filtering, report scheduling and more. The 1.0 release also involved quite a bit of code cleanup, removing proprietary code and marks, and adds the ability to upgrade from ElasticSearch to OpenSearch as if you were performing a normal upgrade of ElasticSearch. If you're interested in learning where the project is going, head on over to the public roadmap to learn more. ' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/21/07/18/1656208 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/

1 0

Will a New Law Help the Chinese Government Stockpile Zero-Days?
by Peter Reutemann 19 Jul '21

19 Jul '21

'"Starting September 1, 2021, the Chinese government will require that any Chinese citizen who finds a zero-day vulnerability must pass the details to the Chinese government," reports SecurityWeek, "and must not sell or give the knowledge to any third-party outside of China (apart from the vulnerable product's manufacturer)." Brief details are provided in a report by the Associated Press (AP) published Tuesday, July 13, 2021. No source is provided beyond the statement, "No one may 'collect, sell or publish information on network product security vulnerabilities,' say the rules issued by the Cyberspace Administration of China and the police and industry ministries...." AP describes this action as "further tightening the Communist Party's control over information". This is unlikely to be the primary motivation for the new rule since the government already has a vice-like grip on data. Companies may not store data on Chinese customers outside of China. Foreign companies selling routers and some other network devices in China must disclose to regulators how any encryption features work. "I would expect the Chinese Government to weaponize any discovered security vulnerabilities to enhance China's cybersecurity capabilities," Joseph Carson, chief security scientist and advisory CISO at ThycoticCentrify, tells SecurityWeek. And Jake Williams, co-founder and CTO at BreachQuest adds that "the defensive advantages of Chinese government organizations being able to mitigate vulnerabilities discovered may well outweigh any offensive gains...." But he also believes this could rebound against China. "One of the biggest likely issues is brain drain. If Chinese researchers can profit handsomely from their work anywhere else, but can't do so in China, why would they stay? This probably helps China in the short term but harms them in the long term." The new law does encourage network operators and product vendors to set up a reward mechanism for reported vulnerabilities, according to the Record. But Katie Moussouris, founder and CEO of Luta Security, also raises the issue of western-based bug bounty platforms that have been working with Chinese security researchers for the past years. "If Western-based bug bounty platforms comply with this requirement in order to continue to legally receive bug reports from Chinese researchers, we must assume they will be required to hand over vulnerability data to the Ministry within two days of receiving the reports," Moussouris said. "That requirement will effectively introduce a backdoor straight to the Chinese government in any VDP [vulnerability disclosure program] or bug bounty program where Chinese researchers submit bugs via platforms, even to non-Chinese companies."' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/21/07/18/2143207 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/

1 0

Hey Google: It’s Not (Just) A Joke
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 14 Jul '21

14 Jul '21

Looking at this list <https://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/the-best-inappropriate-and-annoyin…> of complaints about ads that didn’t get far with the Advertising Standards Authority, one stood out for me: The complaint: One avid Google Assistant user was very riled by this ad, explaining that when the shop assistant asks "Hey Google", it ended up triggering every Google smart device in his home. "I have 10 such devices in the house which includes smart speakers, smart displays and Chromecast which all respond to the advert," they write. "This is not only highly annoying, but also a deliberate attempt to trigger these devices." Yes, it seems it really does happen ... (Though I think the award for most nitpicking has to go to the “Clair de Lune” one.)

1 0

Speed Up Microsoft Teams By Bypassing Antivirus Checks
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 13 Jul '21

13 Jul '21

Microsoft’s official recommendation <https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/OfficeDocs-SkypeForBusiness/blob/9df8f4069…> for improving the performance of Teams on Windows is to exclude it from antivirus checks: Add the following Teams programs to your antivirus safe list. %localappdata%\Microsoft\Teams\current\Teams.exe %localappdata%\Microsoft\Teams\Update.exe Add the following Teams folders to your antivirus safe list. %localappdata%\Microsoft\Teams %appdata%\Microsoft\Teams| Because antivirus software only exists to slow your system down, right? (Found from this <https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2021/07/12/windows_11_still_doesnt…> reader comment.)

