- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Got an Asus router? Someone on your network can probably hack it
by Peter Reutemann 09 Jan '15

09 Jan '15

'If you're running an Asus wireless router, chances are good that someone inside your network can take full administrative control of it thanks to a currently unpatched vulnerability in virtually all versions of the firmware, a security researcher said. While the vulnerability isn't as serious as those that allowhackers on the Internet at large to compromise the devices, it's nonetheless concerning. People with administrative control can reroute everyone connected to malicious websites and possibly install alternate or even malicious firmware updates. "I trust people that join my network to some degree, but I don't want them to be able to reconfigure the router," Joshua Drake, research director at Accuvant and the person whobrought the vulnerability to light Thursday, told Ars. "I can't prevent them without this getting fixed (short of the workaround)."' -- source: http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/01/got-an-asus-router-someone-on-your-… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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meetings
by Peter Reutemann 08 Jan '15

08 Jan '15

Hi everyone We're currently in the process of sorting out the dates for the monthly meetings this year. Ian S. suggested to not bother moving the meeting forward by a week if it falls on a Monday that is a public holiday, as we've done in the past. Why this change? The advantage would be that there is no confusion over *when* the meeting happens, it's always the 4th Monday. However, the downside could be that people are away or have no public transport to get to the meeting. What are your thoughts? Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Intel’s “Compute Stick” Computer In An HDMI Dongle
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 08 Jan '15

08 Jan '15

<http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/01/intels-compute-stick-is-a-full-windo…> Available with either Windows 8.1, 2GiB RAM and 32GiB of flash storage, or Linux, 1GiB RAM and 8GiB flash. Is there some kind of deal with Microsoft to never offer identical hardware configurations with your choice of Windows or Linux?

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Extra Leap Second To Be Added To Clocks On June 30
by Peter Reutemann 08 Jan '15

08 Jan '15

"On June 30 this year, the day will last a tad longer — one second longer, to be precise — as a leap second is to be added to clocks worldwide. The time UTC will go from 23:59:59 to 23:59:60 in order to cope with Earth's rotation slowing down a bit. So, what do you intend to do during that extra second added to that day? Well, you may want to fix your systems. The last time a leap second was added, in 2012, a number of websites, Java and even Linux experienced some troubles. Leap seconds can be disruptive to precision systems used for navigation and communication. Is there a better way of dealing with the need for leap seconds?" -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/01/06/1821234 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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ODFPY Now Supports Python 3
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 07 Jan '15

07 Jan '15

ODFPY is a very handy set of tools for manipulating Open Document Format files. Besides its own command-line tools, it also offers a Python class library that you can call from your own programs. I have been using this in my own billing system for many years to generate invoices for clients. This used to kept in a SVN repo on a somewhat slow server at <https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/software/odfpy/home>. But now they have moved to GitHub at <https://github.com/eea/odfpy>, and I see the current library works with Python 3 as well. This pleases me no end, as I have been moving many of my older projects across from Python 2.

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Tips For Securing Your Secure Shell
by Peter Reutemann 07 Jan '15

07 Jan '15

"As you may have heard, the NSA has had some success in cracking Secure Shell (SSH) connections. To respond to these risks, a guide written by Stribika tries to help you make your shell as robust as possible. The two main concepts are to make the crypto harder and make stealing keys impossible. So prepare a cup of coffee and read the tutorial carefully to see what could be improved in your configuration. Stribika gives also some extra security tips: don't install what you don't need (as any code line can introduce a bug), use the kind of open source code that has actually been reviewed, keep your software up to date, and use exploit mitigation technologies." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/15/01/07/161227 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Browsing in privacy mode? Super Cookies can track you anyway
by Peter Reutemann 07 Jan '15

07 Jan '15

"For years, Chrome, Firefox, and virtually all other browsers have offered a setting that doesn't save or refer to website cookies, browsing history, or temporary files. Privacy-conscious people rely on it to help cloak their identities and prevent websites from tracking their previous steps. Now, a software consultant has devised a simple way websites can in many cases bypass these privacy modes unless users take special care." -- source: http://goo.gl/jnkuaA Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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I Just Want The Root Filesystem!
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 06 Jan '15

