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Hāwera High School Hit By Ransomware Attack
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 02 Aug '18

02 Aug '18

Some students have lost access to their coursework <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/02/new_zealand_school_hit_by_ransomwa…>.

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Reddit Breached Via Two-Factor Authentication Vulnerability
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 02 Aug '18

02 Aug '18

Two-factor authentication, using a phone call or SMS text as the second factor, seemed like such a neat idea. But it turned out to be far too easy to hack. And here’s the proof <https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/08/password-breach-teac…>: The 2FA protecting the Reddit accounts, however, relied on OTPs sent through SMS messages, despite reports over the years (such as this one <https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/05/thieves-drain-2fa-pr…>) that make it amply clear they are susceptible to interception. Seems like the only reasonable option for a second authentication factor is dedicated hardware security keys.

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sudo Or su?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 01 Aug '18

01 Aug '18

Found this piece <https://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,90479.0.html> in the PCLinuxOS forums, courtesy of a reader link from <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/01/ncsc_ubuntu/>. Basically it says that “sudo”, when used “In The Manner Of the Buntus”, i.e. to be able to run arbitrary commands as root, is a bad idea. Instead, it should be carefully restricted to allow access only to functions needed by a particular user. To get blanket root access, it is better to use “su”, which means having a separate root password. Actually, it goes further than that: it decrees that anybody posting instructions on the PCLinuxOS forums involving “irresponsible” use of sudo (i.e. contrary to the philosophy above) is subject to having their posts deleted, being reprimanded, and ultimately having their account cancelled altogether. Thoughts?

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UK’s National Cyber Security Centre Weighs In On Ubuntu
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 01 Aug '18

01 Aug '18

Advice for both users and admins about Ubuntu 18.04 LTS <https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/guidance/eud-security-guidance-ubuntu-1804-lts>, from the arm of the GCHQ charged with looking after the security of the computers of ordinary mortals. Points out some gaps in software-only disk encryption, and recommends enabling Secure Boot, among a remarkable amount of other detail. Found from <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/01/ncsc_ubuntu/>.

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If You Buy Something, Do You Own It?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 31 Jul '18

31 Jul '18

Raglan man Niall Darwin discovers that assurances by electric-car company Tesla’s own official representatives aren’t worth a darn. And so, the question needs to be asked for the hundredth or thousandth time: when you buy a consumer item with essential proprietary software at its heart, what actually do you own? <https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2018/07/waikato-man-suing-tesla-…>

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Now They Need To Fix The TV Sets ...
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 31 Jul '18

31 Jul '18

YouTube has adopted a more responsive page layout to cope with videos having different aspect ratios <https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/youtube-picks-up-dark-mode-on-andro…>. To no-one’s surprise, this has annoyed a few people who have become accustomed to the old design. When 16:9 widescreen TVs were being conceived way back in the 1990s, the aim clearly was to allow us all to view cinematic movies full-screen, making maximum use of available screen area with minimal or no black bars. Nobody foresaw the widespread popularity of smartphones with built-in cameras, and of the common use of footage captured with such devices in TV broadcasts. But while such phones commonly have 16:9 screens and their cameras capture 16:9 footage, their users often hold them vertically, so the image ends up in just about the worst shape for display on a regular widescreen TV. There seems to be a common convention nowadays of filling in the gaps with blurred portions of the actual image -- which I agree looks less jarring than black bars. Hmmm ... there have been computer monitors that can be rotated to portrait or landscape orientations, with automatic adjustment of the display to match (aka “xrandr” <https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/xrandr>). Wouldn’t it be useful if a TV could do the same...?

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Ubuntu 18.04.01 now released for most flavours
by Ian Stewart 30 Jul '18

30 Jul '18

Hi, A few days ago Ubuntu 18.04.01 was released for most flavours (e.g. Desktop, Server, Mate, Budgie, Kylin, Xubuntu, Kubuntu) You can get your flavour, in 32 or 64 bit, from here... https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop <https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop> http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/releases/18.04.1/release/ <http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/releases/18.04.1/release/> http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-mate/releases/18.04.1/release/ http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-budgie/releases/18.04.1/release/ http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntukylin/releases/18.04.1/release/ http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/18.04.1/release/ http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/18.04.1/release/ My understanding is that if you are running 16.04.xx LTS and you have enabled "Notify me of a new updated version of Ubuntu", then you should now start to get pop-up's prompting you to do an on-line update to 18.04.01. I'm hopeful that it will bring some stability to Mate that seemed to be lacking in 18.04.00. cheers, Ian.

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Distrowatch review of Ubuntu MATE and Budgie 18.04
by Ian Young 30 Jul '18

30 Jul '18

This week's Distrowatch features Ubuntu MATE and Budgie for review. Not the usual reviewer and somewhat longer than most of the weekly distro reviews. Some faults found with the MATE version and to a lesser extent with Budgie. The laptop in use for testing only had 2GiB of RAM however which might account for some of the problems encountered. 4 GiB seems to be a bare minimum these days.

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Intel Moving Away From Hyperthreading?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 27 Jul '18

27 Jul '18

Looks like Intel’s next-generation i7 product family will abandon hyperthreading in favour of increasing the core count. So while you will still be able to run 8 concurrent threads, each one gets its own core now. Also, it looks like Intel’s current fab technology is running out of steam, while the new one is a bit behind schedule. <https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/leaked-benchmarks-show-intel-is-dro…>

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Space Supercomputer Comes Up To First Birthday
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 26 Jul '18

26 Jul '18

340 days ago, an HPE machine made up of two Apollo Intel x86 servers running RHEL was installed on the ISS, without any radiation hardening or any other special hardware adaptation measures, apart from a “water-cool enclosure”. So far it has suffered only two complete outages, both triggered by loss of external power, not the failure of the machine itself. Though the software has apparently been picking up transient memory errors (not too surprising, really). <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/07/26/hpe_iss_supercomputer/>

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