- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

WireGuard VPN is a step closer to mainstream adoption
by Peter Reutemann 10 Dec '19

10 Dec '19

'As of this morning, Linux network stack maintainer David Miller has committed the WireGuard VPN project into the Linux "net-next" source tree. Miller maintains both net and net-next—the source trees governing the current implementation of the Linux kernel networking stack and the implementation of the next Linux kernel's networking stack, respectively. This is a major step forward for the WireGuard VPN project. Net-next gets pulled into the new Linux kernel during its two-week merge window, where it becomes net. With WireGuard already a part of net-next, this means that—barring unexpected issues—there should be a Linux kernel 5.6 release candidate with built-in WireGuard in early 2020. Mainline kernel inclusion of WireGuard should lead to significantly higher uptake in projects and organizations requiring virtual private network capability. Normal, day-to-day Linux users probably won't see in-kernel WireGuard until late 2020. Ubuntu is one of the faster-moving mainstream distributions, and its next Long Term Support (LTS) release is in April 2020. But the Linux 5.6 kernel and Ubuntu 20.04 will likely be in release candidate status at the same time, so its inclusion in 20.04 seems unlikely. The interim 20.10 Ubuntu release seems like a much safer bet for Canonical's first use of a 5.6 or later kernel. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) inclusion will likely be a year or more beyond that; the current RHEL 8.1 shipped in May 2019 with the 4.18 kernel, which was already 9 months old. Although highly speculative, it's also possible that WireGuard could land in-kernel on Ubuntu 20.04 even without the 5.6 kernel—Donenfeld offered to do the work backporting WireGuard into earlier Ubuntu kernels directly. Donenfeld also stated today that a 1.0 WireGuard release is "on the horizon."' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/12/wireguard-vpn-is-a-step-closer-to-m… 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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Linux Users Can Now Use Disney+ After DRM Fix
by Peter Reutemann 09 Dec '19

09 Dec '19

'"Linux users can now stream shows and movies from the Disney+ streaming service after Disney lowered the level of their DRM requirements," reports Bleeping Computer: When Disney+ was first launched, Linux users who attempted to watch shows and movies were shown an error stating "Something went wrong. Please try again. If the problem persists, visit the Disney+ Help Center (Error Code 83)." As explained by Hans de Goede, this error was being caused by the Disney+ service using the highest level of security for the Widevine Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology. As some Linux and Android devices did not support this higher DRM security level, they were unable to stream Disney+ shows in their browsers... Yesterday, Twitter users discovered that Disney+ had suddenly started working on Linux browsers after the streaming service tweaked their DRM security levels... Even with Disney+ lowering the DRM requirements, users must first make sure DRM is enabled in the browser. For example, Disney+ will not work with Firefox unless you enable the "Play DRM-controlled content" setting in the browser.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/19/12/08/169213 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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Debian Begins Vote On Supporting Non-Systemd Init Options
by Peter Reutemann 09 Dec '19

09 Dec '19

"It's been five years already since the vote to transition to systemd in Debian over Upstart," reports Phoronix, noting that the Debian developer community has now begun a 20-day ranked-choice vote on eight different proposals for "'init system diversity' and just how much Debian developers care (or not) in supporting alternatives to systemd." -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/19/12/08/2131220 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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Qualcomm To Offer GPU Driver Updates On Google Play Store For Some Snapdragon Chips
by Peter Reutemann 08 Dec '19

08 Dec '19

'At its Snapdragon Summit in Maui, Hawaii this week, Qualcomm unveiled the new Snapdragon 865 Mobile Platform, which enable next year's flagship 5G Android phones with more performance, a stronger Tensor-based AI processor and a very interesting new forthcoming feature not yet offered for any smartphone platform to date. The company announced that it will eventually start delivering driver updates for its Adreno GPU engines on board the Snapdragon 865 as downloadable packages via the Google Play Store. This is big news for smartphones, as GPU drivers are rarely updated out of band, if ever, and typically have to wait for the next major Android release. And even then, many OEMs don't bother putting in the effort to ensure that mobile GPUs are running the most current graphics drivers from Qualcomm. The process, which would have to be pre-qualified by major OEMs as well, will be akin to what the PC GPU 3D graphics driver ecosystem has been benefiting from for a long time, for maximum performance and compatibility. Unfortunately, at least currently, GPU driver update support is limited to only the Adreno 650 core on board the new Snapdragon 865, which currently supports updating drivers in this fashion. Here's hoping this program is met with success and Qualcomm will begin to enable the feature for legacy and new midrange Snapdragon platforms as well.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/12/06/2132212 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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Keybase Moves To Stop Onslaught of Spammers on Encrypted Message Platform
by Peter Reutemann 07 Dec '19