06 Jan '15

Sometimes you want to perform some operation on the volume mounted at /, but not in any volume mounted under it. Some commands (e.g. “find” and “rsync”) provide options to avoid recursing into lower filesystems, but others (e.g. “du”) don’t make it so easy. A simple technique for getting around this is to use a bind mount. For example, after mount --bind / /mnt the /mnt directory shows you a view of the same filesystem as /, except you will notice that directories like /mnt/proc and (assuming your user files are on a separate volume) /mnt/home are empty. Or, to be more precise, those directories are now showing their original contents, unobscured by any other filesystem mounted on top of them. An example use of this is, the root partition on a machine might be filling up, and I want to know why. To narrow down which directories are using the space, I try to do du -ks /*/ but this wants to scan /home/ as well, which on this machine is a separate volume and therefore just adds greatly to the time taken without telling me anything relevant. But with the bind mount, I can do du -ks /mnt/*/ and it will only check the root volume. Another use of this is, as I mentioned above, you can see what is originally in the directories being used for mounting other filesystems. For example, one machine might normally have a network volume from another server mounted on a directory into which it regularly saves files. For some reason the network link might go down, and during that interval it blithely continues saving files into the local directory where the network volume was mounted, rather than the network volume itself. After the network mount is restored, you will probably want to check what files were accidentally saved locally, and move them onto the network volume where they belong. A bind mount lets you do this without disrupting access to the network volume. Then when you are finished with the bind mount, you can get rid of it in the usual way: umount /mnt

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Life With Debian Unstable
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 06 Jan '15

06 Jan '15

Doing an “apt-get dist-upgrade -s” on a Debian Unstable system is currently telling me it wants to remove most of KDE. This even though I tried an apt-get update on two different repo mirrors. I think I’ll leave it, and check again in a few days...

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Browsing The Linux Kernel Sources Online
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 06 Jan '15

06 Jan '15

You may remember at one of my presentations I was trying to bring up a website that allowed browsing and linking to the Linux kernel sources online, complete with cross references and search. However, that original site seems to have long gone. The good news is, another site <http://lxr.free-electrons.com/> is offering exactly the same thing, and I think they’re using the same software (developed by people at Oslo University in Norway) as well.

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AMD Catalyst Linux Driver Catching Up To and Beating Windows
by Peter Reutemann 03 Jan '15

03 Jan '15

'Along with the open-source AMD Linux driver having a great 2014, the AMD Catalyst proprietary driver for Linux has also improved a lot. Beyond the open-source Radeon Gallium3D driver closing in on Catalyst, the latest Phoronix end-of-year tests show the AMD Catalyst Linux driver is beating Catalyst on Windows for some OpenGL benchmarks. The proprietary driver tests were done with the new Catalyst "OMEGA" driver. Is AMD beginning to lead real Linux driver innovations or is OpenGL on Windows just struggling?' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/01/03/1426208 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Red Hat Engineer Improves Math Performance of Glibc
by Peter Reutemann 03 Jan '15

03 Jan '15

"Siddhesh Poyarekar from Red Hat has taken a professional look into mathematical functions found in Glibc (the GNU C library). He has been able to provide an 8-times performance improvement to slowest path of pow() function. Other transcendentals got similar improvements since the fixes were mostly in the generic multiple precision code. These improvements already went into glibc-2.18 upstream. Siddhesh believes that a lot of the low hanging fruit has now been picked, but that this is definitely not the end of the road for improvements in the multiple precision performance. There are other more complicated improvements, like the limitation of worst case precision for exp() andlog() functions, based on the results of the paper Worst Cases for Correct Rounding of the Elementary Functions in Double Precision (PDF). One needs to prove that those results apply to the Glibc multiple precision bits." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/01/02/2025232 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Bots Scanning GitHub To Steal Amazon EC2 Keys
by Peter Reutemann 03 Jan '15

03 Jan '15

'As one developer found out, posting your Amazon keys to GitHub on accident can be a costly mistake if they are not revoked immediately. "When I woke up the next morning, I had four emails from Amazon AWS and a missed phone call from Amazon AWS. Something about 140 servers running on my AWS account. What? How? I only had S3 keys on my GitHub and they where gone within 5 minutes! Turns out through the S3 API you can actually spin up EC2 instances, and my key had been spotted by a bot that continually searches GitHub for API keys. Amazon AWS customer support informed me this happens a lot recently; hackers have created an algorithm that searches GitHub 24 hours per day for API keys. Once it finds one it spins up max instances of EC2 servers to farm itself bitcoins."' -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/15/01/02/2342228 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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The Case Against "Non-Commercial" Restrictions
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 21 Dec '14

