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Let’s Talk About Anonymity Online

Let me show you what it looks like from the internet’s point of view when I go to a simple website using a normal Browser (Brave):

111.222.333.444 – – [18/Dec/2019:16:29:05 +0000] “GET / HTTP/1.1” 200 7094 “-” “Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/78.0.3904.108 Safari/537.36”

The 111.222.333.444 would be my IP address. With that, anyone can get a lot of information about. With just a simple google search, you can actually see in the general vicinity where an IP address originates from. For example, the public IP address for Google is 172.217.23.238. You can use services like https://whatismyipaddress.com/ to what company owns an IP and a map to where it is located. In this case, the IP for Google is probably in a datacenter in Kansas. When I look up my personal IP, the website shows a map of Prague and the company that I use for my internet provider.

What does this mean? To any website that I visit and I don’t say who I am, I am anonymous but I am trackable. My IP address and many other things about my computer and my browser give me an unique fingerprint. From the website that I run, if I wanted, I could see a list of every IP address that ever visited, where they come from, what kind of computer they use, what browser they use, what resolution their screen is, and a lot more. A law enforcement or legal organization can easily find out who I am personally by contacting my internet service provider and then I am no longer anonymous at all. Anonymity is a very tenuous concept online. It really isn’t difficult to find out who someone is in real life if you have the means to do so.

Now let’s change gears. You’re probably heard about Tor. I know I’ve written about it a lot here. Tor is a way to make yourself both anonymous and untrackable. Furthermore it makes your true IP address a secret so even law enforcement have a very hard time tracking down someone using it. Your ISP doesn’t know what you do online.

Let’s see what it looks like when visit my website using the Tor Browser:

45.66.35.35 – – [18/Dec/2019:16:49:41 +0000] “GET / HTTP/1.1” 200 7094 “-” “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/68.0”

The IP address is not mine. It belongs to an exit node which is run by a Tor volunteer. These IP addresses are publicly known and are often banned from many websites (we’ll talk about that later). Even though I am still running Linux, Tor Browser says that I am running Firefox on Windows 10. In fact every Tor Browser user appears to be running Windows 10 and they all have fake IP addresses.

If I do something that people don’t like, the best they could do it to contact and possibly ban the exit node but it is no simple feat to find someone using Tor. It takes a lot of big-government level money and resources to do so and even then it takes a lot of work.

Why is this important? Isn’t the amount of privacy that I have online enough? After all, if I log into Twitter or Reddit, I can create a new account and never tell anyone my real name. I am anonymous aren’t I?

To a point, you are anonymous but only on the most basic level. Again, it takes very little to pinpoint who you are in real life. Do one of these types of people sound like you? This list was written from a specific point of view. The thing that gets me most of all is that there are people in this world and perhaps in your country who are willing to use violence to keep opinions that they don’t like quiet. It is easy to keep quiet and hope not to get caught up. It is difficult to speak what you believe where the consequence could be loss of employment, injury, imprisonment, or even death. Anonymity isn’t cowardice. Sometimes it’s the only safe way to be heard.

Before I finish up, I have to talk about the negatives of anonymity. First and most obvious is that many online companies do not want you to be anonymous. They make money from giving you ads and tracking what you do. Do not be surprised if many website, including Google, stop working when using Tor. They have no reason to allow you to use their services if they can’t make money off of you and every reason to discourage it.

Secondly, bad people also use Tor. Not nearly as many as there are on the open internet, but they are there. Some are criminals. Some are merely trolls. A few do terrible things under the cover of anonymity online. Those are probably the stories that you have heard in the media and not about those who live under repressive regimes.

Not everyone agrees with me, but I believe that anonymity is important and it is crucial for safety online.

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openSUSE Leapは、15の前は42だったんだ?

この記事はopenSUSE Advent Calendar 2019の21日目です

今日はLeapのバージョニングについて振り返ってみたいと思います。

Leapの登場は2015年のLeap 42.1が最初のようです。この前がopenSUSE 13.2。

つまり、13.2(Leapの前) > 42.1 (以降、Leap)> 42.2 > 42.3 > 15.0 > 15.1(今年リリースの現行版)とバージョニングされています。

なお、リリースは年に一回で計画されていて、来年は15.2のリリースが予定されています。(現在開発中。)マイナーリリースは3年の計画なので、このままいけば再来年はメジャーバージョンがかわります。

はたして、素直に16にいくのでしょうか?

42?

元ネタは「銀河ヒッチハイク・ガイド」というSF小説とのことです。ある宇宙人が、「生命、宇宙、そして万物についての究極の疑問の答え」をスーパーコンピューターで計算したところ、答えが「42」だったらしいです。

ちなみに、このスーパーコンピューターは、究極の答えに対応する究極の問いが何なのかわからないため、42 の意味まではわからないのだとか。そこで、その問いを算出する為にスーパースーパーコンピューターを作って、といった所がストーリーにからんでくるようです。そのスーパースーパーコンピューターというのが、実は・・・

Leap 42.1のポータルには、次の素晴らしい一文が乗っています。

openSUSE Leap 42.1 はその重要さに合った名前に値します。

Portal:42.1

なお、15.0がリリースされたあと、「最新バージョンを取得しようとすると、42用パッケージとってきちゃうんですけど・・」「あ、数字が大きいものをとってくるようにしてるから、15じゃなくて42とってきちゃうんだね。」といったやりとりが頻発した模様。

まとめ

バージョニングに突如42をもってくるところに、私はopenSUSEプロジェクトっぽさを感じています。

  • そもそもLeapが誕生した経緯を調べたい
  • 私がopenSUSEプロジェクトに関わり始めたのはLeap 15目前のときで、42のやりとりはタイムリーには見れていないんですよね

openSUSE Advent Calendar 2019、明日はftakeさんの「 LibreOffice で OpenType フォントの機能を使う話」です。有意なお話っぽそうですね。お楽しみに!

