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Security and DRM/Monopoly

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Security
  • IPFire 2.23 - Core Update 139 released

    It is time for the first release of the year, IPFire 2.23 - Core Update 139. It is packed with improvements, software updates, and many many bug fixes.

  • What's HTTPS for secure computing?

    Over the past few years, it's become difficult to find a website that is just "http://…" This is because the industry has finally realised that security on the web is "a thing," and also because it has become easy for both servers and clients to set up and use HTTPS connections. A similar shift may be on its way in computing across cloud, edge, Internet of Things, blockchain, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and beyond. We've known for a long time that we should encrypt data at rest (in storage) and in transit (on the network), but encrypting it in use (while processing) has been difficult and expensive. Confidential computing—providing this type of protection for data and algorithms in use using hardware capabilities such as trusted execution environments (TEEs)—protects data on hosted systems or vulnerable environments.

    I've written several times about TEEs and, of course, the Enarx project of which I'm a co-founder with Nathaniel McCallum (see Enarx for everyone (a quest) and Enarx goes multi-platform for examples). Enarx uses TEEs and provides a platform- and language-independent deployment platform to allow you safely to deploy sensitive applications or components (such as microservices) onto hosts that you don't trust. Enarx is, of course, completely open source (we're using the Apache 2.0 licence, for those with an interest).

  • TenFourFox not vulnerable to CVE-2019-17026

    After doing some analysis late last night and today to determine if we need a chemspill build, I have concluded that TenFourFox is not vulnerable to CVE-2019-17026, or at least not to any of the PoCs or test cases available to me. This is the 0-day that was fixed in Firefox 72.0.1 and 68.4.1. Though a portion of the affected code exists in the TenFourFox code base, there doesn't seem to be a way to trigger the exploit due to various other missing optimizations and the oddities of our JIT. (Firefox 45-based browsers using our patches as upstream should bear in mind this may not be true for other architectures, however.) Absent evidence to the contrary it will be nevertheless patched as part of the standard security fixes in FPR19.

  • TikTok Security Flaws May Have Exposed User Videos to [Attackers]

    Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. outlined in a report a series of vulnerabilities that cyber-attackers could exploit to manipulate user accounts and information, from revealing personal data and deleting videos to sending text messages on behalf of TikTok. The research firm said it informed TikTok -- owned by Chinese giant ByteDance Inc. -- which deployed fixes. TikTok confirmed the patches and said it was committed to protecting user data, and encouraged researchers to privately disclose flaws.

  • European Law Enforcement Officials Upset Facebook Is Warning Users Their Devices May Have Been Hacked

    Oh boy. Facebook has just added fuel to the anti-encryption fire. And by doing nothing more than something it should be doing: notifying users that their device may have been compromised by malware.

  • Disappointing: Apple The Latest To Abuse DMCA 1201 To Try To Stifle Competition, Security Research, Jailbreaking And More

    Back in August, Apple kicked off an already questionable lawsuit against Corellium, makers of virtualization software that would let users create and interact with "virtual" iOS devices. It is a useful tool for a variety of reasons, including (importantly) for security researchers trying to hunt down bugs on a virtual iPhone. Over the last few months, security researchers in particular have been raising the alarm about this lawsuit. Then, just before the New Year, Apple made things much, much worse, with its amended complaint, that takes Section 1201 of the DMCA to new and even more ridiculous heights.

  • The End of Indie Web Browsers: You Can (Not) Compete

    No longer is it possible to build your own web browser capable of consuming some of the most popular content on the web. Websites like Netflix, Hulu, HBO, and others require copyright content protection which is only accessible through browser vendors who have license agreements with large corporations.

    During development of Metastream⁠—a browser-based side project of mine⁠—I ran into a roadblock when Google Widevine rejected my application to use their software that allows playback of encrypted media. The same problems I faced are affecting other developers with no known solutions in-sight.

    These roadblocks were primarily introduced to appease the media industry.

