Tux Machines

Proprietary Software and Security

Posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jan 25, 2023

=> today's howtos | Games: Steam, Godot, Forspoken, and More

MacOS is the Worst Part of Apple Silicon

=> ↺ MacOS is the Worst Part of Apple Silicon

Fast forward to today and the situation is far more murkier and less clear. For starters, MacOS lacks a wide variety of quality of life features that you can basically expect out of the box in Windows along with most high end Linux desktop environments. For example the ability to easily move application windows between multiple monitors using keyboard shortcuts, or snap windows into place so they partially occupy portions of a particular screen are completely missing out of the box. Yes there are third party applications like Rectangle that will add these features to MacOS at no cost, but I can't help but to wonder why a modern OS in 2023 requires third party addons for something that basically became standard functionality when they first debutted with Windows 7 in 2009.

Ransomware may be waning, but wiper malware is growing

=> ↺ Ransomware may be waning, but wiper malware is growing

Ransomware payments are dropping even as there’s been a shift in hackers’ tactics toward using wiper malware to delete data rather than ransom it, according to data released in two reports issued this week. First up, Chainalysis, which tracks cryptocurrency payments to and from known hackers’ accounts, says ransomware groups extorted $311 million less in 2022 compared to the $768 million they scored from victims in 2021.

Containerized deployments, the Death Star of complexity

=> ↺ Containerized deployments, the Death Star of complexity

The article starts with the rise and fall of Java EE, then it goes through the rise and fall of (SOAP/XML based) web-services, and finally it lands on the current hot topic of containerized deployments.
It's perhaps a bit of dry writing, however it boiled down the situation quite nicely. (Although I might be extremely biased...)

New Linux kernel SMB security flaw revealed

=> ↺ New Linux kernel SMB security flaw revealed

Before Christmas 2022, there was a truly nasty security hole in the Linux 5.15 in-kernel Server Message Block (SMB) server, ksmbd. It could be used to execute code in the kernel context. In short: Bad. But, the newest ksmbd security problem, discovered by the Sysdig Threat Team, is relatively minor.
Ksmbd, introduced to the kernel in 2021, was developed by Samsung. Its goal was to deliver speedy SMB3 file-serving performance. SMB is used in Windows and Linux--via Samba--as an important file server protocol. Most distributions do not have Ksmbd compiled into the kernel or enabled by default.

IPinside: Korea’s mandatory spyware | Almost Secure

=> ↺ IPinside: Korea’s mandatory spyware | Almost Secure

On our tour of South Korea’s so-called security applications we’ve already took a look at TouchEn nxKey, an application meant to combat keyloggers by … checks notes … making keylogging easier. Today I want to shed some light on another application that many people in South Korea had to install on their computers: IPinside LWS Agent by Interezen.
The stated goal of the application is retrieving your “real” IP address to prevent online fraud. I found however that it collects way more data. And while it exposes this trove of data to any website asking politely, it doesn’t look like it is all too helpful for combating actual fraud.

Administrator of RSOCKS Proxy Botnet Pleads Guilty

=> ↺ Administrator of RSOCKS Proxy Botnet Pleads Guilty

Denis Emelyantsev, a 36-year-old Russian man accused of running a massive botnet called RSOCKS that stitched malware into millions of devices worldwide, pleaded guilty to two counts of computer crime violations in a California courtroom this week. The plea comes just months after Emelyantsev was extradited from Bulgaria, where he told investigators, “America is looking for me because I have enormous information and they need it.”

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