- wlug - University of Waikato Mail Lists

The Planet Needs a New Internet
by Peter Reutemann 22 Aug '19

22 Aug '19

'When climate change comes for our coffee and our wine, we'll moan about it on Twitter, read about it on our favorite websites, and watch diverting videos on YouTube to fill the icy hole in our hearts. We'll do all this until the websites go dark and the networks go down because eventually, climate change will come for our internet, too. That is, unless we can get the web ready for the coming storms. Huge changes will be needed because right now, the internet is unsustainable. On the one hand, rising sea levels threaten to swamp the cables and stations that transmit the web to our homes; rising temperatures could make it more costly to run the data centers handling ever-increasing web traffic; wildfires could burn it all down. On the other, all of those data centers, computers, smartphones, and other internet-connected devices take a prodigious amount of energy to build and to run, thus contributing to global warming and hastening our collective demise. To save the internet and ourselves, we'll need to harden and relocate the infrastructure we've built, find cleaner ways to power the web, and reimagine how we interact with the digital world. Ultimately, we need to recognize that our tremendous consumption of online content isnâ(TM)t free of consequences -- if we're not paying, the planet is. You probably don't think about it when you're liking a photo or reading an article, but everything you do online is underpinned by a globe-spanning labyrinth of physical infrastructure. There are the data centers hosting the web and managing enormous flows of information on the daily. There are the fiber cables transmitting data to into our homes and offices, and even across oceans. There are cell towers sending and receiving countless calls and texts on the daily.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/08/22/1733253 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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KNOPPIX Live GNU/Linux System Is Now Based on Debian GNU/Linux 10 "Buster"
by Peter Reutemann 21 Aug '19

21 Aug '19

'KNOPPIX 8.6 is now available based on the software repositories of the recently released Debian GNU/Linux 10 "Buster" operating system series, but also packing some elements from the Debian Uunstable (Sid) repos. It's powered by the latest Linux 5.2 kernel series and X.Org Server 7.7 display server to support newer graphics cards and computer hardware. Best of all, Knoppix 8.6 is shipping with both 32-bit and 64-bit kernels to support old and new computers. The 64-bit version of KNOPPIX 8.6 supports machines with more than 4GB of RAM (system memory), as well as chroot into 64-bit installations for system rescue tasks. Moreover, the bootloader starts the 64-bit kernel automatically whenever a 64-bit CPU is detected.' -- source: https://news.softpedia.com/news/knoppix-live-gnu-linux-system-is-now-based-… 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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Bitbucket Dropping Support For Mercurial
by Peter Reutemann 21 Aug '19

21 Aug '19

'Bitbucket, once one of the largest Mercurial repository hosting sites, said Tuesday it plans to remove Mercurial features and repositories from its platform on June 1, 2020. In a blog post, Bitbucket wrote: As we surpass 10 million registered users on the platform, we're at a point in our growth where we are conducting a deeper evaluation of the market and how we can best support our users going forward. After much consideration, we've decided to remove Mercurial support from Bitbucket Cloud and its API. Bitbucket will stop letting users create new Mercurial repositories starting February 1, 2020, and start removing all the Mercurial repositories four months later. So you will want to backup your repositories and switch to a different platform in the coming months. A different user pointed out, "Another shitty aspect of bitbucket dropping mercurial support and deleting all the old repositories in 2020: all yt pull request discussions from before 2017 are going to be deleted. There's valuable context for how the code got written in those discussions." Several users have expressed their concerns over this decision. Sebastien Jodogne, CSO at Osimis, said, "This is an extremely concerning decision that endangers diversity in the computer science industry by pushing the de facto hegemony of git." For those of you affected by this, you can consider a number of platforms including SourceForge to host and manage your repositories. ' -- source: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/19/08/20/1654253 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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IBM is Moving OpenPower Foundation To The Linux Foundation
by Peter Reutemann 21 Aug '19