2 1

Libre-SOC's Open Hardware 180nm ASIC Submitted To IMEC for Fabrication
by Peter Reutemann 11 Jul '21

11 Jul '21

'"We're building a chip. A fast chip. A safe chip. A trusted chip," explains the web page at Libre-SOC.org. "A chip with lots of peripherals. And it's VPU. And it's a 3D GPU... Oh and here, have the source code." And now there's big news, reports long-time Slashdot reader lkcl: Libre-SOC's entirely Libre 180nm ASIC, which can be replicated down to symbolic level GDS-II with no NDAs of any kind, has been submitted to IMEC for fabrication. It is the first wholly-independent Power ISA ASIC outside of IBM to go Silicon in 12 years. Microwatt went to Skywater 130nm in March; however, it is also developed by IBM, as an exceptionally well-made Reference Design, which Libre-SOC used for verification. Whilst it would seem that Libre-SOC is jumping on the chip-shortage era's innovation bandwagon, Libre-SOC has actually been in development for over three and a half years so far. It even pre-dates the OpenLane initiative, and has the same objectives: fully automated HDL to GDS-II, full transparency and auditability with Libre VLSI tools Coriolis2 and Libre Cell Libraries from Chips4Makers. With €400,000 in funding from the NLNet Foundation [a long-standing non-profit supporting privacy, security, and the "open internet"], plus an application to NGI Pointer under consideration, the next steps are to continue development of Draft Cray-style Vectors (SVP64) to the already supercomputer-level Power ISA, under the watchful eye of the upcoming OpenPOWER ISA Workgroup.' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/21/07/10/0154220 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/

1 0

Microsoft Edge Beats Firefox To Become the Third-Most Popular Browser
by Peter Reutemann 11 Jul '21

11 Jul '21

'"New data from Statcounter shows that Edge has now overtaken established rival Firefox in the rankings," reports TechRadar: In recent months, the pair have been neck-and-neck, but Microsoft's browser has now put daylight between itself and Firefox. Figures for June suggest Microsoft Edge now holds 3.4% of the browser market, while Firefox has slipped to 3.29%, continuing a downward trajectory that has seen the browser either lose or maintain market share in ten of the last twelve months. The change pushes Edge into third position in the browser rankings, behind only Chrome (65.27%) and Safari (18.34%). Launched in January 2020, the new Chromium-based Edge got off to a slow start, but began to gather momentum as the year progressed. Since last summer, the browser's market share has more than tripled. The increase in adoption can be attributed in part to renewed marketing efforts, but also to improvements that brought the experience in line with other modern web browsers. That may be true, but the article also acknowledges that it was just last month that Microsoft began rolling out Edge to all Windows PCs (via Windows 10 updates), "expanding the install base by millions almost overnight. "Now, Microsoft is doing everything in its power to encourage users to abandon Internet Explorer in favor of Edge, such as removing support for Microsoft 365 web apps and automatically launching certain web pages in the new browser."' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/21/07/10/0353201 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/

1 0

Google's Unfair Performance Advantage in Chrome
by Peter Reutemann 10 Jul '21

10 Jul '21

'Google Chrome for Android has a feature that gives Google Search an unfair advantage over its competition. Sure, it's the default search engine and that's a huge hurdle to overcome for any competitor. However, Chrome also reserves a performance-boosting feature for Google Search exclusively. I recently poked around in the Chromium project source code; the open-source foundation for Google's Chrome web browser. The Chromium project is co-developed by Google, and other corporate and individual contributors. The project is managed and controlled by Google, however. I was looking for something else when I stumbled upon a feature called PreconnectToSearch. When enabled, the feature preemptively opens and maintains a connection to the default search engine. The preconnection feature resolves the domain name, and negotiates and sets up a secure connection to the server. All these things take time and they must happen before the search engine can receive the users' search queries. Preempting these steps can save a dozen seconds on a slow network connection or half a second on a fast connection. This optimization can yield a nice performance boost for Google's customers. Assuming the connection only requires a trivial amount of processing power and network bandwidth, of course. Setting up the connection early can be wasteful or slow down the loading of other pages if the user isn't going to search the web. There's just one small catch: Chromium checks the default search engine setting, and only enables the feature when it's set to Google Search. This preferential treatment means no other search engine can compete with Google Search on the time it takes to load search results. Every competitor must wait until the user has started to type a search query before Chrome will establish a connection.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/21/07/09/2056209 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/