07 Dec '19

'Keybase started off as co-founder and developer Max Krohn's "hobby project" -- a way for people to share PGP keys with a simple username-based lookup. Then Chris Coyne (who also was cofounder of OkCupid and SparkNotes) got involved and along came $10.8 million in funding from a group of investors led by Andreesen Horowitz. And then things got increasingly more complicated. Keybase aims to make public-key encryption accessible to everyone, for everything from messaging to file sharing to throwing a few crypto-coins someone's way. But because of that level of accessibility, Keybase faces a very OkCupid kind of problem: after drawing in people interested in easy public-key crypto-based communications and then drawing in blockchain lovers with its partnership with (and funding from) Stellar.org, Keybase has also drawn in spammers and scammers. And that has brought a host of alerts and messages that have made what was once a fairly clear communications channel into one clogged with unwanted alerts, messages, and other unpleasantry -- raising a chorus of complaints in Keybase's open chat channel. It turns out there's a reason spell check keeps wanting to tell me that Keybase should be spelled "debase." Keybase's leadership is promising to do something to fix the spam problem -- or at least make it easier to report and block abusers. In a blog post, Krohn and Coynes wrote, "To be clear, the current spam volume isn't dire, YET. Keybase still works great. But we should act quickly." But the measures promised by Keybase won't completely eliminate the issue. And Keybase execs have no interest in getting involved with additional steps that they see as censorship. "Keybase is a private company and we do retain our rights to kick people out," the co-founders said in the blog post. "That hammer will not be used because someone is mostly disliked, as long as they're playing nicely on Keybase."' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/19/12/06/1610259 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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New Linux Vulnerability Lets Attackers Hijack VPN Connections
by Peter Reutemann 06 Dec '19

06 Dec '19

'Security researchers found a new vulnerability allowing potential attackers to hijack VPN connections on affected *NIX devices and inject arbitrary data payloads into IPv4 and IPv6 TCP streams. They disclosed the security flaw tracked as CVE-2019-14899 to distros and the Linux kernel security team, as well as to others impacted such as Systemd, Google, Apple, OpenVPN, and WireGuard. The vulnerability is known to impact most Linux distributions and Unix-like operating systems including FreeBSD, OpenBSD, macOS, iOS, and Android. A currently incomplete list of vulnerable operating systems and the init systems they came with is available below, with more to be added once they are tested and found to be affected: Ubuntu 19.10 (systemd), Fedora (systemd), Debian 10.2 (systemd), Arch 2019.05 (systemd), Manjaro 18.1.1 (systemd), Devuan (sysV init), MX Linux 19 (Mepis+antiX), Void Linux (runit), Slackware 14.2 (rc.d), Deepin (rc.d), FreeBSD (rc.d), and OpenBSD (rc.d). This security flaw "allows a network adjacent attacker to determine if another user is connected to a VPN, the virtual IP address they have been assigned by the VPN server, and whether or not there is an active connection to a given website," according to William J. Tolley, Beau Kujath, and Jedidiah R. Crandall, Breakpointing Bad researchers at University of New Mexico. "Additionally, we are able to determine the exact seq and ack numbers by counting encrypted packets and/or examining their size. This allows us to inject data into the TCP stream and hijack connections," the researchers said.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/19/12/05/2022205 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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Polo – A Modern Light-weight File Manager for Linux
by Peter Reutemann 06 Dec '19

