- wlug - University of Waikato Mail Lists

Classic Linux Joke Even Less Funny Than Previously Thought
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 02 Feb '16

02 Feb '16

On some UEFI-based systems, the old “rm -rf /” trick for destroying your system may do more than annihilate your software installation, it may also brick your machine. This is because it is possible to mount a virtual kernel filesystem that gives access to persistent UEFI configuration data read/write, and deleting this data makes it impossible for your machine to boot. <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/02/delete_efivars_linux/>

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Towards A Ten-Million-Core Supercomputer
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 02 Feb '16

02 Feb '16

Europe’s ExaNeSt project is putting together a small prototype of what will eventually be a supercomputer with 10 million ARM cores. Why ARM? Because the performance bottleneck in a super is not the CPUs, but the interconnect between them. So it makes sense to use more power-efficient cores to keep the overall cost down. The main cost of running a super, or indeed any massively-multiprocessor installation (data centre, cloud service, render farm etc) is the electricity bill. <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/02/buddy_can_you_spare_ten_meeelion_ar…>

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Using IPv6 with Linux? You’ve likely been visited by Shodan and other scanners
by Peter Reutemann 02 Feb '16

02 Feb '16

"One of the benefits of the next-generation Internet protocol known as IPv6 is the enhanced privacy it offers over its IPv4 predecessor. With a staggering 2128 (or about 3.4×1038) theoretical addresses available, its IP pool is immune to the types of systematic scans that criminal hackers and researchers routinely perform to locate vulnerable devices and networks with IPv4 addresses. What's more, IPv6 addresses can contain regularly changing, partially randomized extensions. Together, the IPv6 features cloak devices in a quasi anonymity that's not possible with IPv4. Now, network administrators have discovered a clever way that scanners are piercing the IPv6 cloak of obscurity. By setting up an IPv6-based network time protocol service most Internet-connected devices rely on to keep their internal clocks accurate, the operators can harvest huge numbers of IPv6 addresses that would otherwise remain unknown. The server operators can then scan hundreds or thousands of ports attached to each address to identify publicly available surveillance cameras, unpatched servers, and similar vulnerabilities." -- source: http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/02/using-ipv6-with-linux-youve-likely-… 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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Bloat: How and Why UNIX Grew Up (and Out)
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 31 Jan '16

31 Jan '16

The original versions of common utilities like “cat”, “grep” and “ls” on V6 Unix from 1976 could measure their disk and RAM usage in bytes in just five figures. A few decades later, and the corresponding programs on a modern Linux distro are orders of magnitude larger. Why? Here is a detailed (and technical) analysis from the 2012 Linux.conf.au <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbv9L-WIu0s> which takes you step by step through all the contributions to the difference. They isolated most of these by modifying the code, selectively taking out features, and building it in different ways. Conclusion: you may call it “bloat”, but if you want a modern system, it’s pretty much unavoidable.

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High-severity bug in OpenSSL allows attackers to decrypt HTTPS traffic
by Peter Reutemann 28 Jan '16

28 Jan '16

"Maintainers of the OpenSSL cryptographic code library have fixed a high-severity vulnerability that made it possible for attackers to obtain the key that decrypts communications secured in HTTPS and other transport layer security channels. While the potential impact is high, the vulnerability can be exploited only when a variety of conditions are met. First, it's present only in OpenSSL version 1.0.2. Applications that rely on it must use groups based on the digital signature algorithm to generate ephemeral keys based on the Diffie Hellman key exchange. By default, servers that do this will reuse the same private Diffie-Hellman exponent for the life of the server process, and that makes them vulnerable to the key-recovery attack. DSA-based Diffie-Hellman configurations that rely on a static Diffie-Hellman ciphersuite are also susceptible." -- source: http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/01/high-severity-bug-in-openssl-allows… 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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What’s The Cheapest Wi-Fi Access Point?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 27 Jan '16

27 Jan '16

Someone has hacked a cheapie wireless SD card reader to turn it into a wi-fi access point running OpenWRT: <http://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Zsun-WiFI-With-OpenWRT>. The most obvious thing it lacks is any kind of wired network port...

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Material for Monday's meeting
by Peter Reutemann 26 Jan '16

26 Jan '16

Hi everyone The material from Monday's meeting is now available from our github account: https://github.com/WLUG/meetings/tree/master/2016/2016-01-25 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 4.5 Adds Raspberry Pi 2 Support, AMD GPU Re-Clocking, Intel Kaby Lake
by Peter Reutemann 24 Jan '16

24 Jan '16

"Linux 4.5 is set to bring many new features across the kernel's 20 million line code-base. Among the new/improved features are Raspberry Pi 2 support, open-source Raspberry Pi 3D support, NVIDIA Tegra X1 / Jetson TX1 support, an open-source Vivante graphics driver, AMDGPU PowerPlay/re-clocking support, Intel Kaby Lake enablement, a Logitech racing wheel driver, improvements for handling suspended USB devices, new F2FS file-system features, and better Xbox One controller handling." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/16/01/24/1329206 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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Atom-Based JaguarBoard To Take On Raspberry Pi
by Peter Reutemann 24 Jan '16

24 Jan '16

"The tiny single-board PC movement that's leading the Internet of Things (IoT) market is largely dominated by ARM-based processors, and for good reason — they're cheap, low power and capable. However, what if you prefer to work with the x86 architecture? JaguarBoard looks strikingly similar to Raspberry Pi, which is arguably the most popular single-board mini PC. But unlike Raspberry Pi, JaguarBoard allows users to develop for x86, courtesy of its Intel Atom Z3735G (Bay Trail) foundation. The chip is a quad-core part clocked at 1.33GHz to 1.83GHz with 2MB of L2 cache, offering a fair amount of horsepower for IoT applications. In addition to an Atom processor, JaguarBoard also boasts 1GB of DDR3L memory, 16GB of eMMC storage, three USB 2.0 ports, 10/100M LAN port, HDMI 1.4 output, SDIO 3.0 socket, two COM ports, four GPIO pins, and audio ports. It's an interesting device that you could use strictly as a mini PC for general purpose computing, as an embedded system, a learning or research tool, or for whatever DIY projects you can conjure up." -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/16/01/24/1729241 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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Searching For Vulnerable Webcams
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 23 Jan '16

23 Jan '16

Customers don’t understand and don’t care about the security of the devices they put online. And vendors are in no hurry to enlighten them, if it adds to costs and cuts profits. If anybody is in a position to intervene, it has to be a Government authority. <http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/01/how-to-search-the-internet-of-thing…>

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