1 0

Firefox Extends Privacy and Security of Canadian Internet Users With By-default DNS-over-HTTPS Rollout in Canada
by Peter Reutemann 09 Jul '21

09 Jul '21

'In a few weeks, Firefox will start the by-default rollout of DNS over HTTPS (or DoH for short) to its Canadian users in partnership with local DoH provider CIRA, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority. >From a report: DoH will first become a default for 1% of Canadian Firefox users on July 20 and will gradually reach 100% of Canadian Firefox users in late September 2021 -- thereby further increasing their security and privacy online. This follows the by-default rollout of DoH to US users in February 2020. As part of the rollout, CIRA joins Mozilla's Trusted Recursive Resolver (TRR) Program and becomes the first internet registration authority and the first Canadian organization to provide Canadian Firefox users with private and secure encrypted Domain Name System (DNS) services.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/21/07/08/1732203 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/

1 0

Kaspersky Password Manager Fixes Flaw That Generated Easily Bruteforced Passwords
by Peter Reutemann 09 Jul '21

09 Jul '21

'ZDNet reports: Suppose you are in the business of generating passwords, it would probably be a good idea to use an additional source of entropy other than the current time, but for a long time, that's all Kaspersky Password Manager (KPM) used. In a blog post to cap off an almost two year saga, Ledger Donjon head of security research Jean-Baptiste Bedrune showed KPM was doing just that. "Kaspersky Password Manager used a complex method to generate its passwords. This method aimed to create passwords hard to break for standard password crackers. However, such method lowers the strength of the generated passwords against dedicated tools," Bedrune wrote. One of the techniques used by KPM was to make letters that are not often used appear more frequently, which Bedrune said was probably an attempt to trick password cracking tools. "Their password cracking method relies on the fact that there are probably 'e' and 'a' in a password created by a human than 'x' or 'j', or that the bigrams 'th' and 'he' will appear much more often than 'qx' or 'zr'," he said. "Passwords generated by KPM will be, on average, far in the list of candidate passwords tested by these tools. If an attacker tries to crack a list of passwords generated by KPM, he will probably wait quite a long time until the first one is found. This is quite clever." The flip side was that if an attacker could deduce that KPM was used, then the bias in the password generator started to work against it. "If an attacker knows a person uses KPM, he will be able to break his password much more easily than a fully random password. Our recommendation is, however, to generate random passwords long enough to be too strong to be broken by a tool." The big mistake made by KPM though was using the current system time in seconds as the seed into a Mersenne Twister pseudorandom number generator. "It means every instance of Kaspersky Password Manager in the world will generate the exact same password at a given second," Bedrune said. Because the program has an animation that takes longer than a second when a password is created, Bedrune said it could be why this issue was not discovered. "The consequences are obviously bad: every password could be bruteforced," he said. Bedrune added due to sites often showing account creation time, that would leave KPM users vulnerable to a bruteforce attack of around 100 possible passwords. "Kaspersky was informed of the vulnerability in June 2019, and released the fix version in October that same year," adds ZDNet. "In October 2020, users were notified that some passwords would need to be generated, with Kaspersky publishing its security advisory on 27 April 2021." "All public versions of Kaspersky Password Manager liable to this issue now have a new logic of password generation and a passwords update alert for cases when a generated password is probably not strong enough," the security company said.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/21/07/08/2116252 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/

1 0

Endian Wars: Linus Has Spoken
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 06 Jul '21

06 Jul '21

The Rust language continues to make progress for use in the Linux kernel <https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/05/rust_for_linux_kernel_project/>. The article ends with a comment from Linus Torvalds about the old “endian wars” which have been a feature of the computing landscape since byte addressability became common: should the bytes of a number be arranged in big-endian order (most significant end at the lowest address) or little-endian (least significant end at the lowest address)? In the latest patches, Ojeda proposed to use big-endian order for long symbols in the kernel symbol table, needed because Rust symbols "can become quite long due to namespacing introduced by modules, types, traits, generics." Torvalds responded: "Why is this in big-endian order? Let's just try to kill big-endian data, it's disgusting and should just die already... networking has legacy reasons from the bad old days when byte order wars were still a thing, but those days are gone." Having used both kinds of computer architectures over the years, I agree. Little-endian ordering is more mathematically consistent.

