Category Archives: Technology

How To Check If Your Mac or Linux Machine Is Vulnerable to Shellshock

Copy-paste this line of text into a bash window

env x='() { :;}; echo vulnerable' bash -c 'echo hello'

If the reply comes back as:

vulnerable hello

or

vulnerable
hello

Then your version of bash is vulnerable to shellshock. Most distributions have already pushed out a new version of bash. My Ubuntu machines updated yesterday.

If you use Cygwin, then you need to check there to. Cygwin bash 4.1.10 is definitely vulnerable, but 4.1.11 is not.

If your version of bash is not vulnerable the output will be:

bash: warning: x: ignoring function definition attempt
bash: error importing function definition for `x'
hello

How To Check If Your Mac or Linux Machine Is Vulnerable to Shellshock.

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Sear-ed

This person got pissed with Sears. And then got Sear-ed in return (although, to be fair, it’s not clear whether the person who replied was a Sears employee, or just some passer-by who got pissed off with the post)

sears

School dropout codes chat program that foils NSA spying (Wired UK)

The National Security Agency has some of the brightest minds working on its sophisticated surveillance programs, including its metadata collection efforts. But a new chat program designed by a middle-school dropout in his spare time may turn out to be one of the best solutions to thwart those efforts.

School dropout codes chat program that foils NSA spying (Wired UK).

School dropout creates messaging app that foils NSA spying

jamesgoode98's avatarLinux News

The National Security Agency has some of the brightest minds working on its sophisticated surveillance programs, including its metadata collection efforts. But a new chat program designed by a middle-school dropout in his spare time may turn out to be one of the best solutions to thwart those efforts.

Prompted by Edward Snowden’s revelations about the government’s intrusive surveillance activities, loosely knit citizen militias of technologists and security professionals have cropped up around the world to develop systems to protect us from government agencies out to identify us online and grab our communications.

John Brooks is now among them.

Brooks, who is just 22 and a self-taught coder who dropped out of school at 13, was always concerned about privacy and civil liberties. Four years ago he began work on a program for encrypted instant messaging that uses Tor hidden services for the protected transmission of communications. The program, which…

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SchoolGuard App Is a Panic Button That Alerts All Police Within 20 Miles

A new smartphone system may help law enforcement respond faster to school shootings or other emergencies. SchoolGuard is an app with a button that, when pushed, alerts all police officers within a 20-mile radius of the school at risk.

Many school districts have police notification systems in place in case of an active shooter or other emergency situation, but in many cases, police or other responders do not get to the scene in time to prevent further casualties. A study from the Department of Homeland Security showed that while the average mass shooting lasted 12.5 minutes, the average response time was 18 minutes.

The increase in school shootings over the years prompted Nate McVicker, a police officer and co-founder of SchoolGuard, to take action. Along with Mike Snyder, a retired Illinois State Police colonel, and a few programmers, McVicker launched SchoolGuard in May of this year.

About 12,000 police officers in all 50 states have downloaded the app since its inception, Vicker told Mashable. Additionally, 60 schools in five states — Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey and Texas — have adopted the program. McVicker expects 300 to 400 more schools to introduce SchoolGuard over the next few months.

“We wanted to get as many officers on board as possible,” he said. “Now, we’re starting to roll out to the schools.”

Unlike a traditional panic button, SchoolGuard operates using a smartphone or tablet. Unlike a traditional panic button, SchoolGuard operates using a smartphone or tablet. It’s also more effective than a traditional police radio, Snyder said, since the app alerts both on- and off-duty officers in the affected area.

SchoolGuard App Is a Panic Button That Alerts All Police Within 20 Miles.

Virtualisation

Wow, you learn something new everyday. I’ve just found out about two variations on virtualisation. Linux Containers (LXC) and Vagrant.

Linux Containers (LXC) is known as OS-level virtualisation, meaning the kernel looks after the virtualisation, and there is no need for some extra management software along the lines of VMWare or Virtualbox. The guest OSes run as containers, similar to chroot jails, and all containers, including the main one you booted from, share the same kernel and resources as your main container. As such, LXC only supports linux-based guest OSes. You can’t (easily, anyway) run Windows under LXC. Homepage, Wikipedia.

Vagrant is a strange one. It sells itself as being a way to keep development environments consistent, and I can understand why — if you have a team of people all with a VM of the same OS, but end with different results because they have tinkered with the settings on the VM OS, Vagrant prevents this by keeping the core one in the cloud, and each time the machine is started up, it checks itself against the cloud version, updating itself if needed. That guarantees consistency. Homepage, Wikipedia.

I haven’t tried both of these tools in great detail yet, but here’s some related links for you to check out:

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Sharing

I didn’t realise WordPress tracks shares of my posts. Some interesting stats.

Turns out the most shared post is this one:

https://blenderfox.com/2013/04/03/snippet-chromium-snapshot-download-cygwin/

And the most popular share site is Pinterest (654 shares). Least popular share site is Tumblr (574 shares)

Game (And Software) Release Stages

This is a Google Developers episode detailing how best to avoid releasing broken or defective games on Google Play. It speaks of three release stages: Alpha, Beta, and Canary/Staged Rollout. Alpha and Beta, almost all people are aware of. But Canary/Staged Rollout is a new term for me, but makes a lot of sense.

If you develop and/or release software, this is probably worth a watch.