- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

meeting next Monday (in theory)
by Peter Reutemann 16 Mar '20

16 Mar '20

Hi everyone At this stage, the university is monitoring the COVID-19 situation but (to my knowledge) isn't closing yet nor is it curtailing meetings such as ours. However, this could change any day and I will post an update when this should happen. So, at this stage we have an exciting WLUG meeting scheduled for next Monday: 'The voice interface represents another big shift in user interfaces, and could be as big a shift as the shift from switches to terminals, the switch from terminals to windowed GUIs, or the switch from full computers to small touchscreen devices. Unfortunately, right now most of these devices are little more than a telephone for talking to a server in the cloud. That is a big problem for privacy, and presents the user with a false choice between access and privacy. Today's computers are capable of handling a verbal interface without requiring a cloud service to handle all of your requests. Aaron Chantrill is one of the developers on the Naomi Project, a free and open source voice assistant (https://projectnaomi.com) It is a plugin based system based on Jasper (http://jasperproject.github.io/) and depending on how the user chooses to configure it, can run totally offline. In this presentation, Aaron would like to introduce people to the Naomi Project, talk about the benefits of a verbal interface, talk about the current architectures of virtual assistants, and ways in which that architecture can be altered to provide better privacy, and also do a comparison of offline speech to text and text to speech solutions, including Pocketsphinx, Mozilla Deepspeech, Kaldi, and Julius. Finally, He will invite people to participate in building and improving Naomi. There is a lot to do and much of it is both engaging and cutting-edge.' Details: https://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/266792000/ https://gettogether.community/events/3276/wlug-meeting/ 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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Ice Lake GPU underperforming? Put it in powersave mode. Wait, what?
by Peter Reutemann 16 Mar '20

16 Mar '20

'Back in December, Linux users were starting to notice that Ice Lake-equipped laptops were getting better framerates in powersave mode than in performance mode. This Tuesday, Intel developer Francisco Jerez released a patchset to address the conundrum. Jerez begins by noting the fact that if your system bottleneck is I/O, boosting CPU performance won't help—the CPU can't process more data if the I/O subsystem isn't providing it fast enough. "In IO-bound scenarios (by definition) the throughput of the system doesn't improve with increasing CPU frequency beyond the threshold value at which the IO device becomes the bottleneck." Jerez goes on to note that pointlessly boosting the CPU into turbo frequencies when there's no additional data for it to process doesn't just hurt power efficiency. In the case of laptop designs, there's typically no room for desktop- or server-style "overengineering"—you've got limited space as well as limited power. This means, among other things, that there's only so much cooling to go around. "With the current governors [...] the CPU frequency tends to oscillate with the load, often with an amplitude far into the turbo range, leading to severely reduced energy efficiency." This is particularly likely to become a problem in games, where the GPU portions of the processor get a much bigger workout than the x86 CPU itself. If you unnecessarily boost CPU frequency, you waste your TDP budget dealing with unnecessary waste heat from the CPU—which may in turn require throttling the GPU, since you've already eaten through your thermal overhead.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/03/power-management-is-hard-linux-patc… 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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Internet 'is Not Working For Women and Girls', Says Sir Tim Berners-Lee
by Peter Reutemann 13 Mar '20

13 Mar '20

'Women and girls face a "growing crisis" of online harms, with sexual harassment, threatening messages and discrimination making the web an unsafe place to be, Sir Tim Berners-Lee has warned. The inventor of the world wide web said the "dangerous trend" in online abuse was forcing women out of jobs, causing girls to skip school, damaging relationships and silencing female opinions, prompting him to conclude that "the web is not working for women and girls." "The world has made important progress on gender equality thanks to the unceasing drive of committed champions everywhere," Berners-Lee wrote in an open letter to mark the web's 31st birthday on Thursday. "But I am seriously concerned that online harms facing women and girls -- especially those of colour, from LGBTQ+ communities and other marginalised groups -- threaten that progress."' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/03/12/1436247 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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Firefox 74 Slams Facebook In Solitary Confinement: Browser Add-On Stops Social Network Stalking Users Across the Web
by Peter Reutemann 13 Mar '20