3 7

Kaseya VSA Software Compromised By Ransomware
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 06 Jul '21

06 Jul '21

Kaseya VSA is a piece of software widely used around the world (and in NZ) to manage IT resources in small-to-medium businesses. Now it appears <https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/446162/new-zealand-may-be-caught-up-in-…> this software has been subverted as a weapon, likely by the notorious Russia-based “REvil” gang, to hold data to ransom across a range of organizations worldwide. This evening’s TV1 news mentions a Cambridge school <https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/cambridge-school-among-business…> among other victims in NZ.

1 4

Open Source Audio Editor Audacity Has Become 'Spyware'
by Peter Reutemann 06 Jul '21

06 Jul '21

'Anyone deciding to download the free and open-source audio editor Audacity is being warned that the software may now be classified as spyware due to recent updates to its privacy policy. From a report: Audacity has been around for over 21 years and classes as the world's most popular audio editing software. On April 30, the Muse Group acquired Audacity with the promise that the software would "remain forever free and open source." However, as FOSS Post reports, last week the Audacity privacy policy page was updated and introduced a number of personal data collection clauses. The data collected includes OS version and name, user country based on IP address, the CPU being used, data related to Audacity error codes and crash reports, and finally "Data necessary for law enforcement, litigation and authorities' requests (if any)." The personal data collected can be shared with Muse Group employees, auditors, advisors, legal representatives and "similar agents," potential company buyers, and "any competent law enforcement body, regulatory, government agency, court or other third party where we believe disclosure is necessary (i) as a matter of applicable law or regulation, or (ii) to exercise, establish or defend our legal rights."' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/21/07/05/2155212 How long before a fork occurs that will strip out these bits? 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/

3 3

Infinidash: The Most Amazing Amazon Web Services Product ... That Never Was
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 05 Jul '21

05 Jul '21

It all started with one person wondering how long it would take after merely mentioning the name of some hypothetical new AWS-based product before it started appearing in job ads. So he made up a product name, put out a tweet, and waited. It took just three days <https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/05/infinidash/>. I had a look at the linked job ad, and it still contains the sentence “Infinidash is at the core of everything we do”, with absolutely no hint that it might be tongue-in-cheek. This is just a continuation of the long-standing phenomenon among HR departments and employment agencies putting out job ads requiring something like “5+ years experience in Technology X”, when Technology X has only been around for a few months.

1 0

Microsoft To Add Support for Linux GUI Apps on Windows 10 Later This Year
by Peter Reutemann 03 Jul '21

03 Jul '21

'Microsoft is making the promised support for Linux graphical user interface (GUI) apps on Windows 10 available to customers as of the next Windows 10 release, officials said on May 25. Microsoft officials made the announcement on Day 1 of its virtual Build 2021 developers conference. From a report: During his Day 1 keynote, CEO Satya Nadella basically acknowledged there will be another event "soon" about the next Windows. He said: ""And soon we will share one of the most significant updates of Windows of the past decade." He said he has been self-hosting it over the past several months and called it "the next generation of Windows." Microsoft released a preview of Linux GUI apps on the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) in April, 2021. This capability is meant to allow developers to run their preferred Linux tools, utilities and apps directly on Windows 10. With GUI app support, users can now run GUI apps for testing, development and daily use without having to set up a virtual machine.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/21/05/25/1639238 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/