21 Dec '14

The Creative Commons <http://creativecommons.org/> family of copyright licences has become very popular for artworks, documentation and all kinds of creative works generally. But there are different kinds of Creative Commons (CC) licences, with additional qualifications, namely “BY” (attribution required, i.e. give credit to the creators), “SA” (sharealike or “copyleft”, i.e. if you redistribute, do it on the same terms it was given to you), “NC” (non-commercial use only) and “ND” (no derivatives--i.e. modified versions--allowed), and certain combinations thereof. These qualifications divide the CC licences into two categories: Free and non-Free. The non-Free CC licences are those including NC or ND or both, while the Free ones are the rest: * CC0 -- effectively public domain * CC-BY -- distribution with attribution required * CC-BY-SA -- sharealike distribution with attribution If you want to promote sharing and contribute to Free Culture, stick to these three licences. In particular, here <http://freedomdefined.org/Licenses/NC> is a detailed discussion of the NC restriction, and why it is such a bad idea. Most people who stick an NC licence on their work think in terms of preventing big commercial outfits from “ripping them off”. However, this licensing restriction may not achieve what you think it does, particularly since it is often unclear what constitutes “commercial” use anyway.

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Does Anybody Like GNU Info?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 21 Dec '14

21 Dec '14

Anybody who has looked at Linux documentation on the command line would know about man pages, and quite likely about GNU info as well. The GNU project invented the “info” system as a (supposedly) superior replacement for man pages, but for some reason it never became that popular. I personally find it quite annoying to use, and it’s clear I’m not the only one. The GNU info system requires documentation to be written in Texinfo format, from which it can be generated in other formats displayable with the info command as well as other means. Now at least one GNU project, namely Emacs <http://lwn.net/Articles/625072/>, is contemplating moving away from maintaining its documentation in Texinfo format. The suggestion is to use AsciiDoc instead. This is one of a raft of newer, simpler markup formats that are designed so that even the source can be read and understood by ordinary humans, since the appearance of many of the markup sequences already gives some indication of their function in the layout. You may also have heard of Markdown (GitHub uses a flavour of this) and reStructedText (understood by Docutils/Sphinx, the standard toolset for Python documentation)--these are variations on the same idea. The LWN article has an error in it, though: the AsciiDoc package itself is not constrained to only generating HTML, it can output (shudder) DocBook SGML as well. And then there is another piece of software called Pandoc, which can convert between a whole range of different formats, including AsciiDoc.

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Critical Git Security Vulnerability Announced
by Peter Reutemann 19 Dec '14

19 Dec '14

'Github has announced a security vulnerability and has encourage users to update their Git clients as soon as possible. The blog post reads in part: "A critical Git security vulnerability has been announced today, affecting all versions of the official Git client and all related software that interacts with Git repositories, including GitHub for Windows and GitHub for Mac. Because this is a client-side only vulnerability, github.com and GitHub Enterprise are not directly affected. The vulnerability concerns Git and Git-compatible clients that access Git repositories in a case-insensitive or case-normalizing filesystem. An attacker can craft a malicious Git tree that will cause Git to overwrite its own .git/config file when cloning or checking out a repository, leading to arbitrary command execution in the client machine. Git clients running on OS X (HFS+) or any version of Microsoft Windows (NTFS, FAT) are exploitable through this vulnerability. Linux clients are not affected if they run in a case-sensitive filesystem....Updated versions of GitHub for Windows and GitHub for Mac are available for immediate download, and both contain the security fix on the Desktop application itself and on the bundled version of the Git command-line client."' -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/12/18/2346238 Cheers, Petere -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Grinch Vulnerability Could Put a Hole In Your Linux Stocking
by Peter Reutemann 18 Dec '14

18 Dec '14

"In a blog post Tuesday, security service provider Alert Logic warned of a Linux vulnerability, named grinch after the well-known Dr. Seuss character, that could provide attackers with unfettered root access. The fundamental flaw resides in the Linux authorization system, which can inadvertently allow privilege escalation, granting a user full administrative access. Alert Logic warned that Grinch could be as severe as the Shellshock flaw that roiled the Internet in September." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/12/18/2022245 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Manufacturer's Backdoor Found On Popular Chinese Android Smartphone
by Peter Reutemann 17 Dec '14

17 Dec '14

"A popular Android smartphone sold primarily in China and Taiwan but also available worldwide, contains a backdoor from the manufacturer that is being used to push pop-up advertisements and install apps without users' consent. The Coolpad devices, however, are ripe for much more malicious abuse, researchers at Palo Alto Networks said today, especially after the discovery of a vulnerability in the backend management interface that exposed the backdoor's control system. Ryan Olson, intelligence director at Palo Alto, said the CoolReaper backdoor not only connects to a number of command and control servers, but is also capable of downloading, installing and activating any Android application without the user's permission. It also sends phony over-the-air updates to devices that instead install applications without notifying the user. The backdoor can also be used to dial phone numbers, send SMS and MMS messages, and upload device and usage information to Coolpad." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/12/17/1815250 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Python Moving To Git
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 16 Dec '14

