- wlug - University of Waikato Mail Lists

Thunderbird Announces OpenPGP Support
by Peter Reutemann 08 Oct '19

08 Oct '19

'On the Mozilla Thunderbird blog it was announced that for the future Thunderbird 78 release, planned for summer 2020, they will add built-in functionality for email encryption and digital signatures using the OpenPGP standard. This addresses a feature request opened on Bugzilla almost 20 years ago and has been one of the top voted bugs for most of that period.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/19/10/08/209254 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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D-Link Home Routers Open To Remote Takeover Will Remain Unpatched
by Peter Reutemann 08 Oct '19

08 Oct '19

'D-Link won't patch a critical unauthenticated command-injection vulnerability in its routers that could allow an attacker to remotely take over the devices and execute code. Threatpost reports: The vulnerability (CVE-2019-16920) exists in the latest firmware for the DIR-655, DIR-866L, DIR-652 and DHP-1565 products, which are Wi-Fi routers for the home market. D-Link last week told Fortinet's FortiGuard Labs, which first discovered the issue in September, that all four of them are end-of-life and no longer sold or supported by the vendor (however, the models are still available as new via third-party sellers). The root cause of the vulnerability, according to Fortinet, is a lack of a sanity check for arbitrary commands that are executed by the native command-execution function. Fortinet describes this as a "typical security pitfall suffered by many firmware manufacturers." With no patch available, affected users should upgrade their devices as soon as possible. ' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/19/10/08/2016251 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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Attackers exploit 0-day vulnerability that gives full control of Android phones
by Peter Reutemann 06 Oct '19

06 Oct '19

'Attackers are exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in Google’s Android mobile operating system that can give them full control of at least 18 different phone models, including four different Pixel models, a member of Google’s Project Zero research group said on Thursday night. There’s evidence the vulnerability is being actively exploited, either by exploit developer NSO Group or one of its customers, Project Zero member Maddie Stone said in a post. NSO representatives, meanwhile, said the "exploit has nothing to do with NSO." Exploits require little or no customization to fully root vulnerable phones. The vulnerability can be exploited two ways: (1) when a target installs an untrusted app or (2) for online attacks, by combining the exploit with a second exploit targeting a vulnerability in code the Chrome browser uses to render content. “The bug is a local privilege escalation vulnerability that allows for a full compromise of a vulnerable device,” Stone wrote. “If the exploit is delivered via the Web, it only needs to be paired with a renderer exploit, as this vulnerability is accessible through the sandbox.”' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/10/attackers-exploit-0d… 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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Russian Malware 'Patches' Chrome and Firefox To Fingerprint TLS Traffic
by Peter Reutemann 06 Oct '19

06 Oct '19

'A Russian cyber-espionage hacker group has been spotted using a novel technique that involves patching locally installed browsers like Chrome and Firefox in order to modify the browsers' internal components. The end goal of these modifications is to alter the way the two browsers set up HTTPS connections, and add a per-victim fingerprint for the TLS-encrypted web traffic that originates from the infected computers... According to a Kaspersky report published this week, hackers are infecting victims with a remote access trojan named Reductor, through which they are modifying the two browsers. This process involves two steps. They first install their own digital certificates to each infected host. This would allow hackers to intercept any TLS traffic originating from the host. Second, they modify the Chrome and Firefox installation to patch their pseudo-random number generation (PRNG) functions. These functions are used when generating random numbers needed for the process of negotiating and establishing new TLS handshakes for HTTPS connections. Turla hackers are using these tainted PRNG functions to add a small fingerprint at the start of every new TLS connection. The attack is being attributed to Turla, "a well-known hacker group believed to operate under the protection of the Russian government," ZDNet reports. And though the remote-access trojan already grants full control over a victim's device, one theory is the modified browsers offer "a secondary surveillance mechanism" if that trojan was discovered and removed. Researchers believe the malware is installed during file transfers over HTTP connections, suggesting an ISP had been compromised, according to the article. "A January 2018 report from fellow cyber-security firm ESET revealed that Turla had compromised at least four ISPs before, in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet space, also with the purpose of tainting downloads and adding malware to legitimate fil' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/10/06/2242221 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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Microsoft Might Bring Its Edge Browser To Linux
by Peter Reutemann 06 Oct '19