3 4

Google Is Working On an HTTPS-Only Mode For Chrome
by Peter Reutemann 01 Jul '21

01 Jul '21

'Following in the footsteps of browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome is also in line to receive an HTTPS-Only Mode that will upgrade all unencrypted HTTP connections to encrypted HTTPS alternatives, where possible. Currently, the new Chrome HTTPS-Only Mode is still under development in Chrome Canary distributions. Work is being done to add specific settings in the browser's interface, and no actual HTTP-to-HTTPS functionality is currently present. The feature is expected to be ready for Chrome 93, set to be released later this fall.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/21/06/30/1734234 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/

1 0

Tim Berners-Lee Sells Web Source Code NFT for $5.4 Million
by Peter Reutemann 01 Jul '21

01 Jul '21

'The original source code for the world wide web has been sold as a non-fungible token, making $5.4m. From a report: NFTs are certificates of ownership for digital assets, which often do not have a physical representation. They do not necessarily include copyright control -- and critics say they are get-rich-quick schemes that are bad for the environment. World-wide-web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee sold the NFT to an unidentified buyer, through auction house Sotheby's. The highest bid stood at $3.5m for most of the last day of the auction -- but there were a flurry of bids in the closing 15 minutes. The auction began on 23 June, with an opening bid of $1,000.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/21/06/30/1846213 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/

1 0

Word Of The Week: “Footgun”
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 30 Jun '21

30 Jun '21

You know the phrase “shooting yourself in the foot” -- wielding a tool or capability with great power that, if not used carefully, has great capacity to cause harm, to the wielder and others. A “footgun” is a (mis)feature of some system that makes it more likely that this will happen. You thought security was an intrinsic feature of the container concept? Well, it seems <https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/29/newsblur_docker_ransomware/> Docker has long had an oddly insecure default setting, where network ports on a container are automatically punched through your kernel’s firewall settings, allowing access from the entire Internet. This is often not what you want.

1 0

Hackers exploited 0-day, not 2018 bug, to mass-wipe My Book Live devices
by Peter Reutemann 30 Jun '21

30 Jun '21

'Last week’s mass-wiping of Western Digital My Book Live storage devices involved the exploitation of not just one vulnerability but also a second critical security bug that allowed hackers to remotely perform a factory reset without a password, an investigation shows. The vulnerability is remarkable because it made it trivial to wipe what is likely petabytes of user data. More notable still was that, according to the vulnerable code itself, a Western Digital developer actively removed code that required a valid user password before allowing factory resets to proceed.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/hackers-exploited-0-day-not-2018-bu… 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/

1 0

Python Implementation Pyston Aims To Speed Up the Programming Language's Code for Web Applications
by Peter Reutemann 30 Jun '21

30 Jun '21

'When Kevin Modzelewski and his colleagues at Dropbox set out to create Pyston in 2014, they had a very simple objective: to lower the costs of running Python code on Dropbox's servers, by making the code itself faster. "We were growing exponentially, so our server cost was growing exponentially," Modzelewski tells TechRepublic. "If we could get Python running faster, we would spend less money running Python." The original cost reduction initiative at Dropbox snowballed into a bigger project for Modzelewski when the company moved away from Python in 2017 and cancelled the Pyston project. He had realized while working on the language that there was a strong demand for faster Python among the developer community, and while there were plenty of tools around for improving the performance in smaller applications, there were none designed for big, business logic-type applications such as Dropbox. "There's a lot of tools out there for helping you run Python faster, but there weren't any that were a good fit for Dropbox's use case," says Modzelewski. "This was an area of the Python market where a lot of money was being spent, but not very many tools were being developed for helping. It was under served." Fast forward to today and Pyston is now in version 2.2, and has been open-sourced, with Modzelewski and fellow developer Marius Wachtler now leading the project as co-founders. The latest implementation promises a 30% performance improvement over Python 3.8.8, with a key benefit being that developers can simply drop their Python applications into Pyston and get going, without having to rewrite their code. It's also a "completely separate thing" to what Modzelewski and fellow developers built for Dropbox some seven years ago.' -- source: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/21/06/29/195244 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/

1 0

Inside Neeva, the Ad-Free, Privacy-First Search Engine From ex-Googlers
by Peter Reutemann 30 Jun '21

