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Security: SKS, YouTube, Malware and More

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Security
  • Impact of SKS keyserver poisoning on Gentoo

    The SKS keyserver network has been a victim of certificate poisoning attack lately. The OpenPGP verification used for repository syncing is protected against the attack. However, our users can be affected when using GnuPG directly. In this post, we would like to shortly summarize what the attack is, what we did to protect Gentoo against it and what can you do to protect your system.

    The certificate poisoning attack abuses three facts: that OpenPGP keys can contain unlimited number of signatures, that anyone can append signatures to any key and that there is no way to distinguish a legitimate signature from garbage. The attackers are appending a large number of garbage signatures to keys stored on SKS keyservers, causing them to become very large and cause severe performance issues in GnuPG clients that fetch them.

    The attackers have poisoned the keys of a few high ranking OpenPGP people on the SKS keyservers, including one Gentoo developer. Furthermore, the current expectation is that the problem won’t be fixed any time soon, so it seems plausible that more keys may be affected in the future. We recommend users not to fetch or refresh keys from SKS keyserver network (this includes aliases such as keys.gnupg.net) for the time being. GnuPG upstream is already working on client-side countermeasures and they can be expected to enter Gentoo as soon as they are released.

  • YouTube's latest ban? Infosec instructional videos are outlawed

    Google's video-sharing site YouTube has started to ban videos that show users how to get past software restrictions and provide instructions on information security.

  • Youtube's ban on "hacking techniques" threatens to shut down all of infosec Youtube

    Youtube banning security disclosures doesn't make products more secure, nor will it prevent attackers from exploiting defects -- but it will mean that users will be the last to know that they've been trusting the wrong companies, and that developers will keep on making the same stupid mistakes...forever.

  • TN men use Bluetooth-enabled tablet to steal cars

    During the interrogation, one of the accused –a car mechanic- said he bought a Bluetooth-enabled tablet online used by car showroom staff to access the vehicles.

  • Kaspersky reinforce collaboration with INTERPOL in the fight against cybercrime

    This cooperation strengthens the existing relationship between the two organizations, ensuring information and technology sharing can support INTERPOL in cybercrime-related investigations. Within the new agreement, Kaspersky will share information about its cyberthreat research and provide the necessary tools to assist with full digital forensics, aimed at strengthening efforts on the prevention of cyberattacks.

  • China Is Forcing Tourists to Install Text-Stealing Malware at its Border

    The malware downloads a tourist’s text messages, calendar entries, and phone logs, as well as scans the device for over 70,000 different files.

  • Chinese border guards reportedly install spy apps on tourists' Android phones

    Border guards reportedly took tourists' phones and secretly installed an app on them which could extract emails, texts and contacts, along with information about the handset; basically a mother-load of privacy-sapping stuff.

    There are reports that in some cases Android phones are returned to those entering the region with an app called Fēng cǎi installed. Apple's iPhones don't appear to come back with the app, but they could have been scanned by border control guards in a separate area after travellers were forced to hand them over.

  • China Snares Tourists’ Phones in Surveillance Dragnet by Adding Secret App

    The app gathers personal data from phones, including text messages and contacts. It also checks whether devices are carrying pictures, videos, documents and audio files that match any of more than 73,000 items included on a list stored within the app’s code.

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.