16 Dec '14

About 5½ years ago, the decision was made <http://lwn.net/Articles/326201/> to use Mercurial as the preferred version-control system (VCS) for Python development. It was already clear at the time that there was a strong preference among developers for Git instead of Mercurial. And since that time, the dominance of Git has only grown. It appears that Mercurial is still the official VCS for at least the CPython core, but the Python project already has a GitHub area <https://github.com/python> which includes a “Semi-official read-only mirror of the CPython Mercurial repository”. I would suspect that a lot of their contributors are already doing their work in Git, and communicating with the upstream Mercurial repo using an addon like git-remote-hg, which makes it look just like a native Git repo. Now there is a plan to migrate at least some supporting repositories <http://lwn.net/Articles/624101/> <http://lwn.net/Articles/623905/> officially to Git, and also use GitHub to host these instead of at python.org. These stats from the PEP are quite interesting: The Open Hub (Previously Ohloh) statistics ... show that currently 37% of the repositories Open Hub is indexing is using git which is second only to SVN (which has 48%) while Mercurial has just 2% of the indexed repositories (beating only bazaar which has 1%). In addit[i]on to the Open Hub statistics a look at the top 100 projects on PyPI (ordered by total download counts) shows us that within the Python space itself there is a majority of projects using git: === ========= ========== ====== === ==== Git Mercurial Subversion Bazaar CVS None === ========= ========== ====== === ==== 62 22 7 4 1 1 === ========= ========== ====== === ==== Interesting that Subversion (aka SVN, an older, centralized, much less flexible version-control system) manages to handily beat Mercurial in non-Python-specific projects...

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Raspberry Pi In Space
by Peter Reutemann 14 Dec '14

14 Dec '14

"When British astronaut Tim Peake heads off to the International Space Station in November 2015 he will be accompanied on his 6-month mission by two augmented Rapsberry Pis, aka Astro Pis. The Astro Pi board is a Raspberry Pi HAT and provides gyroscope, accelerometer and magnetometer and sensors for temperature, barometric pressure and humidity. It also has a real time clock, LED display and some push buttons — it sounds like the sort of addon that we could do with down here on earth as well! It will also be equipped with both camera module and an infra-red camera. UK school pupils are being challenged to write Rapberry Pi apps or experiments to run in space. During his mission Tim Peake will deploy the Astro Pis, upload the winning code whilst in orbit, set them running, collect the data generated and then download it to be distributed to the winning teams." -- source: http://build.slashdot.org/story/14/12/14/1827252 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Linux Mint 17.1 review—less change is good change
by Peter Reutemann 10 Dec '14

10 Dec '14

"This marks the first time Linux Mint has not used the newest version of Ubuntu for a release. But if you paid attention to the curious approach of Linux Mint 17.0, you'll know that was the plan all along. These days, Mint will not be changing its Ubuntu base again until the next LTS release—Ubuntu 16.04—arrives in 2016. And at first glance, it might seem like a bad thing. After all, Mint is missing out on whatever new stuff is in Ubuntu 14.10 (in this case it's not much, but 15.04 will have plenty of changes)." -- source: http://goo.gl/zaWPTV Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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$35 Quad-core Hacker SBC Offers Raspberry Pi-like Size and I/O
by Peter Reutemann 10 Dec '14

10 Dec '14

"Hardkernel has again set its sites on the Raspberry Pi with a new $35 Odroid-C1 hacker board that matches the RPI's board size and offers a mostly similar 40-pin expansion connector. Unlike the previous $30 Odroid-W that used the same Broadcom BCM2835 SoC as the Pi and was soon cancelled due to lack of BCM2835 SoC availability, the Odroid-C1 is based on a quad-core 1.5GHz Cortex-A5 based Amlogic S805 SoC, which integrates the Mali-400 GPU found on Allwinner's popular SoCs. Touted advantages over the similarly priced Raspberry Pi Model B+ include a substantially more powerful processor, double the RAM, an extra USB2.0 port that adds Device/OTG, and GbE rather than 10/100 Ethernet." -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/12/10/1334251 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Ubuntu Gets Container-Friendly "Snappy" Core
by Peter Reutemann 10 Dec '14