13 Mar '20

'Tim Anderson reporting via The Register: The first thing users will see after updating to Mozilla's latest browser, Firefox 74, is a prompt to install the Facebook Container add-on. The Facebook Container add-on is not new, but has been enhanced in its latest version, 2.1.0, with the ability to add custom sites to the container so that you can "login with Facebook wherever you need to." The purpose of the Facebook Container is to let you continue to use Facebook but without having the social network site track your browsing elsewhere. "Installing this extension closes your Facebook tabs, deletes your Facebook cookies, and logs you out of Facebook," say the docs. When you visit Facebook and log in, the cookies it plants are isolated to the container. This prevents Facebook Like buttons and embedded comments from working on other sites. There is also an issue with sites that require or offer a Facebook login, which you can now overcome by adding those sites to the container. Sites are added by clicking a fence icon and selecting "Allow site in Facebook container." The effect is like having two web browsers, one in which you are logged into Facebook and subject to potential tracking on any site which has Facebook content, and another where Facebook has no knowledge of you.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/03/12/2027215 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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Modern RAM Used For Computers, Smartphones Still Vulnerable To Rowhammer Attacks
by Peter Reutemann 13 Mar '20

13 Mar '20

'According to new research published today, modern RAM cards are still vulnerable to Rowhammer attacks despite extensive mitigations that have been deployed by manufacturers over the past six years. These mitigations, collectively referred to as Target Row Refresh (TRR), are a combination of software and hardware fixes that have been slowly added to the design of modern RAM cards after 2014 when academics disclosed the first-ever Rowhammer attack. But in a new research paper titled today and titled "TRRespass: Exploiting the Many Sides of Target Row Refresh," a team of academics from universities in the Netherlands and Switzerland said they developed a generic tool named TRRespass that can be used to upgrade the old Rowhammer attacks to work on the new-and-improved TRR-protected RAM cards. The new upgraded attacks work on both DIMM and LPDDR4 memory types, and can be used to retrieve encryption keys from memory, or escalate an attacker's access right to sudo/SYSTEM-level.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/20/03/12/2042242 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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Security Practices At The CIA
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 13 Mar '20

13 Mar '20

The trial of an ex-CIA operative accused of leaking some military-grade hacking tools <https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/03/cia_dirty_laund.html> has exposed some embarrassing details about the security practices of an organization that, you would expect, has security as its core mission. They regularly used (and freely circulated) rubbish passwords for services on their intranet for the elite “Operational Support Branch”, the excuse being that access to that intranet was already being tightly controlled. The old adage that “a system is only as secure as its weakest point”? They have heard of it...

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Want To Use An Open-Source, Royalty-Free Video Codec? Pay Up, Please!
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 13 Mar '20

13 Mar '20

A company called Sisvel is assembling a pool of patents claiming to cover the AV1 video codec <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200312/04075244087/former-refrigerator-…>. They expect to eventually have an arsenal of about 2000 patents, for which they will demand licence fees. If you remember, AV1 was created precisely to avoid the patent morass that surrounds H.265 aka HEVC.

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Microsoft delivers emergency patch to fix wormable Windows 10 flaw
by Peter Reutemann 13 Mar '20

13 Mar '20

'Microsoft on Thursday released an unscheduled fix for a critical security bug that makes it possible for attackers to remotely execute malicious code that can spread from vulnerable machine to vulnerable machine without requiring any interaction from users. The flaw, in version 3 of Microsoft's implementation of the Server Message block protocol, is present only in 32- and 64-bit Windows 10 versions 1903 and 1909 for clients and servers. Although the vulnerability is difficult to exploit in a reliable way, Microsoft and outside researchers consider it critical because it opens large networks to "wormable" attacks, in which the compromise of a single machine can trigger a chain reaction that causes all other Windows machines to quickly become infected. That's the scenario that played on with the WannaCry and NotPetya in 2017. In a bulletin accompanying Thursday's patch, Microsoft said it has no evidence the flaw is being actively exploited, but the company went on to label the bug as "exploitation more likely." That designation means malicious actors will probably develop and use exploits in the future.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/03/microsoft-delivers-e… 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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Windows has a new wormable vulnerability, and there’s no patch in sight
by Peter Reutemann 12 Mar '20

