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Remotely Helpful | LAS 425

chris — Sun, 10 Jul 2016 19:46:06 +0000

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This week we take a look at what Noah’s using at Altispeed to provide remote assistance to his clients. We ponder over what Microsoft might have planned for Skype on Linux, cover why Android’s full disk encryption might not be as secure as you think, Mycroft’s collaboration with Canonical, the picks, your feedback & more!

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Brought to you by: Linux Academy

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Runs Linux

Tim Hortan’s Runs LINUX

Tim Hortons dougnut shop – RUNS LINUX!

Desktop App Pick

pinger-indicator

Ping Indicator is an app that shows the ping speed of various services or addresses.

The application “pings” a given set of hosts (with configurable ping interval) and monitors the response time with logarithmic scale, displaying the results in the indicator menu.

For each host, the app shows the response time as a graph in the AppIndicator icon. On packet losses, the graph turns red, as you can see in the screenshot above, for the latest entry, which doesn’t exist.

Ping Indicator is useful in many situations, including to track your latency in various areas (by adding hosts from certain areas), monitor your website latency, track when a website that went down goes back up and so on.

According to its developer, Ping Indicator still has some rough edges and unimplemented parts from the old Link Monitor Applet, and asks its users to star and watch the project on GitHub, to encourage further improvements.

Spotlight

Open Broadcaster Software

Open Broadcaster Software is free and open source software for video recording and live streaming.

OBS Studio (formerly known as OBS Multiplatform) is a complete rewrite of the original OBS from the ground up, with the main goals being multiplatform support, a more thorough feature set, and a much more powerful API. While still in its early stages, releases are currently available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

OBS Studio will eventually support many of the advanced requested features not present in the original OBS, such as multiple stream outputs and scene previewing, the latter of which is now available in the current release.

— NEWS —

Skype May Be Back on Linux

If you’re a GNU/Linux user, then you’ll be very aware at just how horrible Skype is on the platform. Not only has it not been updated since June 2014, but the Skype team at Microsoft – perhaps when they were bored – added extra hoops and complications as time went on.

Exciting news for Linux users

Encryption on Android just got weaker

Privacy advocates take note: Android’s full-disk encryption just got dramatically easier to defeat on devices that use chips from semiconductor maker Qualcomm, thanks to new research that reveals several methods to extract crypto keys off of a locked handset. Those methods include publicly available attack code that works against an estimated 37 percent of enterprise users.

A blog post published Thursday revealed that in stark contrast to the iPhone’s iOS, Qualcomm-powered Android devices store the disk encryption keys in software. That leaves the keys vulnerable to a variety of attacks that can pull a key off a device. From there, the key can be loaded onto a server cluster, field-programmable gate array, or supercomputer that has been optimized for super-fast password cracking.

The independent researcher that published the post included exploit code that extracts the disk encryption keys by exploiting two vulnerabilities in TrustZone. TrustZone is a collection of security features within the ARM processors Qualcomm sells to handset manufacturers. By stitching together the exploits, the attack code is able to execute code within the TrustZone kernel, which is an enclave dedicated for sensitive operations such as managing cryptographic keys and protecting hardware.
A third of enterprise Android phones exploitable

Both Google and Qualcomm are quick to note that both of the vulnerabilities involved—indexed as CVE-2015-6639 and CVE-2016-2431—have since been patched. The first was patched in January while the second was patched in May. Google also pointed out that it paid the researcher for his work through the company’s bug bounty program.

But researchers from two-factor authentication service Duo Security told Ars that an estimated 37 percent of all the Android phones that use the Duo app remain susceptible to the attack because they have yet to receive the patches. The lack of updates is the result of restrictions imposed by manufacturers or carriers that prevent end users from installing updates released by Google.

Mycroft: The Open Source Answer to Natrual Language

We’re thrilled to be working with Mycroft, the open source answer to proprietary natural language platform. Mycroft has adopted Ubuntu Core and Snaps to deliver their software to Mycroft hardware, as well as Snaps to enable desktop users to install the software regardless of the Linux distribution they are using! CEO of Mycroft, Joshua Montgomery, explains more within his piece below.

Mail Bag

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The post Remotely Helpful | LAS 425 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Comcast Carries Grudge | Tech Talk Today 72

chris — Wed, 08 Oct 2014 10:39:39 +0000

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Belkin users go offline all over the world due to a router design flaw, Facebook has a private chat app in the works, Adobe spies on you & Comcast gets a customer fired for complaining about their service.