06 Dec '19

'Polo is a modern, light-weight and advanced file manager for Linux, that comes with a number of advanced features that are not present in many commonly used file managers or file browsers on Linux distributions. It comes with multiple panes with multiple tabs in each pane, support for archive creation, extraction and browsing, support for cloud storage, support for running KVM images, support for modifying PDF documents and image files, support for writing ISO files to UDB drives and much more.' -- source: https://www.tecmint.com/polo-file-manager-for-linux/ 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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Strange email
by john 06 Dec '19

06 Dec '19

I just received a email as follows: for something I did not order with what appears to be an invalid tracking number banner Hi John Thompson, A consignment has been dispatched from NZ LIFESTYLE CAMPING LTD, these will leave on our next courier cycle. Please click on the links below to track your parcels Shipping Information Receiver: *John Thompson* 2/22 Stokes Crescent Maeroa, 3200 Parcels Reference Label Number CQ0000465225 <http://www.fastway.co.nz/courier-services/track-your-parcel?l=CQ0000465225> *Visit our website at: www.fastway.co.nz <http://www.fastway.co.nz>* The headers appear a little dodgy to me could someone look at them and help me decide if this is bovine scatology? Return-path: <csc(a)nzlifestylecamping.com> Envelope-to: jaytee21(a)slingshot.co.nz Delivery-date: Thu, 05 Dec 2019 19:32:17 +1300 Received: from [10.253.37.139] (port=45902 helo=canit-scanner-1.slingshot.co.nz) by mda-2.slingshot.co.nz with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from <csc(a)nzlifestylecamping.com>) id 1ickgR-0004iw-Gp for jaytee21(a)slingshot.co.nz; Thu, 05 Dec 2019 19:32:15 +1300 Received: from EX-VCLUST-03.FASTWAYTECH.local (smtp.fastway.org [103.61.69.250]) by canit-scanner-1.slingshot.co.nz (8.14.4/8.14.4/Debian-8+deb8u2) with ESMTP id xB56W9xu012445 for <jaytee21(a)slingshot.co.nz>; Thu, 5 Dec 2019 19:32:10 +1300 Received: from EX-VWEB-LB-01 ([192.168.32.164]) by EX-VCLUST-03.FASTWAYTECH.local with Microsoft SMTPSVC(7.5.7600.16601); Thu, 5 Dec 2019 19:32:08 +1300 MIME-Version: 1.0 From: csc(a)nzlifestylecamping.com To: jaytee21(a)slingshot.co.nz Date: 5 Dec 2019 19:32:08 +1300 Subject: New Consignment Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 Message-ID: <EX-VCLUST-03UYLqVpU001ab53e(a)EX-VCLUST-03.FASTWAYTECH.local> X-OriginalArrivalTime: 05 Dec 2019 06:32:08.0088 (UTC) FILETIME=[B7B31180:01D5AB35] X-Bayes-Prob: 0.0001 (Score 0, tokens from: jaytee21, base:default, @@RPTN) X-Spam-Score: -0.89 () [Hold at 5.00] HTML_FONT_LOW_CONTRAST:0.001,HTML_MESSAGE:0.001,MIME_HTML_ONLY:1.105,SPF(none:0),DKIM(none:0),CC(NZ:-2) X-CanIt-Geo: ip=103.61.69.250; country=NZ; latitude=-41.0000; longitude=174.0000; http://maps.google.com/maps?q=-41.0000,174.0000&z=6 X-CanItPRO-Stream: base:jaytee21 (inherits from base:default) X-Canit-Stats-ID: 031y6w9mF - 4fdbdb3d511b - 20191205 Received-SPF: none (canit-scanner-1.slingshot.co.nz: domain of csc(a)nzlifestylecamping.com does not designate permitted sender hosts) receiver=canit-scanner-1.slingshot.co.nz; client-ip=103.61.69.250; envelope-from=<csc(a)nzlifestylecamping.com>; helo=EX-VCLUST-03.FASTWAYTECH.local; identity=mailfrom X-Scanned-By: CanIt 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ICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgPC90YWJsZT4NCiAgICAgICAg ICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgIDwvdGQ+DQogICAgICAgICAgICAgICAg ICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICA8dGQgd2lkdGg9IjEwIj4mbmJzcDsNCiAgICAgICAg ICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgIDwvdGQ+DQogICAgICAgICAgICAgICAg ICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgIDwvdHI+DQogICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAg ICAgIDx0cj4NCiAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgIDx0ZCBj b2xzcGFuPSI0IiB3aWR0aD0iNTMwIj4mbmJzcDsNCiAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAg ICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgIDwvdGQ+DQogICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAg ICAgIDwvdHI+DQogICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgPC90Ym9keT4NCiAg ICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgIDwvdGFibGU+DQogICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAg IDwvZGl2Pg0KDQogICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgIDxkaXYgYWxpZ249ImNlbnRlciI+ DQogICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAmbmJzcDsNCiAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAg ICAgPC9kaXY+DQogICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgPC90ZD4NCiAgICAgICAgICAgIDwvdHI+ DQogICAgICAgIDwvdGFibGU+DQogICAgPC9kaXY+DQo8L2JvZHk+DQo8L2h0bWw+DQo= Hi John Thompson, A consignment has been dispatched from NZ LIFESTYLE CAMPING LTD, these will leave on our next courier cycle. Please click on the links below to track your parcels Label Number CQ0000465225 <http://www.fastway.co.nz/courier-services/track-your-parcel?l=CQ0000465225> *Visit our website at: www.fastway.co.nz <http://www.fastway.co.nz>*