30 Jun '21

'Sridhar Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan helped turn Google into an ad giant. Now they're starting over with a service whose only customers are its users. From a report: A new search engine? One that people have to pay to use? At first blush, it may seem like a textbook example of a startup idea destined never to get anywhere. By definition, any new search engine competes with Google, whose 90 percent-plus market share leaves little oxygen for other players. And we've been accustomed to getting our search for free since well before there was a Google -- which might make paying for it sound like being expected to purchase a phone book. But Neeva is indeed a new search engine, officially launching today, that carries a subscription fee. Though it's extremely similar to Google in many respects -- with a few twists of its own -- it dumps the web giant's venerable ad-based business model in the interest of avoiding distractions, privacy quandaries, and other compromises. It's free for three months -- long enough for users to grow accustomed to it without obligation -- and $4.95 a month thereafter. Apps for iPhones and iPads, and browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, and Brave, are part of the deal. Neeva may have a certain whiff of improbability about it, but its cofounders, Sridhar Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan, are the furthest thing from naifs. Two long-time Google executives with more than a quarter-century of experience at the web giant between them, they have an insider's understanding of how it operates. Moreover, about 30 percent of the roughly 60-person staff they've assembled at Neeva consists of ex-Googlers, including Hall-of-Famers such as Udi Manber (a former head of Google search) and Darin Fisher (one of the inventors of Chrome). They've also secured $77.5 million in funding, including investments from venture-capital titans Greylock and Sequoia.' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/21/06/29/2017205 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/

1 0

Hubble Computer Trouble
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 29 Jun '21

29 Jun '21

The Hubble Space Telescope is currently out of action, seemingly from a computer-related fault, though booting up the backup computer hasn’t made a difference (so far). In the meantime, here <https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/28/hubbles_cosmic_science_is_mindblowin…> is a retrospective on how that outermost of our sky-seeing eyes came to be, and what it has achieved. Born out of repurposed parts from an unneeded spy satellite? You might think that; those who know couldn’t possibly comment ... By the way, this description of the fault with the mirror And oh yes, that mirror. Younger readers won’t recall the shock at first light when a tiny mistake in its shape made the star of the show useless. Nobody’s saying how many spybirds were similarly afflicted, but where it mattered the most, Hubble was blind. is wrong. Hubble wasn’t blind, it was merely short-sighted. Those pictures that were supposed to have more detail than anything achievable from ground level were only fair-to-middling. I remember a visit to Waikato University in the early 1990s from a researcher in the US who was part of a team that was modelling the blurring effect of the mirror aberration, and applying it in reverse to sharpen up the images to something resembling the quality they were supposed to have. I think they were achieving some useful results. Eventually, of course, their work became unnecessary, as that wonder of eyeglass contraptions called COSTAR was installed.

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Intel To Disable TSX By Default On More CPUs With New Microcode
by Peter Reutemann 29 Jun '21

29 Jun '21

'Intel is going to be disabling Transactional Synchronization Extensions (TSX) by default for various Skylake through Coffee Lake processors with forthcoming microcode updates. Phoronix reports: Transactional Synchronization Extensions (TSX) have been around since Haswell for hardware transactional memory support and going off Intel's own past numbers can be around 40% faster in specific workloads or as much 4~5 times faster in database transaction benchmarks. TSX issues have been found in the past such as a possible side channel timing attack that could lead to KASLR being defeated and CVE-2019-11135 (TSX Async Abort) for an MDS-style flaw. Now in 2021 Intel is disabling TSX by default across multiple families of Intel CPUs from Skylake through Coffee Lake. [...] The Linux kernel is preparing for this microcode change as seen in the flow of new patches this morning for the 5.14 merge window. A memory ordering issue is what is reportedly leading Intel to now deprecate TSX on various processors. There is this Intel whitepaper (PDF) updated this month that outlines the problem at length. As noted in the revision history, the memory ordering issue has been known to Intel since at least before October 2018 but only now in June 2021 are they pushing out microcode updates to disable TSX by default. With forthcoming microcode updates will effectively deprecate TSX for all Skylake Xeon CPUs prior to Stepping 5 (including Xeon D and 1st Gen Xeon Scalable), all 6th Gen Xeon E3-1500m v5 / E3-1200 v5 Skylake processors, all 7th/8th Gen Core and Pentium Kaby/Coffee/Whiskey CPUs prior to 0x8 stepping, and all 8th/9th Gen Core/Pentium Coffee Lake CPUs prior to 0xC stepping will be affected. That ultimately spans from various Skylake steppings through Coffee Lake; it was with 10th Gen Comet Lake and Ice Lake where TSX/TSX-NI was subsequently removed. In addition to disabling TSX by default and force-aborting all RTM transactions by default, a new CPUID bit is being enumerated with the new microcode to indicate that the force aborting of RTM transactions. It's due to that new CPUID bit that the Linux kernel is seeing patches. Previously Linux and other operating systems applied a workaround for the TSX memory ordering issue but now when this feature is disabled, the kernel can drop said workaround. These patches are coming with the Linux 5.14 cycle and will likely be back-ported to stable too.' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/21/06/28/205240 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/