Proprietary Software Security

  • The Hidden Cost of Ransomware: Wholesale Password Theft

    Organizations in the throes of cleaning up after a ransomware outbreak typically will change passwords for all user accounts that have access to any email systems, servers and desktop workstations within their network. But all too often, ransomware victims fail to grasp that the crooks behind these attacks can and frequently do siphon every single password stored on each infected endpoint. The result of this oversight may offer attackers a way back into the affected organization, access to financial and healthcare accounts, or — worse yet — key tools for attacking the victim’s various business partners and clients.

LWN on Maddock's "The End of Indie Web Browsers"

  • Maddock: The End of Indie Web Browsers

    Samuel Maddock writes that the adoption of the "encrypted media extensions" by the World Wide Web Consortium has had just the sort of effect that people were worried about four years ago. "No longer is it possible to build your own web browser capable of consuming some of the most popular content on the web. Websites like Netflix, Hulu, HBO, and others require copyright content protection which is only accessible through browser vendors who have license agreements with large corporations."

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More in Tux Machines

digiKam 7.7.0 is released

After three months of active maintenance and another bug triage, the digiKam team is proud to present version 7.7.0 of its open source digital photo manager. See below the list of most important features coming with this release. Read more

Dilution and Misuse of the "Linux" Brand

Samsung, Red Hat to Work on Linux Drivers for Future Tech

The metaverse is expected to uproot system design as we know it, and Samsung is one of many hardware vendors re-imagining data center infrastructure in preparation for a parallel 3D world. Samsung is working on new memory technologies that provide faster bandwidth inside hardware for data to travel between CPUs, storage and other computing resources. The company also announced it was partnering with Red Hat to ensure these technologies have Linux compatibility. Read more

today's howtos

  • How to install go1.19beta on Ubuntu 22.04 – NextGenTips

    In this tutorial, we are going to explore how to install go on Ubuntu 22.04 Golang is an open-source programming language that is easy to learn and use. It is built-in concurrency and has a robust standard library. It is reliable, builds fast, and efficient software that scales fast. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel-type systems enable flexible and modular program constructions. Go compiles quickly to machine code and has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. In this guide, we are going to learn how to install golang 1.19beta on Ubuntu 22.04. Go 1.19beta1 is not yet released. There is so much work in progress with all the documentation.

  • molecule test: failed to connect to bus in systemd container - openQA bites

    Ansible Molecule is a project to help you test your ansible roles. I’m using molecule for automatically testing the ansible roles of geekoops.

  • How To Install MongoDB on AlmaLinux 9 - idroot

    In this tutorial, we will show you how to install MongoDB on AlmaLinux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, MongoDB is a high-performance, highly scalable document-oriented NoSQL database. Unlike in SQL databases where data is stored in rows and columns inside tables, in MongoDB, data is structured in JSON-like format inside records which are referred to as documents. The open-source attribute of MongoDB as a database software makes it an ideal candidate for almost any database-related project. This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the MongoDB NoSQL database on AlmaLinux 9. You can follow the same instructions for CentOS and Rocky Linux.

  • An introduction (and how-to) to Plugin Loader for the Steam Deck. - Invidious
  • Self-host a Ghost Blog With Traefik

    Ghost is a very popular open-source content management system. Started as an alternative to WordPress and it went on to become an alternative to Substack by focusing on membership and newsletter. The creators of Ghost offer managed Pro hosting but it may not fit everyone's budget. Alternatively, you can self-host it on your own cloud servers. On Linux handbook, we already have a guide on deploying Ghost with Docker in a reverse proxy setup. Instead of Ngnix reverse proxy, you can also use another software called Traefik with Docker. It is a popular open-source cloud-native application proxy, API Gateway, Edge-router, and more. I use Traefik to secure my websites using an SSL certificate obtained from Let's Encrypt. Once deployed, Traefik can automatically manage your certificates and their renewals. In this tutorial, I'll share the necessary steps for deploying a Ghost blog with Docker and Traefik.