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Check Point Releases Open-Source Fix For Common Linux Memory Corruption Security Hole
by Peter Reutemann 22 May '20

22 May '20

'For years, there's been a known security vulnerability hiding in the GNU C Library (glibc). This library, which is critical for Linux and many other operating systems and programs, had a dynamic memory management security hole that could be used for denial of service (DoS) attacks. Now, the security company, Check Point, has issued an open-source patch, which will make it much more difficult to exploit this memory allocation (malloc) problem. Check Point re-encountered this known problem when it discovered that so-called smart light bulbs could be used to hack into networks by exploiting unprotected single-linked-lists. The double-linked-list version of this problem had been fixed back in 2005 with Safe-Unlinking. But, the single-linked-list version, which is present in the memory primitive functions Fast-Bins and Thread Cache (TCache), remained vulnerable. Now, the fix is in for this problem. This new built-in security mechanism is called Safe-Linking. It protects malloc by signing its single-linked-list pointers with random numbers derived from Linux's Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) functionality. Combined with memory chunk alignment integrity checks, it protects the memory pointers from hijacking attempts and thus the system itself. The patch is now being integrated with the most common standard C library implementation, glibc. Safe-Linking will be released in glibc 2.32 in August 2020. It's already up and running in glibc's popular embedded counterpart: uClibc-NG.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/20/05/21/2018256 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Raspberry Pi 4 Beta Firmware Brings True USB Boot for High-Speed Storage, No microSD Required
by Peter Reutemann 22 May '20

22 May '20

'Owners of a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B single-board computer looking to make the most of the device's high-speed USB 3.0 connectivity by turning it into the device's primary storage can now do so — at least, if they're willing to help out with beta-testing the latest firmware. The Raspberry Pi 4 launched last year with a range of improvements over its predecessor, including the option of up to four times as much memory and high-speed USB 3.0 connectivity for peripherals, but with a couple of regressions: The loss of the ability, present in the Raspberry Pi 3 range, to boot from a network server or USB Mass Storage device.' -- source: https://www.hackster.io/news/raspberry-pi-4-beta-firmware-brings-true-usb-b… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Term Of The Week: “RPA”
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 21 May '20

21 May '20

Came across this phrase “robotic process automation” (RPA) <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/05/sba_rpa_ban/> which seems to be just another name for “web-scraping”. The site in question also offers APIs that can be used more directly to make requests and receive info. It’s just that the scraping works on a GUI designed for human users and human response times and data rates, so it creates a lot more overhead on the servers when being driven automatically with a lot of requests. Some outfits try to say that using such technology on their site is a violation of their terms of service. As one of the reader comments points out, if a company is banned from using a scraper bot that is batching its requests, and has to resort to hiring an army of humans, creating a concomitant swarm of separate login sessions, to enter the same data, the result can be even worse load on the servers.

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Information Technology Asset Management (ITAM) Forum
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 21 May '20

21 May '20

Choice quote from the founder/chairman <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/20/itam_forum_launches/>: “One of the reasons people have been interested in ITAM in the past is because they are sick of software audits and want to learn to defend themselves against audits...” Given the way the proprietary licence agreements are worded, it’s hard to see how you can avoid this and still use the same software. Further: “Ten years ago, people thought everything would be compliant in the cloud. Although software compliance is less of an issue, costs certainly aren’t planned. It is as complex as ever. Whether it's on the desktop, in the data centre or in the cloud, you’re looking at roughly 35 per cent waste across all of those platforms.” That’s a pretty high figure. It means that, when you buy proprietary software, you are paying about a 50% markup on the supposed price.

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Samsung Smart TV - blocking ads
by Peter Reutemann 21 May '20

21 May '20

Hi everyone Just came across this tip on reddit for blocking ads on your Samsung Smart TV: https://www.reddit.com/r/YouShouldKnow/comments/gn7fw5/ysk_if_you_own_a_sam… Blocking "ads.samsung.com" (or similar) on the router seems to be sufficient... The above link has more domains listed for Samsung and LG. Not that I'm connecting my TV to the internet in the first place... ;-) Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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List Of Spreadsheet Horror Stories
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 21 May '20

21 May '20

One of the things the European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group likes to do is collect horror stories about the (mis)use of spreadsheets <http://eusprig.org/horror-stories.htm>. Found the link in a reader comment <https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/all/2020/05/19/sap_analytics_cloud_o…> to this article <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/19/sap_analytics_cloud_office_integra…> about how software company SAP, creator of a complete business analytics suite, has felt compelled to include an interface to Microsoft Excel, just because that’s what most of its customers are familiar with.

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SD Cards Version 8 Are Coming
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 20 May '20

20 May '20

According to the pic linked from this article <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/20/sd_8_for_sd_express/>, the new SD card spec uses PCIe instead of the previous “SD Bus” interface to achieve around ... is it 4GB/s, or 4Gb/s? The article says it both ways, while the diagram uses capital B throughout. The current fastest SD cards have two rows of pins; this spec adds a third row.

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Linux distro review: Fedora Workstation 32
by Peter Reutemann 20 May '20

20 May '20

'Today's Linux distro review is one I've been wanting to do for quite some time—Fedora Workstation. Fedora is one of the heavyweight desktop distros of the Linux world, with a vibrant community and a strong presence at every open source convention I've ever attended. (Remember physically attending events? Ars remembers.) I never felt particularly drawn to Fedora myself, because it's a bleeding-edge distro—one targeted to the very newest software, possibly at the expense of stability. That's not what I personally want in an operating system—I fix broken things professionally; I'd prefer not to fix them personally any more than I have to. But as one of the few distros using the next-generation Wayland display server by default, Fedora made me very curious indeed. Although the screenshots taken throughout this review are of virtual machines, my first installation of Fedora Workstation (ever!) was bare metal, on the HP Dragonfly Elite G1.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/05/linux-distro-review-fedora-workstat… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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“To Fix Social Media, We Need To Introduce Digital Socialism”
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 20 May '20

20 May '20

Some may find this opinion piece <https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/fix-social-media-introduce-digita…> a bit too political, I don’t know. But he does mention some interesting open-source software projects, like the various “Fediverse” networks of decentralized social-media servers, and the “LibreSocial” project, which is trying to get rid of what little centralization still exists in those networks. Where I suppose it gets controversial is where he suggests that funding for such projects could be raised by taxing the existing Big Tech firms. But certainly many would agree the open-source projects he mentions are worth pursuing regardless.

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OT: NZ COVID Tracer app
by Peter Reutemann 20 May '20

20 May '20

Hi everyone Just came through on my twitter feed: the NZ COVID Traver app is ready: https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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