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Linux Foundation's New 'OVN Network' Pushes Open Standards for AI-Powered Voice Apps
by Peter Reutemann 29 Jun '21

29 Jun '21

'"Organizations are beginning to develop, design, and manage their own AI-powered voice assistant systems independent of platforms such as Siri and Alexa," reports VentureBeat: The transition is being driven by the desire to manage the entirety of the user experience and integrate voice assistance into multiple business processes and brand environments, from call centers to stores. In a recent survey of 500 IT and business decision-makers in the U.S., France, Germany, and the U.K., 28% of respondents said they were using voice technologies and 84% expect to be using them in the next year. To support the evolution, the Linux Foundation launched the Open Voice Network (OVN), an alliance advocating for the adoption of open standards across voice assistant apps in automobiles, smartphones, smart home devices, and more. With founding members Target, Schwarz Gruppe, Wegmans Food Markets, Microsoft, Veritone, Deutsche Telekom, and others, the OVN's goal — much like Amazon's Voice Interoperability Initiative — is to standardize the development and use of voice assistant systems and conversational agents that use technologies including automatic speech recognition, natural language processing, advanced dialog management, and machine learning... It was first announced as the Open Voice Initiative in 2019, but expanded significantly as the COVID-19 pandemic spurred enterprises to embrace digital transformation. "Voice is expected to be a primary interface to the digital world, connecting users to billions of sites, smart environments and AI bots ... Key to enabling enterprise adoption of these capabilities and consumer comfort and familiarity is the implementation of open standards," Mike Dolan, SVP and general manager of projects at the Linux Foundation, said in a statement. "The potential impact of voice on industries including commerce, transportation, healthcare, and entertainment is staggering and we're excited to bring it under the open governance model of the Linux foundation to grow the community and pave a way forward." Besides a focus on standards and technology-sharing, the group plans to collaborate with existing industry associations on regulatory/legislative issues — including data privacy."' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/21/06/28/0051204 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/

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Using VMs To Hide Ransomware Attacks is Becoming More Popular
by Peter Reutemann 29 Jun '21

29 Jun '21

'In early 2020, security researchers were baffled to discover that a ransomware gang had come up with an innovative trick that allowed it to run its payload inside virtual machines on infected hosts as a technical solution that bypassed security software. One year later, that technique has spread among the cybercrime underground and is now used by multiple ransomware operators. Initially seen with the Ragnar Locker gang in May 2020, the technique was also adopted by a Maze ransomware subgroup later in the year and has been recently spotted in attacks where the Conti and MountLocker ransomware strains were deployed. In hindsight, it should be no surprise that this technique is becoming more popular, as it has tangible benefits for any threat actor. The general idea behind such an attack is that a ransomware gang that has a small foothold on an infected host can download and install VM software. The ransomware gang will then start a VM instance, share the host computer's storage space with the VM, and then proceed to encrypt the victim's files from within the VM, where the host's antivirus software cannot reach and detect the ransomware during execution.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/21/06/28/1521220 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/

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Linux 5.13 Kernel Released, Includes Apple M1 Support, Clang CFI, and Landlock's Linux Security Module
by Peter Reutemann 28 Jun '21