06 Oct '19

'Microsoft appears to be porting its Edge browser to Linux, reports ZDNet: "We on the MS Edge Dev team are fleshing out requirements to bring Edge to Linux, and we need your help with some assumptions," wrote Sean Larkin, a member of Microsoft's Edge team.... Chrome, of course, is already available for Linux, so Microsoft should be able to deliver Chromium-based Edge to Linux distributions with minimal fuss.... [I]n June Microsoft Edge developers said there are "no technical blockers to keep us from creating Linux binaries" and that it is "definitely something we'd like to do down the road". Despite Chrome's availability on Linux, the Edge team noted there is still work to be done on the installer, updaters, user sync, and bug fixes, before it could be something to commit to properly. Slashdot reader think_nix shared a link to the related survey that the Edge team has announced on Twitter. "If you're a dev who depends on Linux for dev, testing, personal browsing, please take a second to fill out this survey."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/19/10/05/1723204 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 Fight Spectre-Like Attacks, Intel Suggests a New Kind of Memory
by Peter Reutemann 06 Oct '19

06 Oct '19

'Intel researchers published a paper last week suggesting a new kind of CPU memory to block side-channel attacks like Meltdown and Spectre, according to ZDNet: SAPM -- or Speculative-Access Protected Memory -- is the work of Intel STORM (STrategic Offensive Research & Mitigations), a team of elite security researchers that Intel assembled since 2017 to work on creating mitigations for all the speculative-execution attacks that have impacted the CPU maker's products. SAPM is only an idea for the moment, and there are no silicon prototypes. Intel STORM engineers only released "the theory and possible implementation options," to provide "a ground base for other researchers to improve upon and also for the industry to consider...." Intel STORM researchers say SAPM will implement protections at the hardware level and will work with both physical and virtual memory addresses. "SAPM can be applied to specific memory ranges, with the attribute that any memory access to such memory type will be instruction-level serialized, meaning that any speculative execution beyond the SAPM-accessing instruction will be stopped pending the successful retirement of this SAPM-accessing instruction," Intel STORM developers said in their short description of SAPM's basic principles... Intel STORM researchers say the second part (backend) of most speculative execution attacks performs the same actions. SAPM was designed to introduce hardware-based protections against the backend part of most attacks. It's because of this concept that Intel's research team believes that SAPM will also future-proof the next generations of Intel CPUs against other -- currently undiscovered -- speculative execution attacks. "Intel STORM researchers don't deny that there's a performance hit," the article adds. "However, this impact is low and could be mitigated further by dropping other existing protections."' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/19/10/05/0315201 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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COSMO and Psions
by tom butz 05 Oct '19

05 Oct '19

The Psions were good as long as there was still a dial-up Internet around: they could even generate the DTMF-tones out of telephone-numbers and use them to dial using your phone's microphone. I've kept a 3c-model because of its database program. None of the Psions actually were phones. As they only supported dial-up Internet, I had a look for ISP's that still supported that, and found one (serving the Australian Outback). Unfortunately they didn't accept new customers. As far as second screens are concerned, a while ago there was a Finnish/Russian phone/PDA that had a black and white additional screen on its back. That one drew very little power and could be used for notes and - checking who called. Typing, however, was as clumsy as on any phone. The COSMO features a colour-screen on its back - coloured LEDs instead obviously would've been as user-friendly as Morse-code (for telling you who was calling, if you didn't want to open your phone). In a perfect world, developers would have come up with a Psion keyboard, Internet/WiFi/Bluetooth capability and a black and white screen at the back. Today's cameras are good at taking/watching photos/videos, and they are a lot less chunky.

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Psion Reborn
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 04 Oct '19

04 Oct '19

The Cosmo Communicator should be shipping to its backers next week <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/04/planet_launches_cosmo_communicator…>. It has more than a passing resemblance to the Psion clamshell pocket PCs of the 1990s, except this one has an open design, intended to allow it to run a choice of open-source operating systems. This looks to be a niche market, compared to the millions of units shipped by all the usual big-name vendors. But if they can make enough money--and keep enough customers happy--to stay in business, why not?

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List Of IPTV Resources
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 04 Oct '19

04 Oct '19

This user <https://github.com/iptv-org> just popped up in my GitHub feed. One repo <https://github.com/iptv-org/iptv> claims to be a list of links to over 8000 streaming TV channels from nations all over the world, while the other is a list of tools*, providers and other resources. Do be aware it’s a bit of a mixed bag: yes, there are legitimate channels (no encryption so far that I have noticed), but also some dubious-looking links. *Oddly, FFmpeg and youtube-dl aren’t in the list.

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Award For “Most Spectacular Misuse Of Microsoft Excel”?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 03 Oct '19

03 Oct '19

Astronaut Tim Peake blames the spreadsheet for his dialling a wrong number during his stint on the International Space Station <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/02/future_decoded_peake/>: "I'm still blaming that on the software, I imported my contacts address book in Excel and all the 9s got rounded up to 0s…" Will people never learn <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8wO4ppE9L8> ...

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