Practical Technology

for practical people.

October 3, 2011
by sjvn01
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How to lock down Linux

Linux is, by design, a very secure operating system, but so what? You can have the best security system in the world on your house, but if you leave your front-door open anyone can still walk in. Even people who know better, like Linux kernel developers, blow it sometimes. That’s what happened to the Linux Foundation’s constellation of sites. Multiple important Linux sites were down for weeks and as of October 3rd, kernel.org is still down. This doesn’t have to happen to you. Here are a few simple suggestions from me, and some more advanced ones from Greg Kroah-Hartman, one of Linux’s lead developers.

First, here are some rules that everyone should know. Number one with a bullet is security expert Bruce Schneier’s mantra, “Security is a process, not a product.” I don’t care that your server was Fort Knox, two weeks ago, if you haven’t updated your system with the latest security patches, checked to make sure your users haven’t started running a porn Web server, and looked over your network logs to see if someone or something isn’t up to mischief then you can’t trust your system today.

In addition, as Kroah-Hartman wrote, “it is imperative that nobody falls victim to the belief that it cannot happen to them. We all need to check our systems for intrusions.” And, I might add, we need to keep doing it all the time.

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October 2, 2011
by sjvn01
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Major Security Hole claimed in some HTC Android Smartphones

What is it with companies wanting to know your every move anymore? Facebook’s has been tracking you on Websites with Facebook Like buttons; Amazon, with its forthcoming Silk Web browser, will literally track your every move on the Web, and now HTC, in some of its Android smartphones, has planted a logging program that records everything do you with your phone. That’s bad enough, but according to Android Police researchers, that snooping program has a giant security hole that will let crackers easy grab the information that it’s has been gathering.

According to the researchers, Trevor Eckhart, Artem Russakovskii, and Justin Case, in recent updates to some of its devices, HTC introduces a suite of logging tools that collected both system and personal information. That’s invasive. What’s even more annoying is that they also discovered HTC had added “an app called androidvncserver.apk to their Android OS installations”. That’s a Virtual Network Computing (VNC) remote access server. With it, HTC, in theory, could remotely control your phone.

But, wait, there’s more! The real problem is that they’ve found that “any app on affected devices that requests a single android.permission.INTERNET (which is normal for any app that connects to the web or shows ads) can get its hands on” this data.

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September 30, 2011
by sjvn01
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Firefox 7: Better Memory Management, Meh Performance (Review)

I was hoping that Mozilla would do a better job with Firefox 7 than it had with the rather disappointing Firefox 6. They have. While it’s not as good as Google’s latest Chrome 14 Web browser, it is better. The real question: “Is it good enough?”

Well, let’s start with the good news. Firefox’s biggest problem over the years has been that it’s been a memory hog. The longer you run Firefox, the more memory it eats up. If, like me, you left Firefox on for days and with multiple tabs you could actually lock a computer up just with Firefox alone. That, I’m happy to say, they’ve made a lot better.

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September 30, 2011
by sjvn01
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World’s most profitable Android company? Microsoft!?

Measuring a profit can be a complicated thing my accounting friends tell me. For example, Google, which controls Android, is certainly making money from it, but how much? But, what if you’re making $444 million from Android and you actually didn’t have to spend any money on research and development or programming? You’d be doing great wouldn’t you? Well, welcome to Microsoft’s business plan for Android.

According to a Goldman Sachs‘ tech analyst note, as reported by Business Insider, that’s exactly how Microsoft is cashing in on Android. Goldman Sachs estimates that Microsoft will pick up $444-million in revenue from its Android patent deals for fiscal year 2012. For those of you playing at home, that’s $3-$6 per Android device. Yes, that may well be more than Microsoft makes from its own troubled mobile operating systems.

That’s nice work if you can get it. We still don’t know exactly how much Microsoft is getting from its cross-licensing patent deals with Samsung and other Android manufacturers. We don’t even know what patents Microsoft is being paid for.

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September 29, 2011
by sjvn01
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Amazon’s Kindle Fire Silk browser has serious security concerns

OK, here’s the good stuff about the new Silk Web browser, which Amazon will be embedding in its new Amazon Kindle Fire tablets: From all reports it makes Web-browsing amazing fast on relatively low-end hardware. The bad news? It does it by watching all, and I mean all, of your Web activity through Amazon’s cloud-based Amazon Web Services.

You don’t have to take my word for it. Amazon states that, “All of the browser subsystems are present on your Kindle Fire as well as on the AWS cloud computing platform. Each time you load a web page, Silk makes a dynamic decision about which of these subsystems will run locally and which will execute remotely. In short, Amazon Silk extends the boundaries of the browser, coupling the capabilities and interactivity of your local device with the massive computing power, memory, and network connectivity of our cloud.”

And to think I was worried because Facebook was tracking you on the Web whenever you were on a site with a Facebook like button on it! That, while sneaky and underhanded, was nothing. When you’ll be using your Kindle Fire’s Silk Web browser everything you do on the Web will be made part of your permanent record.

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September 28, 2011
by sjvn01
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The Amazon Kindle Fire is no iPad Killer

This? This is what all the excitement about? Don’t get me wrong. The just unveiled Amazon Kindle Fire is a fine low-end Android Linux-based e-reader/tablet, but it’s not a major Android tablet and it’s certainly no iPad killer.

While waiting to get my hands on one-come on Amazon, you’ve shipped enough books to my place to know my address by heart-I already know enough to know what the Kindle Fire is and isn’t. First, it’s not a full-powered tablet. If you want a full-sized tablet with Android under the hood I recommend you give the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 a try.

It is, however a nice media consumer device. When I look at the Kindle Fire, I don’t see so much a tablet as the next generation of the e-reader. Instead of just e-books, the Kindle Fire will let you watch movies, off Amazon Prime’s newly enlarged video library, listen to music, and get just enough of the Web, with its new Silk Web browser, that you can use it for some basic Web browsing.

Put it all together, and I see Amazon’s next generation competitor for Barnes & Nobles Nook Color much more so than I do a full-powered tablet. Of course, with a price-tag of $199, it could be very popular.

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