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Linux Mint Sells Out for Mozilla Money
by Peter Reutemann 11 Jan '22

11 Jan '22

'Brian Fagioli, reporting for BetaNews: The developers of the Ubuntu-based operating system have agreed to accept an undisclosed amount of money from Mozilla in exchange for making significant changes to Linux Mint. This includes removal of modifications to Firefox and a big change for search. The devs share the upcoming changes to Firefox in Linux Mint 19 and higher. The default start page no longer points to https://www.linuxmint.com/start/ The default search engines no longer include Linux Mint search partners (Yahoo, DuckDuckGo...) but Mozilla search partners (Google, Amazon, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Ebay...) The default configuration switches from Mint defaults to Mozilla defaults. Firefox no longer includes code changes or patches from Linux Mint, Debian or Ubuntu.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/22/01/10/1930243 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Microsoft Invents The “Year 2022” Bug
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 04 Jan '22

04 Jan '22

Microsoft released a new version of Exchange Server at the start of the new year, which promptly caused everybody’s on-premises servers to crash. The reason? The version number. There is apparently code somewhere in the bowels of the software that interprets that number as a signed 32-bit integer, computed as the (year - 2000) × 100 million + additional digits for the month and day etc. Spot the problem with that? The largest representable such integer is 2147483647, so the top two digits can’t be greater than 21. So it can’t actually represent the correct version number for any version released after 2021. Why does the code do that? Who knows... Microsoft’s fix? Change the version number to restrict the top two digits to 21, and increment the lower digits instead, beyond their usual range (e.g. so the release date becomes effectively something like “33 December 2021”). They released a PowerShell script to automate the fix, but it might not work properly, so there is an option for a manual fix as well. <https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/01/exchange-server-bug-…>

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Developer creates ‘Quite OK Image Format’ – but it performs better than just OK
by Peter Reutemann 27 Dec '21

27 Dec '21

'A developer named Dominic Szablewski has given the world a new file format with a splendid name: the Quite OK Image Format (QOI). The file format might be better than that. Szablewski explained that he decided the world needed a new image format because the likes of PNG, JPEG, MPEG, MOV and MP4 “burst with complexity at the seams.” “Every tiny aspect screams ‘design by consortium’,” he added, going on to lament the fact that most common codecs are old, closed, and “require huge libraries, are compute hungry and difficult to work with.” Szablewski thought he could do better and appears to have achieved that objective by cooking up some code, floating it on GitHub, and paying attention to the 500-plus comments it generated. While Szablewski admits that QOI will not compress images as well as an optimized PNG encoder, he claims it “losslessy compresses images to a similar size of PNG, while offering 20x-50x faster encoding and 3x-4x faster decoding.”' -- source: https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/21/quite_ok_image_format/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/.

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Second Ransomware Family Exploiting Log4j Spotted In US, Europe
by Peter Reutemann 23 Dec '21

23 Dec '21

'Researchers say a second family of ransomware has been growing in usage for attack attempts that exploit the critical vulnerability in Apache Log4j, including in the U.S. and Europe. VentureBeat reports: A number of researchers, including at cybersecurity giant Sophos, have now said they've observed the attempted deployment of a ransomware family known as TellYouThePass. Researchers have described TellYouThePass as an older and largely inactive ransomware family -- which has been revived following the discovery of the vulnerability in the widely used Log4j logging software. TellYouThePass is the second family of ransomware that's been observed to exploit the vulnerability in Log4j, known as Log4Shell, joining the Khonsari ransomware, according to researchers. While previous reports indicated that TellYouThePass was mainly being directed against targets in China, researchers at Sophos told VentureBeat that they've observed the attempted delivery of TellYouThePass ransomware both inside and outside of China -- including in the U.S. and Europe. "Systems in China were targeted, as well as some hosted in Amazon and Google cloud services in the U.S. and at several sites in Europe," said Sean Gallagher, a senior threat researcher at Sophos Labs, in an email to VentureBeat on Tuesday. Sophos detected attempts to deliver TellYouThePass payloads by utilizing the Log4j vulnerability on December 17 and December 18, Gallagher said. TellYouThePass has versions that run on either Linux or Windows, "and has a history of exploiting high-profile vulnerabilities like EternalBlue," said Andrew Brandt, a threat researcher at Sophos, in an email. The Linux version is capable of stealing Secure Socket Shell (SSH) keys and can perform lateral movement, Brandt said. Sophos initially disclosed its detection of TellYouThePass ransomware in a December 20 blog post. The first report of TellYouThePass ransomware exploiting the Log4j vulnerability appears to have come from the head of Chinese cybersecurity group KnownSec 404 Team on December 12. The attempted deployment of TellYouThePass in conjunction with Log4Shell was subsequently confirmed by additional researchers, according to researcher community Curated Intelligence. In a blog post Tuesday, Curated Intelligence said its members can now confirm that TellYouThePass has been seen exploiting the vulnerability "in the wild to target both Windows and Linux systems." TellYouThePass had most recently been observed in July 2020, Curated Intelligence said. It joins Khonsari, a new family of ransomware identified in connection with exploits of the Log4j vulnerability. ' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/21/12/22/2255231 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Patch fixing critical Log4J 0-day has its own vulnerability that’s under exploit
by Peter Reutemann 20 Dec '21