10 Dec '14

'Canonical just announced Ubuntu Core, which uses containers instead of packages. It's the biggest Ubuntu shakeup for 20 years, says Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth, and is based on a tiny core, which will run Docker and other container technology better, quicker and with greater security than other Linux distros. Delivered as alpha code today, it's going to become a supported product, designed to compete with both CoreOS and Red Hat Atomic, the two leading container-friendly Linux approaches. Shuttleworth says it came about because Canonical found it had solved the "cloud" problems (delivering and updating apps and keeping security) by accident — in its work on a mobile version of Ubuntu.' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/12/09/2225210 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Unity 8 Will Bring 'Pure' Linux Experience To Mobile Devices
by Peter Reutemann 09 Dec '14

09 Dec '14

'If you have tried the live images of Ubuntu Next you may worry that Canonical is trying to do a Windows 8 with Ubuntu. That's not true. There is no need to worry though: A great deal of work is happening at a deeper level that may not have yet surfaced. It will surface eventually, however. Will Cooke of Canonical clarifies: "We are trying to make it clear that Unity 8 desktop will look like the traditional desktop and will behave like a normal desktop. We are very aware that our users expect a normal desktop there." Unity 8 will offer the traditional desktop interface when it detects a desktop. The same OS will switch to a touch-based interface on touch-based devices such as tablets and smartphones.' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/12/09/1516240 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Just-Announced X.Org Security Flaws Affect Code Dating Back To 1987
by Peter Reutemann 09 Dec '14

09 Dec '14

'Some of the worst X.Org security issues were just publicized in an X.Org security advisory. The vulnerabilities deal with protocol handling issues and led to 12 CVEs published and code dating back to 1987 is affected within X11. Fixes for the X Server are temporarily available via this Git repository.' -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/12/09/1747212 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Fedora 21 Released
by Peter Reutemann 09 Dec '14

09 Dec '14

'The Fedora Project has announced the release of Fedora 21. "As part of the Fedora.next initiative, Fedora 21 comes in three flavors: Cloud, Server, and Workstation. Cloud is now a top-level deliverable for Fedora 21, and includes images for use in private cloud environments like OpenStack, as well as AMIs for use on Amazon, and a new "Atomic" image streamlined for running Docker containers. The Fedora Server flavor is a common base platform that is meant to run featured application stacks, which are produced, tested, and distributed by the Server Working Group. The Fedora Workstation is a new take on desktop development from the Fedora community. Our goal is to pick the best components, and integrate and polish them. This work results in a more polished and targeted system than you've previously seen from the Fedora desktop." Here are screenshots for Fedora 21: GNOME, KDE, Xfce, LXDE, and MATE.' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/12/09/2059252 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Google Releases Android Studio 1.0, the First Stable Version of Its IDE
by Peter Reutemann 09 Dec '14

09 Dec '14

"After two years of development, Google today released Android Studio 1.0, the first stable version of its Integrated Development Environment (IDE) aimed solely at Android developers. You can download the tool right now for Windows, Mac, and Linux from the Android Developer site. Google first announced Android Studio, built on the popular IntelliJ IDEA Java IDE, at its I/O Developer conference in May 2013. The company's pitch was very simple: this is the official Android IDE." -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/12/08/2129255 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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POODLE Flaw Returns, This Time Hitting TLS Protocol
by Peter Reutemann 09 Dec '14

09 Dec '14

"If you patched your sites against a serious SSL flaw discovered in October you will have to check them again. Researchers have discovered that the POODLE vulnerability also affects implementations of the newer TLS protocol. The POODLE (Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption) vulnerability allows attackers who manage to intercept traffic between a user's browser and an HTTPS website to decrypt sensitive information, like the user's authentication cookies." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/12/09/0423210 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Blockly Versus Scratch
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 09 Dec '14

09 Dec '14

You may have heard of MIT Scratch <http://scratch.mit.edu/>, a visual programming language oriented to teaching children programming. Initially I was put off by the non-Free licence (you couldn’t redistribute modified code), but that seems to have gone now, and the source is available <https://github.com/LLK/Scratch_1.4> under completely Free licences, the core being GPLv2, plugins under an MIT licence, and support materials/samples under CC-BY-SA. Google has its own alternative along the same lines, but Web-based, called Blockly <https://code.google.com/p/blockly/>. And Barack Obama has successfully used it to become the first US president to write a computer program <http://www.engadget.com/2014/12/08/barack-obama-just-became-the-first-us-pr…>.