21 Aug '19

'IBM makes the Power Series chips, and as part of that has open sourced some of the underlying technologies to encourage wider use of these chips. The open source pieces have been part of the OpenPower Foundation. Today, the company announced it was moving the foundation under The Linux Foundation, and while it was at it, announced it was open sourcing several other important bits. From a report: Ken King, general manager for OpenPower at IBM, says that at this point in his organization's evolution, they wanted to move it under the auspices of the Linux Foundation. But IBM didn't stop there. It also announced that it was open sourcing some of the technical underpinnings of the Power Series chip to make it easier for developers and engineers to build on top of the technology. Perhaps most importantly, the company is open sourcing the Power Instruction Set Architecture (ISA). These are "the definitions developers use for ensuring hardware and software work together on Power," the company explained. King sees open sourcing this technology as an important step for a number of reasons around licensing and governance. "The first thing is that we are taking the ability to be able to implement what we're licensing, the ISA instruction set architecture, for others to be able to implement on top of that instruction set royalty free with patent rights," he explained. The company is also putting this under an open governance workgroup at the OpenPower Foundation.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/08/20/197244 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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WebKit Introduces New Tracking Prevention Policy
by Peter Reutemann 21 Aug '19

21 Aug '19

'WebKit, the open source HTML engine used by Apple's Safari browser and a number of others, has created a new policy on tracking prevention. The short version is that many forms of tracking will now be treated the same way as security flaws, being blocked or mitigated with no exceptions. While on-site tracking will still be allowed (and is practically impossible to prevent anyway), all forms of cross-site tracking and covert tracking will be actively and aggressively blocked.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/19/08/20/1522235 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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tilix - terminal emulator
by Peter Reutemann 20 Aug '19

20 Aug '19

Hi everyone I've been a long-term user of the gnome terminal and then the mate terminal (after switching to Linux Mint). Despite the tab-support that these terminals offer, there were occasions when I missed being able to tile (ie vertical or horizontal split) in the same window rather than opening another window (and then moving/resizing it to make it fit better). Over the last month or so, I've been trialing "tilix" as my everyday terminal and I have to say that I'm very happy with it! According to the website, tilix is "an advanced GTK3 tiling terminal emulator that follows the Gnome Human Interface Guidelines" Here is the project page (incl screenshots) if you want to know more: https://gnunn1.github.io/tilix-web/ 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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Is Your HDMI Cable Streaming-Compatible?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 20 Aug '19

20 Aug '19

It seems <https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/rugby-world-cup/115128021/rugby-world-c…> that some people hoping to watch streams of the Rugby World Cup on a TV or external monitor connected via an HDMI cable from their PC may be out of luck. If the client software thinks you’re trying to record the stream, it will block it. And some cables will trigger this block, even if they’re just connecting to a monitor.

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New Attack exploiting serious Bluetooth weakness can intercept sensitive data
by Peter Reutemann 20 Aug '19

20 Aug '19

'Researchers have demonstrated a serious weakness in the Bluetooth wireless standard that could allow hackers to intercept keystrokes, address books, and other sensitive data sent from billions of devices. Dubbed Key Negotiation of Bluetooth—or KNOB for short—the attack forces two or more devices to choose an encryption key just a single byte in length before establishing a Bluetooth connection. Attackers within radio range can then use commodity hardware to quickly crack the key. From there, attackers can use the cracked key to decrypt data passing between the devices. The types of data susceptible could include keystrokes passing between a wireless keyboard and computer, address books uploaded from a phone to a car dashboard, or photographs exchanged between phones. KNOB doesn't require an attacker to have any previously shared secret material or to observe the pairing process of the targeted devices. The exploit is invisible to Bluetooth apps and the operating systems they run on, making the attack almost impossible to detect without highly specialized equipment. KNOB also exploits a weakness in the Bluetooth standard itself. That means, in all likelihood, that the vulnerability affects just about every device that's compliant with the specification. The researchers have simulated the attack on 14 different Bluetooth chips—including those from Broadcom, Apple, and Qualcomm—and found all of them to be vulnerable. "The Key Negotiation Of Bluetooth (KNOB) attack exploits a vulnerability at the architectural level of Bluetooth," the researchers wrote in a research paper published this week. "The vulnerable encryption key negotiation protocol endangers potentially all standard compliant Bluetooth devices, regardless [of] their Bluetooth version number and implementation details. We believe that the encryption key negotiation protocol has to be fixed as soon as possible."' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/08/new-attack-exploitin… 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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Should HTTPS Certificates Expire After Just 397 Days?
by Peter Reutemann 19 Aug '19