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Borked Belkin routers leave many unable to get online | Ars Technica

Owners of Belkin routers around the world are finding themselves unable to get online today. Outages appear to be affecting many different models of Belkin router, and they’re hitting customers on any ISP, with Time Warner Cable and Comcast among those affected. ISPs, inundated with support calls by unhappy users, are directing complaints to Belkin’s support line, which appears to have gone into meltdown in response.

The reason for the massive outages is currently unknown. Initial speculation was that Belkin pushed a buggy firmware update overnight, but on a reddit thread about the problem, even users who claim to have disabled automatic updates have found their Internet connectivity disrupted.

Update: Belkin has given us the following statement:

Starting approximately midnight on October 7, Belkin began experiencing an issue with a service configured in certain Belkin router models that causes a failure when it checks for general network connectivity by pinging a site hosted by Belkin.

If your service has not yet been restored, please unplug your router and plug it back in after waiting 1 minute. Wait 5 more minutes and the router should reconnect. If you have any further issues, please contact our support at (800) 223-5546.

Facebook Readies App Allowing Anonymity – NYTimes.com

The company is working on a stand-alone mobile application that allows users to interact inside of it without having to use their real names, according to two people briefed on Facebook’s plans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the project.

The point, according to these people, is to allow Facebook users to use multiple pseudonyms to openly discuss the different things they talk about on the Internet; topics of discussion which they may not be comfortable connecting to their real names.

There are many unknowns as to how the new app will interact, if at all, with Facebook’s main site. It is unclear if the app will allow anonymous photo sharing, or how friend interactions and existing friend connections will work.

Adobe spies on reading habits over unencrypted web because your ‘privacy is important’ • The Register

Adobe confirmed its Digital Editions software insecurely phones home your ebook reading history to Adobe — to thwart piracy.

And the company insisted the secret snooping is covered in its terms and conditions.

Version 4 of the application makes a note of every page read, and when, in the digital tomes it accesses, and then sends that data over the internet unencrypted to Adobe.

Adobe explained that the data it collects is for digital rights management (DRM) mechanisms that may be demanded by publishers to combat piracy, and gave a detailed list of what and why it needs such specific information:

User ID: The user ID is collected to authenticate the user.
Device ID: The device ID is collected for digital right management (DRM) purposes since publishers typically restrict the number of devices an eBook or digital publication can be read on.
Certified app ID: The Certified App ID is collected as part of the DRM workflow to ensure that only certified apps can render a book, reducing DRM hacks and compromised DRM implementations.
Device IP: The device IP is collected to determine the broad geo-location, since publishers have different pricing models in place depending on the location of the reader purchasing a given eBook or digital publication.
Duration for which the book was read: This information is collected to facilitate limited or metered pricing models where publishers or distributors charge readers based on the duration a book is read. For example, a reader may borrow a book for a period of 30 days. While some publishers/distributers charge for 30-days from the date of the download, others follow a metered pricing model and charge for the actual time the book is read.
Percentage of the book read: This information is collected to allow publishers to implement subscription models where they can charge based on the percentage of the book read. For example, some publishers charge only a percentage of the full price if only a certain percentage of the book is read.

Additionally, the following data is provided by the publisher as part of the actual license and DRM for the ebook:

Date of purchase or download
Distributor ID and Adobe content server operator URL
Metadata of the book provided by publisher (including title, author, publisher list price, ISBN number)

Complain About Comcast, Get Fired From Your Job – Slashdot

When you complain to your cable company, you certainly don’t expect that the cable company will then contact your employer and discuss your complaint. But that’s exactly what happened to one former Comcast customer who says he was fired after the cable company called a partner at his accounting firm. Be careful next time when you exercise your first amendment rights.

From the article:

At some point shortly after that call, someone from Comcast contacted a partner at the firm to discuss Conal. This led to an ethics investigation and Conal’s subsequent dismissal from his job; a job where he says he’d only received positive feedback and reviews for his work.

Comcast maintained that Conal used the name of his employer in an attempt to get leverage. Conal insists that he never mentioned his employer by name, but believes that someone in the Comcast Controller’s office looked him up online and figured out where he worked.
When he was fired, Conal’s employer explained that the reason for the dismissal was an e-mail from Comcast that summarized conversations between Conal and Comcast employees.

But Conal has never seen this e-mail in order to say whether it’s accurate and Comcast has thus far refused to release any tapes of the phone calls related to this matter._

The post Comcast Carries Grudge | Tech Talk Today 72 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.