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Linux 3.18 Released, Lockup Bug Still Present
by Peter Reutemann 08 Dec '14

08 Dec '14

"As anticipated, Linus Torvalds officially released Linux 3.18. The new version is now out there, though that nasty lockup issue has still yet to be resolved. Dave Jones is nearing the end of dissecting the issue, but since it also affects Linux 3.17 and not too many people seem to get hit by the lockups, Linus Torvalds decided to go ahead and do the 3.18 release on schedule. Linus was also concerned that dragging out the 3.18 release would then complicate the Linux 3.19 merge window due to the holidays later this month. Now the Linux 3.19 kernel merge window is open for two weeks of exciting changes." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/12/08/2020251 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Powerful, highly stealthy Linux trojan may have infected victims for years
by Peter Reutemann 08 Dec '14

08 Dec '14

"Researchers have uncovered an extremely stealthy trojan for Linux systems that attackers have been using to siphon sensitive data from governments and pharmaceutical companies around the world." -- source: http://goo.gl/JG2Jh3 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Fwd: [NZOSS-Openchat] LCA 2015 Keynote Session - Q&A with Linus Torvalds
by Peter Reutemann 08 Dec '14

08 Dec '14

Excuse the cross posting, but here is an amazing incentive to get to LCA 2015 in Auckland this year. - Way, way back in 2003, at LCA in Perth, there was a Q&A session with Linus Torvalds, Bdale Garbee and Andrew Tridgell. It’s time for a follow-up so at LCA 2015 in Auckland it’s going to happen! The Q&A session is scheduled for 09:00 am Friday, 16 January 2015 and will be moderated by Bdale Garbee with the assistance of Andrew Tridgell. Helsinki-born Linus, who simply calls himself a Software Engineer, was the principle force behind developing the Linux kernel. It all started from an initial usenet posting in August of 1991 and made what has proved to be a historic debut with the release of version 1.0 on March 14 1994. In June 2003 Linus started working for Open Source Development Labs. After merging with the Free Standards Group it became the Linux Foundation where Linus continues to work as the project’s coordinator and is Chief Architect of the Linux kernel. In 2005, after criticism for for his use and alleged advocacy of BitKeeper, proprietary software for version-control in the Linux kernel, Linus wrote a free-software replacement for BitKeeper called GIT which is now the most widely-adopted version-control system for software development. Linus is an accomplished diver and in 2011, frustrated with the lack of decent divelog software on Linux, he developed Subsurface (http://subsurface-divelog.org/) an Open Source divelog program that runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. We know that there are a number of beautiful diving spots not too far from Auckland... The LCA 2015 Auckland team would like to thank the Linux Foundation for their assistance in making this possible. -------------------------------------------- Steven Ellis - Technical Director OpenMedia Limited - The Home of myPVR email - steven(a)openmedia.co.nz _______________________________________________ Openchat mailing list Openchat(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz http://lists.nzoss.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/openchat -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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moving the mailing list - recap
by Peter Reutemann 02 Dec '14

02 Dec '14

Hi everyone >From what I can gather, the main reason for moving the mailing list (aggressive spam filtering), no longer seems to be an issue. Therefore, I think that we can end the discussion and leave things just as they are. Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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mailing list difficulties
by Ian Young 29 Nov '14

29 Nov '14

Greets, On the last occasion I tried to send a message to the list, it was impounded as there was a suspect word or somesuch in the subject line. Robo was wrong, utterly nonsensical. I think there was some reference in the rejection blurb to (possibly non-existent?) moderation. The message never appeared afaik. Never got around to following it up, but it was a nuisance. Subsequently I stopped bothering to post. And as I press Send now, I find myself wondering whether this message will ever appear. ~ IsY

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Computer History
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 29 Nov '14

29 Nov '14

Anybody interested in talks by and about computer pioneers should look at this YouTube channel <http://www.youtube.com/user/ComputerHistory>, run by the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. All kinds of fun stuff, from the experience of building a working version of Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine No 2 (designed in the 1830s), to the 30th anniversary of the Cray-1 supercomputer, to an interview with Ward Cunningham, inventor of the wiki. And if you want to see how far computer graphics has come, try this one: <http://www.youtube.com/user/VintageCG/>. Some old classics there. But boy, have we come a long way since characters made out of spheres and cylinders...

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Shall We Talk About Moving This List To Another Server?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 28 Nov '14

28 Nov '14

As I recall, the suggestion made last night was to put this list on Google Groups.

