Linux firewalls: What you need to know about iptables and firewalld

A firewall is a set of rules. When a data packet moves into or out of a protected network space, its contents (in particular, information about its origin, target, and the protocol it plans to use) are tested against the firewall rules to see if it should be allowed through. Here’s a simple example...

Mozilla: Firefox GCC/LLVM Clang Dilemma, September 2018 CA Communication and CfP

• Fedora Firefox – GCC/CLANG dilemma

  After reading Mike’s blog post about official Mozilla Firefox switch to LLVM Clang, I was wondering if we should also use that setup for official Fedora Firefox binaries. The numbers look strong but as Honza Hubicka mentioned, Mozilla uses pretty ancient GCC6 to create binaries and it’s not very fair to compare it with up-to date LLVM Clang 6. Also if I’m reading the mozilla bug correctly the PGO/LTO is not yet enabled for Linux, only plain optimized builds are used for now…which means the transition at Mozilla is not so far than I expected.

• September 2018 CA Communication

  Mozilla has sent a CA Communication to inform Certification Authorities (CAs) who have root certificates included in Mozilla’s program about current events relevant to their membership in our program and to remind them of upcoming deadlines. This CA Communication has been emailed to the Primary Point of Contact (POC) and an email alias for each CA in Mozilla’s program, and they have been asked to respond to the following 7 action items:

• Emily Dunham: CFP tricks 1

  Some strategies I’ve recommended in the past for dealing with this include looking at the conference’s marketing materials to imagine who they would interest, and examining the abstracts of past years’ talks.

today's howtos

• Windows 7 to Linux: Preparations

  This is the first part of a series of articles that describes how to migrate from a Windows 7 device to a device running Linux. The main motivation behind the series of tutorials is to provide Windows 7 users with instructions to migrate to a Linux distribution and not to Windows 10. Support for Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system ends in January 2020. While Enterprise customers may extend the support phase by three years by paying Microsoft for extended support, that is not an option for regular users.

• Kubernetes: Naming Things

• [Older] Look Up Website Information With Whois in Linux

• Getting started with openmediavault: A home NAS solution

• Globbing and Regex: So Similar, So Different

• Linux tricks that can save you time and trouble

Security: Quantum Computing and Cryptography, Time to Rebuild Alpine Linux Docker Container

• Quantum Computing and Cryptography

  Quantum computing is a new way of computing -- one that could allow humankind to perform computations that are simply impossible using today's computing technologies. It allows for very fast searching, something that would break some of the encryption algorithms we use today. And it allows us to easily factor large numbers, something that would break the RSA cryptosystem for any key length. This is why cryptographers are hard at work designing and analyzing "quantum-resistant" public-key algorithms. Currently, quantum computing is too nascent for cryptographers to be sure of what is secure and what isn't. But even assuming aliens have developed the technology to its full potential, quantum computing doesn't spell the end of the world for cryptography. Symmetric cryptography is easy to make quantum-resistant, and we're working on quantum-resistant public-key algorithms. If public-key cryptography ends up being a temporary anomaly based on our mathematical knowledge and computational ability, we'll still survive. And if some inconceivable alien technology can break all of cryptography, we still can have secrecy based on information theory -- albeit with significant loss of capability. At its core, cryptography relies on the mathematical quirk that some things are easier to do than to undo. Just as it's easier to smash a plate than to glue all the pieces back together, it's much easier to multiply two prime numbers together to obtain one large number than it is to factor that large number back into two prime numbers. Asymmetries of this kind -- one-way functions and trap-door one-way functions -- underlie all of cryptography.

• This New CSS Attack Restarts iPhones & Freezes Macs

• Time to Rebuild Alpine Linux Docker Containers After Package Manager Patch

• GrrCon 2018 Augusta15 Automation and Open Source Turning the Tide on Attackers John Grigg