28 Jun '21

'"Linus Torvalds has just released the Linux 5.13 kernel as stable," reports Phoronix: Linux 5.13 brings initial but still early support for the Apple M1 with basic support but not yet accelerated graphics and a lot more to iron out moving ahead. There are also new Linux 5.13 security features like the Landlock security module, Clang control flow integrity support, and optionally randomizing the kernel stack offset at each system call. There is also AMD fun this cycle around FreeSync HDMI support, initial Aldebaran bring-up, and more. Intel has more work on Alder Lake, a new cooling driver, and more discrete graphics bring-up. There are also other changes for Linux 5.13 around faster IO_uring, a generic USB display driver, and other new hardware enablement. "5.13 overall is actually fairly large," Linus Torvalds posted on the Linux Kernel Mailing List, calling it "one of the bigger 5.x releases, with over 16,000 commits (over 17k if you count merges), from over 2,000 developers. But it's a "big all over" kind of thing, not something particular that stands out as particularly unusual..."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/21/06/28/0026252 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/

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Anti-Ransomware Technology ... But Where Have I Heard That Before?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 28 Jun '21

28 Jun '21

This report <https://blocksandfiles.com/2021/06/25/dell-technologies-capital-invests-in-…> describes a company called Calamu, whose “safe harbour” technology hashes, compresses, encrypts data, and then breaks it up into three fragments with redundancy. Then it re-encrypts them and stores them in in three separate locations, using different public clouds ... or local file systems. ... Calamu says Protect doesn’t store a complete file in any one location, giving customers full control over who can view their data — even if subpoenaed. That means it cannot be surreptitiously acquired by US law enforcement or intelligence agencies. Now, where have I heard that before? Oh yes ... <https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs>.

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Microsoft Engineer Confirms You Can Sideload Android APKs On Windows 11
by Peter Reutemann 27 Jun '21

27 Jun '21

'Famed software engineer Miguel de Icaza confirmed on Twitter that you will be able to sideload Android APKs in Windows 11. Android Authority reports: Yesterday, Microsoft surprised us all by announcing that Windows 11 will support native Android app installation. Using the Microsoft Store, you'll be able to search for, install, and use Android apps right on your PC. This is possible through an integration of the Amazon App Store. However, a big question loomed over the announcement: would you be able to sideload Android APKs on Windows 11? Sideloading apps would allow you to install Android programs from outside the Microsoft Store, which would give you a much larger potential library. It seems the answer to that question is "yes," at least according to famed engineer Miguel de Icaza. Miguel is responsible for numerous software projects, including GNOME, and currently works at Microsoft. However, his Twitter bio explicitly says "Working at Microsoft, not speaking for them," so we need to take this news with some skepticism. Of course, it's not quite clear how sideloading Android APKs on Windows 11 will work. Will you be able to simply download an APK as you would an EXE, double-click it, and install it? Or will there be some sort of workaround protocol? We'll need to wait to see how this develops. ' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/21/06/25/2056239 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/

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Dell SupportAssist Bugs Put Over 30 Million PCs At Risk
by Peter Reutemann 27 Jun '21

27 Jun '21

'Security researchers have found four major security vulnerabilities in the BIOSConnect feature of Dell SupportAssist, allowing attackers to remotely execute code within the BIOS of impacted devices. According to Dell's website, the SupportAssist software is 'preinstalled on most Dell devices running Windows operating system,' while BIOSConnect provides remote firmware update and OS recovery features. The chain of flaws discovered by Eclypsium researchers comes with a CVSS base score of 8.3/10 and enables privileged remote attackers to impersonate Dell.com and take control of the target device's boot process to break OS-level security controls. "Such an attack would enable adversaries to control the device's boot process and subvert the operating system and higher-layer security controls," Eclypsium researchers explain in a report shared in advance with BleepingComputer. "The issue affects 129 Dell models of consumer and business laptops, desktops, and tablets, including devices protected by Secure Boot and Dell Secured-core PCs," with roughly 30 million individual devices exposed to attacks.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/21/06/25/176208 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/

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