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Bitcoin uses the Bitcoin Core open source software
by Ian Stewart 28 Nov '14

28 Nov '14

Hi wlug folks, FYI: The latest release of Bitcoin is currently version 0.9.3 which was released 27 September 2014. You can download a suitable binary version of the Bitcoin Core from: https://www.bitcoin.org/en/download It is open source code and you can obtain it from: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin cheers, Ian. PS: This e-mail is a test to see if the spam filtering software blocks it being distributed to the wlug email list. From my experience about a year ago, I found that mails that contained the word "bitcoin" would be blocked.

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DragonFly BSD 4.0 Released
by Peter Reutemann 26 Nov '14

26 Nov '14

"From the release page: Version 4 of DragonFly brings Haswell graphics support, 3D acceleration, and improved performance in extremely high-traffic networks. DragonFly now supports up to 256 CPUs, Haswell graphics (i915), concurrent pf operation, and a variety of other devices." -- source: http://bsd.slashdot.org/story/14/11/26/184238 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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AGM tomorrow
by Peter Reutemann 24 Nov '14

24 Nov '14

Hi everyone This year's AGM will take place tomorrow on November 24th, usual place at uni, MS4.G.02. Agenda: - President's Report - Treasurer's Report - Election of 2015 Committee - Consumption of pizza http://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/214504372/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Crowdfunding project promises a “laptop that respects essential freedoms”
by Peter Reutemann 22 Nov '14

22 Nov '14

'What price can you put on freedom? If you’re talking about software freedom, a new San Francisco-based computer company prices it at $1,949 and up. Purism has turned to the crowdfunding site Crowd Supply to fund and launch its first-ever product—a laptop that's as open source friendly as it is technically feasible. Advertised as a "Free and Open Source laptop that respects your essential freedoms," Purism’s Librem 15 laptop, now in prototype and ready for manufacture, is designed to run entirely with open source software, requiring no proprietary drivers. The only proprietary code on the laptop resides in its Intel firmware. ... It will ship with Purism’s own distribution of GNU/Linux based on Trisquel—an Ubuntu derivative that only includes free software. Purism will ship the Librem with Tor installed and turned on by default.' -- source: http://goo.gl/8COuog Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Using a password manager on Android? It may be wide open to sniffing attacks
by Peter Reutemann 22 Nov '14

22 Nov '14

'In early 2013, researchers exposed some unsettling risks stemming from Android-based password managers. In a paper titled "Hey, You, Get Off of My Clipboard," they documented how passwords managed by 21 of the most popular such apps could be accessed by any other app on an Android device, even those with extremely low-level privileges. They suggested several measures to help fix the problem. Almost two years later, the threat remains viable in at least some, if not all, of the apps originally analyzed. An app recently made available on Google Play, for instance, has no trouble divining the passwords managed by LastPass, one of the leading managers on the market, as well as the lesser-known KeePassDroid. With additional work, it's likely that the proof-of-concept ClipCaster app would work seamlessly against many other managers, too, said Xiao Bao Clark, the Australia-based programmer who developed it. While ClipCaster does nothing more than display the plaintext of passwords that LastPass and KeePassDroid funnel through Android handsets, a malicious app with only network privileges could send the credentials to an attacker without the user having any idea what was happening.' -- source: http://goo.gl/CsjkC8 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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AGM next week
by Peter Reutemann 21 Nov '14

21 Nov '14

Hi everyone This year's AGM will take place next week on November 24th, usual place at uni, MS4.G.02. Agenda: - President's Report - Treasurer's Report - Election of 2015 Committee - Consumption of pizza http://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/214504372/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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A Brilliant Mind: SUSE's Kernel Guru Speaks
by Peter Reutemann 20 Nov '14

20 Nov '14

"The man who in every sense sits at the nerve centre of SUSE Linux has no airs about him. At 38, Vojtch Pavlík is disarmingly frank and often seems a bit embarrassed to talk about his achievements, which are many and varied. He is every bit a nerd, but can be candid, though precise. As director of SUSE Labs, it would be no exaggeration to call him the company's kernel guru. Both recent innovations that have come from SUSE — patching a live kernel, technology called kGraft, and creating a means for booting openSUSE on machines locked down with secure boot, have been his babies." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/11/20/203259 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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LFCS: How to use GNU ‘sed’ Command to Create, Edit, and Manipulate files in Linux – Part 1
by Peter Reutemann 20 Nov '14