20 Dec '21

'Last Thursday, the world learned of an in-the-wild exploitation of a critical code-execution zero-day in Log4J, a logging utility used by just about every cloud service and enterprise network on the planet. Open source developers quickly released an update that patched the flaw and urged all users to install it immediately. Now, researchers are reporting that there are at least two vulnerabilities in the patch, released as Log4J 2.15.0, and that attackers are actively exploiting one or both of them against real-world targets who have already applied the update. The researchers are urging organizations to install a new patch, released as version 2.16.0, as soon as possible to fix the vulnerability, which is tracked as CVE-2021-45046. ' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/12/patch-fixing-critica… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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This USB 'Kill Cord' Can Instantly Wipe Your Laptop if Snatched or Stolen
by Peter Reutemann 18 Dec '21

18 Dec '21

'Journalists, activists, and human rights defenders face a constant battle to keep files safe from a growing set of digital threats and surveillance. But physical attacks can be challenging to defend against, whether an opportunist snatch-and-grab thief or an oppressive government kicking down someone's door. This week, a project called BusKill launched a custom USB magnetic breakaway cable that acts as a "dead man's switch," locking a computer if someone physically snatches it and severs the magnetic connectors. BusKill has been in the works for more than two years as a do-it-yourself project. Anyone with the hardware could compile the source code, but it only worked on Linux and components quickly sold out. After a crowdsourcing effort, the cable is now available to buy starting at $59 and has an accompanying app that works on macOS, Windows, and Linux, allowing the person using the cable to easily arm and disarm the cable with a touch of a button.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/21/12/17/1530254 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Pop!_OS 21.10 Review
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 17 Dec '21

17 Dec '21

This review <https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/16/pop_os_2110_new_system76/> of the new version of the Ubuntu variant from System76 mentions a lot of trouble getting it to play nicely with other installed OSes on the same machine. One key difference is that it doesn’t boot with GRUB. Instead, it is EFI-only, and requires your kernel and initial RAM disk to live inside the “EFI System Partition” (ESP), where they can be found by systemd-boot. This typically requires the ESP to be enlarged beyond its initial size. And, depending on the tools you use, that can be problematic. This EFI-only boot procedure can also complicate coexistence with other OS installations on a multiboot system. But, interestingly, not Microsoft Windows, at least according to one of the reader comments. Indeed, a well-known issue where installing Windows on an MBR-based system destroys your ability to boot other OSes goes away with EFI-only booting. Seems Windows is well-enough behaved to only replace its own EFI state, leaving that for other OSes alone.

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AGM next month
by Peter Reutemann 17 Dec '21

17 Dec '21

Hi everyone We have our Annual General Meeting (AGM) coming up on January 24th with the following (preliminary) agenda: - President's Report - Treasurer's Report - Election of 2022 Committee - General business - Consumption of pizza Details: https://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/282720630/ BTW Meeting venue (or whether to be held online due to COVID) will be confirmed closer to the date. Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Google Is Building a New AR Device and OS
by Peter Reutemann 15 Dec '21

15 Dec '21

'According to job listings on LinkedIn, Google appears to be working on an augmented reality device and operating system to pair with it. Ars Technica reports: On LinkedIn, operating system engineering director Mark Lucovsky announced that he has joined Google. He previously headed up mixed reality operating system work for Meta, and before that he was one of the key architects of Windows NT at Microsoft. "My role is to lead the Operating System team for Augmented Reality at Google," he wrote. He also posted a link to some job listings at Google that give the impression Google is getting just as serious about AR as Apple or Meta. As 9to5Google discovered, one of the listings ("Senior Software Developer, Embedded, Augmented Reality OS") described Google's objective in clear terms: "Our team is building the software components that control and manage the hardware on our Augmented Reality (AR) products. These are the software components that run on the AR devices and are the closest to the hardware. As Google adds products to the AR portfolio, the OS Foundations team is the very first software team to work with new hardware." Other job listings say new hires will be working on an "innovative AR device." And one specifies that Google is "focused on making immersive computing accessible to billions of people through mobile devices." The roles are largely in the United States, but some are located in Waterloo, Ontario -- the HQ of Canadian smart glasses maker North, which Google acquired in 2020.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/21/12/14/2233208 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Android 12 Go Edition Brings New Speed, Battery, Privacy Features To Lower-end Phones
by Peter Reutemann 15 Dec '21

15 Dec '21

'Google's Pixel 6 line may have served as Android 12's big debut for higher-end phones, but Android 12 (Go edition) plans to bring many of the enhancements and features of Android 12 to lower-end phones, too. Google on Tuesday unveiled a host of new features for the Go edition that are set to roll out to devices in 2022. From a report: Google says that in addition to speed enhancements that'll help apps launch up to 30% faster, Android 12 (Go edition) will include a feature that'll save battery life and storage by automatically "hibernating apps that haven't been used for extended periods of time." And with the Files Go app, you'll be able to recover files within 30 days of deletion. Android 12 (Go edition) will also help you easily translate any content, listen to the news and share apps with nearby devices offline to save data, Google says. The company said Android Go has amassed 200 million users.' -- source: https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/21/12/14/1848213 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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