- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

World’s cheapest Android smartphone goes on sale for just $3.67
by Peter Reutemann 20 Feb '16

20 Feb '16

"An Android-based smartphone costing about the same as a cup of coffee has been launched today in India by the local company Ringing Bells. The Freedom 251 costs 251 rupees (about £2.50 or $4), comes with a one-year guarantee, and has surprisingly decent specifications, on paper at least. The phone's price is not subsidised by a carrier contract: it really costs £2.50." -- source: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/worlds-cheapest-android-smartphone-g… 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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TP-Link Begins Lockdown of Firmware In Response To FCC
by Peter Reutemann 18 Feb '16

18 Feb '16

'In response to an FCC rule that requires manufacturers to lock down computing devices (routers, PCs, phones) to prevent modification if they have a "modular wireless radio," TP-Link has begun locking down its routers to prevent firmware not signed by TP-Link from being installed. This essentially prevents open source OSs (OpenWRT, for example) from being used on routers.' -- source: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/02/18/1423216 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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Stealing Keys From a Laptop In Another Room — and Offline
by Peter Reutemann 18 Feb '16

18 Feb '16

'Motherboard carries a report that with equipment valued at about $3,000, a group of Israeli researchers have been able to extract cryptographic keys from a laptop that is not only separated by a physical wall, but protected by an air gap. This, they say, "is the first time such an approach has been used specifically against elliptic curve cryptography running on a PC." From the article: The method is a so-called side-channel attack: an attack that doesn't tackle an encryption implementation head on, such as through brute force or by exploiting a weakness in the underlying algorithm, but through some other means. In this case, the attack relies on the electromagnetic outputs of the laptop that are emitted during the decryption process, which can then be used to work out the target's key. Specifically, the researchers obtained the private key from a laptop running GnuPG, a popular implementation of OpenPGP. (The developers of GnuPG have since released countermeasures to the method. Tromer said that the changes make GnuPG âoemore resistant to side-channel attack since the sequence of high-level arithmetic operations does not depend on the secret key.â)' -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/16/02/18/1626205 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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Meet Linux's Little Brother Zephyr, a Tiny Open Source IoT RTOS
by Peter Reutemann 18 Feb '16

18 Feb '16

"The Linux Foundation has launched the Zephyr Project, to foster an open source, small footprint, modular, scalable, connected, real-time OS for IoT devices. The Zephyr Project's RTOS implements both a small footpoint microkernel and an even tinier nanokernel, and is the result of Wind River contributing its Rocket RTOS kernel to the Zephyr Project. (Wind's Rocket RTOS will now become a downstream commercial distribution based on Zephyr sources.) To get a sense of Zephyr's benefit, its nanokernel is said to be able to run in as little as 10KB of RAM on 32-bit microcontrollers, whereas a minimalistic Linux implementation like uClinux needs upwards of 200KB. The Linux Foundation hopes to see cross-project collaboration between the Zephyr and Linux communities. Technical details are at the Zephyr site." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/16/02/18/1522219 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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Magnitude of glibc Vulnerability Coming To Light
by Peter Reutemann 18 Feb '16

18 Feb '16

"The glibc vulnerability disclosed this week has some experts on edge because of how DNS can leveraged in exploits. Dan Kaminsky said that while man-in-the-middle attacks are one vector, it would appear that it's also possible to exploit the bug and attack most Linux servers via DNS caching-only servers. 'This would be substantially worse if it went through the caching ecosystem; 99 percent of attack vectors go through that system,' Kaminsky said. Glibc, or the GNU C library, is used by most flavors of Linux and also a number of popular web services and frameworks, giving attacks potentially massive horizontal scale. The major Linux distros have patched and pushed updates to servers; source code is also available for homegrown Linux builds." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/16/02/18/157239 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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Fwd: [NZLUG] Fwd: [SECURITY] [DSA 3481-1] glibc security update
by Peter Reutemann 18 Feb '16