20 Nov '14

"The Linux Foundation announced the LFCS (Linux Foundation Certified Sysadmin) certification, a new program that aims at helping individuals all over the world to get certified in basic to intermediate system administration tasks for Linux systems. This includes supporting running systems and services, along with first-hand troubleshooting and analysis, and smart decision-making to escalate issues to engineering teams. Part 1: How to use GNU ‘sed’ Command to Create, Edit, and Manipulate files in Linux" -- source: http://www.tecmint.com/sed-command-to-create-edit-and-manipulate-files-in-l… Parts 2-9 are listed in that article as well. Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Jolla Crowdfunds Its First Tablet
by Peter Reutemann 19 Nov '14

19 Nov '14

'Jolla is another rising star in the tech world, having recently expanded its smartphone sales into more countries across the globe. Jolla's Sailfish OS is based on the Linux kernel, and considered by many to be a direct successor to Nokia and Intel's MeeGo and the N9 mobile phone. Its software is based on the open-sourced components of MeeGo. Now, the company is ready to start production of its first tablet. They're crowdfunding it, and they blew past their $380,000 goal in about two hours. The tablet has a 7.9-inch screen with a resolution of 2048 x 1536. It's powered by a 1.8GHz 64-bit quad-core Intel processor, comes with a 32GB of storage, an SD card slot, 2GB of RAM and a 5MP rear camera. Judging by its size, we can see this will rival the iPad Mini the new Nokia N1. While there aren't too many Sailfish-specific apps available, as with the phone, Jolla's tablet will be compatible with Android apps.' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/11/19/1343250 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Launching 2015: a New Certificate Authority To Encrypt the Entire Web
by Peter Reutemann 18 Nov '14

18 Nov '14

"Today EFF, Mozilla, Cisco, and Akamai announced a forthcoming project called Let's Encrypt. Let's Encrypt will be a certificate authority that issues free certificates to any website, using automated protocols (demo video here). Launching in summer 2015, we believe this will be the missing piece that deprecates the woefully insecure HTTP protocol in favor of HTTPS." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/11/18/1830229 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Crowdfunded Linux Voice Magazine Releases First Issue CC-BY-SA
by Peter Reutemann 18 Nov '14

18 Nov '14

"Linux Voice, the crowdfunded GNU/Linux magazine that Slashdot has covered previously, had two goals at its launch: to give 50% of its profits back to the community after one year, and release each issue's contents under the Creative Commons after nine months. Well, it's been nine months since issue 1, so the whole thing is now online and free to share. Readers and supporters have also made audio versions of articles, for listening to on the commute to work." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/11/18/1636234 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Turning a Rasberry Pi into a Tor Gateway with Sphirewall
by Michael Lawson 17 Nov '14

17 Nov '14

Earlier this month Sphirewall released support for Tor as a transparent gateway, we thought it would be neat to get it running on the Pi and show it of a little bit. Half shameless plug, half interesting use case for Sphirewall and a Pi. http://sphirewall.net/blog.html?post_id=2 (Also 100% kiwi ;)) -- Michael Lawson

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Docker - (was: Re: WLUG meeting next Monday)
by Peter Reutemann 17 Nov '14

17 Nov '14

Ian pointed out that my reply to a meeting announcement might confuse people... So, just to clarify, there is no meeting next week, but on the 24th (AGM). Cheers, Peter On Thu, Nov 6, 2014 at 2:31 PM, Peter Reutemann <fracpete(a)waikato.ac.nz> wrote: >> We have a meeting coming up next Monday: >> >> "Virtualization has been become commonplace nowadays, with lots of >> different implementations. Docker provides an as-thin-as-possible >> approach, making use of the kernel's functionality of resource >> isolation, eliminating the need for installing an operating system for >> the guest system. >> Andrew Parnasov will give an introduction to Docker, how to set it up, >> how to use and what it can be used for." >> >> http://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/197652482/ > > Just have come across this here: > > "Google Container Engine (Alpha) > > Run Docker containers on Google Cloud Platform, powered by Kubernetes. > Container Engine takes care of provisioning and maintaining the > underlying virtual machine cluster, scaling your application, and > operational logistics like logging, monitoring, and health > management." > > -- source: https://cloud.google.com/container-engine/ > > Cheers, Peter > -- > Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ > http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174 -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Fedora Looks To Make /usr World-Readable
by Peter Reutemann 17 Nov '14

17 Nov '14

"Fedora developers are looking at requiring all files that be placed in /usr world-readable. Developers are seeking a mandate that all Fedora packages must not install any non-world-readable files within /usr. Right now some Fedora packages do not honor this and restrict permissions to certain files/directories. Stakeholders are after making the user directory world-readable since containerized copies of Fedora can have the directory bind-mounted into the container, support for virtualization use-cases, and for better systemd handling. " -- source: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTgzOTE Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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