12 Mar '20

'Word leaked out on Tuesday of a new vulnerability in recent versions of Windows that has the potential to unleash the kind of self-replicating attacks that allowed the WannaCry and NotPetya worms to cripple business networks around the world. The vulnerability exists in version 3.1.1 of the Server Message Block, the service that’s used to share files, printers, and other resources on local networks and over the Internet. Attackers who successfully exploit the flaw can execute code of their choice on both servers and end-user computers that use the vulnerable protocol, Microsoft said in this bare-bones advisory. The flaw, which is tracked as CVE-2020-0796, affects Windows 10, versions 1903 and 1909 and Windows Server versions 1903 and 1909, which are relatively new releases that Microsoft has invested huge amounts of resources hardening against precisely these types of attacks. Patches aren’t available, and Tuesday’s advisory gave no timeline for one being released. Asked if there was a timeline for releasing a fix, a Microsoft representative said, “Beyond the advisory you linked, nothing else to share from Microsoft at this time.” In the meantime, Microsoft said vulnerable servers can be protected by disabling compression to block unauthenticated attackers from exploiting the vulnerability against an SMBv3 server. Users can use the following PowerShell command to turn off compression without needing to reboot the machine: Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters" DisableCompression -Type DWORD -Value 1 -Force That fix won't protect vulnerable client computers or servers if they connect to a malicious SMB service, but in that scenario, the attacks aren't wormable. Microsoft also recommended users block port 445, which is used to send SMB traffic between machines.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/03/windows-has-a-new-wo… 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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Before it sued Google for copying from Java, Oracle got rich copying IBM’s SQL
by Peter Reutemann 11 Mar '20

11 Mar '20

'More than a decade ago, Google re-implemented the Java programming language as part of its new Android mobile operating system. Oracle, the owner of Java, then sued Google for copyright infringement in 2010. Later this month, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in this epic copyright case that will have huge implications for the entire software industry—and that could cost Google billions of dollars. Google says it has done nothing wrong. Copyright law specifically excludes "systems" and "methods of operation" from copyright protection. Google argues that the aspects of Java it copied—function names, argument types, and so forth—fit squarely into these exceptions. Google also argues that copyright's fair use doctrine allows for this kind of copying. The case is being closely watched by the software industry. Companies like Microsoft and IBM have warned that Oracle's stance could create chaos for the industry. They argue that making this kind of copying illegal would not only create legal headaches for a lot of software companies—it would be bad for customers, too. Software companies copy software interfaces—known in industry jargon as application programming interfaces (APIs)—of their competitors' products all the time. This allows competing software products to be interoperable so that a customer can take software designed to work on one platform and re-use it on another. That means lower switching costs for customers. It also means lower barriers for entry for software startups, since it's easier to sell a new product if it's compatible with a software product that customers already know and trust. If anyone should understand the importance of such copying, it's Oracle. After all, Oracle got its start in the 1970s selling a database product based on the then-new structured query language (SQL). SQL was invented by IBM. And Oracle doesn't seem to have gotten a license to use it. If Oracle wins its legal battle, one ironic result will be to make the software industry less hospitable to future startups like Oracle. Incumbent software companies would have a greater ability to lock customers into their own proprietary standards. Startups wouldn't be allowed to do what Oracle did four decades ago: make its product compatible with an established competitor, then make that interoperability a selling point. As I'll explain below, Oracle's copying of SQL seems pretty similar to Google's copying of Java. But an Oracle spokeswoman disagrees. "It’s an incorrect premise, comparing apples with broccoli, and being completely divorced from the facts of the case," she wrote in a Tuesday email.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/before-it-sued-google-for-copyi… 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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