18 Feb '16

Apologies for cross-posting... Cheers, Peter ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Mark Foster <blakjak(a)blakjak.net> Date: Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 1:50 PM Subject: Re: [NZLUG] Fwd: [SECURITY] [DSA 3481-1] glibc security update To: NZ Linux Users Group <nzlug(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz> And just to illustrate that, CERT is compiling a list of vendor's position statements etc, it's quite a list already: https://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/457759 On 18/02/2016 1:49 p.m., Mark Foster wrote: This is a widespread risk to pretty much every linux based system out there. I hope you're all aware of this one and taking action to patch or protect your systems. -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: [SECURITY] [DSA 3481-1] glibc security update Resent-Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2016 14:18:54 +0000 (UTC) Resent-From: debian-security-announce(a)lists.debian.org Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2016 14:18:27 +0000 From: Salvatore Bonaccorso <carnil(a)debian.org> Reply-To: debian-security(a)lists.debian.org To: debian-security-announce(a)lists.debian.org -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512 - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Debian Security Advisory DSA-3481-1 security(a)debian.org https://www.debian.org/security/ Florian Weimer February 16, 2016 https://www.debian.org/security/faq - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Package : glibc CVE ID : CVE-2015-7547 CVE-2015-8776 CVE-2015-8778 CVE-2015-8779 Debian Bug : 812441 812445 812455 Several vulnerabilities have been fixed in the GNU C Library, glibc. The first vulnerability listed below is considered to have critical impact. CVE-2015-7547 The Google Security Team and Red Hat discovered that the glibc host name resolver function, getaddrinfo, when processing AF_UNSPEC queries (for dual A/AAAA lookups), could mismanage its internal buffers, leading to a stack-based buffer overflow and arbitrary code execution. This vulnerability affects most applications which perform host name resolution using getaddrinfo, including system services. CVE-2015-8776 Adam Nielsen discovered that if an invalid separated time value is passed to strftime, the strftime function could crash or leak information. Applications normally pass only valid time information to strftime; no affected applications are known. CVE-2015-8778 Szabolcs Nagy reported that the rarely-used hcreate and hcreate_r functions did not check the size argument properly, leading to a crash (denial of service) for certain arguments. No impacted applications are known at this time. CVE-2015-8779 The catopen function contains several unbound stack allocations (stack overflows), causing it the crash the process (denial of service). No applications where this issue has a security impact are currently known. While it is only necessary to ensure that all processes are not using the old glibc anymore, it is recommended to reboot the machines after applying the security upgrade. For the stable distribution (jessie), these problems have been fixed in version 2.19-18+deb8u3. For the unstable distribution (sid), these problems will be fixed in version 2.21-8. We recommend that you upgrade your glibc packages. Further information about Debian Security Advisories, how to apply these updates to your system and frequently asked questions can be found at: https://www.debian.org/security/ Mailing list: debian-security-announce(a)lists.debian.org -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1 iQIcBAEBCgAGBQJWwy2KAAoJEAVMuPMTQ89EIIIP/1Sa7Mlc0xJ0b4v5QFf1UL1N zLPxw/JXbExR1sX9RUt8mCzdOoz5rcwaR8yyvGZS0A+NwtSgLr3sNKweMrrf3yaH Ul7vziRfgcNjnWdN5+aeHp+lIUEIgCbT6JJVqt/lfXO8/vo23V2EZKVTtnNt7oR6 FmhSW73+jt8v9qxdHVDhE0ivXhs7Neeo7oLfolAX9n+ZFjRhT68ERRTyPaq3dnfS PdDLdnn5V+g+3y9zjurGNvmSp7OcOq7aKclEFtQBoEF6ZFmqhUYkuOmAkhlQlMMX nJGqZYrY2pgz1pHZZXJGY31WIYDaYR0cSIoe/c49ejT+Kug9IMLBMruvwAglX+gd IAFflJ8Iar9StiPwMz3HloLbNT1vVCvlvdbEJiMrgpTMRUyacG6GfHVid2tso+n7 ZpWnxI2B62lwJU/Jq2yxRkIVtGs9go7lvGEmUs/T4Pl87otULBAfGD0xXtt2vY+A hrEbjCgNMrbrjiCdm/w2MW+hLwiXgRn617Q7w9e5gWnSjIEpybrrwKAR1QsDxxNM zwjgwQdTEivJ5dtXQdwkHg+2ba1/gqKqMU9b0rlBf/YF0e73I/FTaDu1nEgOX4En kq6ZwrPBlptv0kCR0EtyX6xmt4Q3j8tF1IwPyEwfiyPKcN0cxuk7LLILc7ewPnGU pPKkk9EqhPWAP7+Ufo9p =lzjt -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ NZLUG mailing list NZLUG(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz http://lists.nzoss.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/nzlug _______________________________________________ NZLUG mailing list NZLUG(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz http://lists.nzoss.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/nzlug -- 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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Chrome OS distro for regular PCs can now dual-boot with Windows
by Peter Reutemann 18 Feb '16

18 Feb '16

"Today, Neverware announced a new version of CloudReady aimed at schools and individuals who want to try the software on their PCs without losing the capability to run Windows. CloudReady version 45.3 can be installed on any system with an existing UEFI-mode installation of Windows 7, 8, or 10 and 32GB of free disk space. You can find detailed installation directions on Neverware's site." -- source: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/chrome-os-distro-for-regular-pcs-can… 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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Apple Being Ordered To Help Break Into San Bernardino Shooter’s Phone
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 17 Feb '16

17 Feb '16

It is being widely reported in the news that a judge has told Apple to give investigators access to encrypted data on an Iphone belonging to one of the perpetrators in the San Bernardino shooting case. Current versions of IOS do not allow Apple to break this encryption. However, it seems Apple is actually being asked to help bypass the feature that autowipes the phone after 10 failed attempts to enter the decryption key, thereby allowing the key to be broken by brute force. This feature is supposed to be under the control of the owner of the phone, not Apple. But what Apple can give, it can take away. It may be possible that Apple could load a software update (perhaps a temporary one) into the phone to override control of this feature. <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160216/17393733617/no-judge-did-not-jus… backdoor.shtml>

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Backblaze Report On Hard Drive Failures In 2015
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 17 Feb '16

17 Feb '16

Backblaze has posted another report on the reliability of their hard drives <https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-q4-2015/>. As pointed out in the Ars Technica analysis <http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/02/hgst-hard-disks-still…>, HGST is owned by WD, so WD is simultaneously responsible for the most and least reliable brands of drives in the report. An overall statistic of 6% failure rate per year seems a reasonable conclusion. Also it seems like 3-4TB is still the sweet spot.

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WLUG meeting next Monday
by Peter Reutemann 17 Feb '16

17 Feb '16

Hi everyone We have a meeting coming up next Monday: "Peter Reutemann will demo Alpine Linux, a security-oriented, lightweight Linux distribution based on musl libc and busybox. Discussion of March meeting: potential introduction to git version control, in conjunction with CS^3 student society from Computer Science. Discussion of meetup.com's new pricing strategy: going up from USD 12 per 6 months to USD 29.94 per 6 months. Feel like demoing another distro? Or some other great open-source tool (doesn't necessarily have to be Linux)? Then let me know." http://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/228718557/ 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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