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Brother of Drug Lord Pablo Escobar Launches 'Unbreakable' Foldable Smartphone
by Peter Reutemann 05 Dec '19

05 Dec '19

'Roberto Escobar, brother of the late drug lord Pablo Escobar, has announced a foldable smartphone that is "very difficult to break" thanks to the screen's "special type of plastic." The Escobar Fold 1, as it is called, significantly undercuts Samsung's Galaxy Fold and Huawei Mate X with a price of only $349. Neowin reports: While all the foldable phones announced so far have a price tag of at least $1,500+, the Escobar Fold 1 will be available from only $349 which includes free shipping and a case as well. It will be sold unlocked and work on all compatible networks worldwide. This makes it cheaper than other non-foldable flagship smartphones available in the market right now. The drug lord's brother has been able to price the phone so low by cutting out the middlemen like networks and retailers. He is also preparing to file a $30 billion class-action lawsuit against Apple for scamming people and wants the company to "give some of their illegal profits back to the people." Like the Huawei Mate X, the Escobar Fold can be unfolded to turn it into a tablet with a screen size of 7.8-inches. The expanded AMOLED display has a 4:3 aspect ratio and an FHD+ resolution. The design language is different from the Samsung Galaxy Fold which features two separate displays, one of which folds. ' -- source: https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/19/12/03/2325235 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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The Rise and Fall of the PlayStation Supercomputers
by Peter Reutemann 04 Dec '19

04 Dec '19

'"On the 25th anniversary of the original Sony PlayStation, The Verge shares the story of the PlayStation supercomputers," writes Slashdot reader jimminy_cricket. From the report: Dozens of PlayStation 3s sit in a refrigerated shipping container on the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth's campus, sucking up energy and investigating astrophysics. It's a popular stop for tours trying to sell the school to prospective first-year students and their parents, and it's one of the few living legacies of a weird science chapter in PlayStation's history. Those squat boxes, hulking on entertainment systems or dust-covered in the back of a closet, were once coveted by researchers who used the consoles to build supercomputers. With the racks of machines, the scientists were suddenly capable of contemplating the physics of black holes, processing drone footage, or winning cryptography contests. It only lasted a few years before tech moved on, becoming smaller and more efficient. But for that short moment, some of the most powerful computers in the world could be hacked together with code, wire, and gaming consoles. "The game consoles entered the supercomputing scene in 2002 when Sony released a kit called Linux for the PlayStation 2," reports The Verge. Craig Steffen, senior research scientist at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, and his group hooked up between 60 and 70 PlayStation 2s, wrote some code, and built out a library. "The PS3 entered the scene in late 2006 with powerful hardware and an easier way to load Linux onto the devices," the report adds. "Researchers would still need to link the systems together, but suddenly, it was possible for them to imagine linking together all of those devices into something that was a game-changer instead of just a proof-of-concept prototype."' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/19/12/03/2214249 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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