19 Aug '19

'Google has made a proposal to the unofficial cert industry group that "would cut lifespan of SSL certificates from 825 days to 397 days," reports ZDNet. No vote was held on the proposal; however, most browser vendors expressed their support for the new SSL certificate lifespan. On the other side, certificate authorities were not too happy, to say the least. In the last decade and a half, browser makers have chipped away at the lifespan of SSL certificates, cutting it down from eight years to five, then to three, and then to two. The last change occured in March 2018, when browser makers tried to reduce SSL certificate lifespans from three years to one, but compromised for two years after pushback from certificate authorities. Now, barely two years later after the last change, certificate authorities feel bullied by browser makers into accepting their original plan, regardless of the 2018 vote... This fight between CAs and browser makers has been happening in the shadows for years. As HashedOut, a blog dedicated to HTTPS-related news, points out, this proposal is much more about proving who controls the HTTPS landscape than everything. "If the CAs vote this measure down, there's a chance the browsers could act unilaterally and just force the change anyway," HashedOut said. "That's not without precendent, but it's also never happened on an issue that is traditionally as collegial as this. "If it does, it becomes fair to ask what the point of the CA/B Forum even is. Because at that point the browsers would basically be ruling by decree and the entire exercise would just be a farce." Security researcher Scott Helme "claims that this process is broken and that bad SSL certificates continue to live on for years after being mississued and revoked -- hence the reason he argued way back in early 2018 that a shorter lifespan for SSL certificates would fix this problem because bad SSL certs would be phased out faster." But the article also notes that Timothy Hollebeek, DigiCert's representative at the CA/B Forum argues that the proposed change "has absolutely no effect on malicious websites, which operate for very short time periods, from a few days to a week or two at most. After that, the domain has been added to various blacklists, and the attacker moves on to a new domain and acquires new certificates."' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/08/18/1833223 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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Intel Patches Three High-Severity Vulnerabilities
by Peter Reutemann 18 Aug '19

18 Aug '19

'Intel's latest patches "stomped out three high-severity vulnerabilities and five medium-severity flaws," reports Threatpost: One of the more serious vulnerabilities exist in the Intel Processor Identification Utility for Windows, free software that users can install on their Windows machines to identify the actual specification of their processors. The flaw (CVE-2019-11163) has a score of 8.2 out of 10 on the CVSS scale, making it high severity. It stems from insufficient access control in a hardware abstraction driver for the software, versions earlier than 6.1.0731. This glitch "may allow an authenticated user to potentially enable escalation of privilege, denial of service or information disclosure via local access" according to Intel. Users are urged to update to version 6.1.0731. Intel stomped out another high-severity vulnerability in its Computing Improvement Program, which is program that Intel users can opt into that uses information about participants' computer performance to make product improvement and detect issues. However, the program contains a flaw (CVE-2019-11162) in the hardware abstraction of the SEMA driver that could allow escalation of privilege, denial of service or information disclosure... A final high-severity flaw was discovered in the system firmware of the Intel NUC (short for Next Unit of Computing), a mini-PC kit used for gaming, digital signage and more. The flaw (CVE-2019-11140) with a CVSS score of 7.5 out of 10, stems from insufficient session validation in system firmware of the NUC. This could enable a user to potentially enable escalation of privilege, denial of service and information disclosure. An exploit of the flaw would come with drawbacks -- a bad actor would need existing privileges and local access to the victim system. The article notes that the patches "come on the heels of a new type of side-channel attack revealed last week impacting millions of newer Intel microprocessors manufactured after 2012."' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/19/08/18/0030201 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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