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darix posted in English at

About

Welcome to my new blog. All static no data collected.

Hope the informations found here are helpful for you. New posts will be sporadic, but there will be some.

I will be mostly posting about openSUSE, opensource in general and packaging.

Always remember: Never accept the world as it appears to be. Dare to see it for what it could be.

The world can always use more heroes.

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#Rouen #Cybersécurité Journée Mensuelle du Logiciel Libre 1er semestre 2020

Nous organisons une journée dédiée à la cybersécurité et à l’informatique en général, afin de réunir de nombreux passionnés (débutants, étudiants et professionnels) autour de plusieurs activités dont les logiciels libres et notre fer de lance #LuJam. Nous vous donnons RDV les samedis suivants de 14:00 – 18:00  au RDC, Maison St Sever, Centre Commercial […]

The post #Rouen #Cybersécurité Journée Mensuelle du Logiciel Libre 1er semestre 2020 appeared first on Network Users Institute - Cybersécurité, Intégration de Linux & Logiciels Libres à Rouen, Normandie..

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IPv6 for machines in Provo

After some back and forth, I'm happy to announce that more machines in the Provo data center use IPv6 in addition to their IPv4 address. Namely:

  • provo-mirror.opensuse.org (main mirror for US/Pacific regions)

  • status2.opensuse.org (fallback for status.opensuse.org)

  • proxy-prv.opensuse.org (fallback for proxy.opensuse.org)

  • provo-ns.opensuse.org (new DNS server for.opensuse.org - not yet productive)

Sadly neither the forums nor WordPress instances are IPv6 enabled. But we are hoping for the best: this is something we like to work on next year...

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Root cause analysis of the OBS downtime 2019-12-14

Around 16:00 CET at 2019-12-14, one of the Open Build Service (OBS) virtualization servers (which run some of the backend machines) decided to stop operating. Reason: a power failure in one of the UPS systems. Other than normal, this single server had both power supplies on the same UPS - resulting in a complete power loss, while all other servers were still powered via their redundant power supply.

In turn, the communication between the API and those backend machines stopped. The API summed up the incoming requests up to a state where it was not able to handle more.

By moving the backends over to another virtualization server, the problem was temporarily fixed (since ~19:00) and the API was working on the backlog. The cabling on the problematic server is meanwhile fixed and the machine is online again. So we are sure that this specific problem will not happen again in the future.

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openSUSEでファイルがどのパッケージのものなのか調べる方法

この記事はopenSUSE Advent Calendar 2019の20日目です。

openSUSEのパッケージ管理はYaSTやzypperなどで行うのですが、パッケージそのものはRPMです。ですので、そのRPMパッケージが含んでいるファイルを一覧表示するなどの、rpmのコマンドを利用することができます。

ここでは、次のことををしてみたいと思います。

  • パッケージに含まれているファイルの一覧を取得する
  • コマンドやファイルがどのパッケージに含まれているかを調べる

(なお、zypperで直接行う方法や、もっとよい方法などがあると思いますので、そういった情報をお持ちの方は是非ご提供ください。)

パッケージに含まれているファイルの一覧を取得する

以下のrpmコマンドで可能です。

$ rpm -ql [パッケージ名]

例:

$ rpm -ql podman

(含まれているファイルのフルパスの一覧)

私は、そのパッケージがどんな設定ファイルを使っているか、また、どこにインストールしているか、などを調べたい時などに使っています。

コマンドやファイルがどのパッケージに含まれているかを調べる

以下のrpmコマンドで可能です。

$ rpm -qf [調べたいファイルやコマンドのフルパス]

例:

$ rpm -qf /usr/bin/podman

podman-1.4.4-lp151.3.6.1.x86_64

ここで、幾つかのコマンドを組み合わせて便利に使ってみましょう。

まず、コマンドのフルパスを取得します。which、typeなどありますが、ここではtypeを使ってみます。

$ type -p podman

/usr/bin/podman

-pオプションで、パス名だけを取得しています。これをrpmコマンドと組み合わせると、次のようになります。

$ rpm -qf $(type -p podman)

podman-1.4.4-lp151.3.6.1.x86_64

これで、rpmのパッケージ名が取得できます。この名前をそのままzypper infoに渡しても識別してくれないので(そんなパッケージは無いと言われてしまうので)、さしあたって、最初の「-(ハイフン)」までの文字を取得してみます。これで「podman」が取得できます。

$ rpm -qf $(type -p podman) | awk -F ‘-‘ ‘{print $1}’

podman

awkはテキストの加工とパターン処理を行ってくれるコマンドです。 -F ‘-‘ で、ハイフンを区切り文字に指定し、 ‘{print $1}’ で、区切られた最初の部分を出力します。

これを、zypper infoに渡せば、zypperでのパッケージ情報を取得できます。

$ zypper info $(rpm -qf $(type -p podman) | awk -F ‘-‘ ‘{print $1}’)

リポジトリのデータを読み込んでいます…

インストール済みのパッケージを読み込んでいます…

パッケージ podman に関する情報:

——————————-

リポジトリ             : openSUSE:Leap:15.1:Update                                             

名前                   : podman                                                                

バージョン             : 1.4.4-lp151.3.6.1                                                     

アーキテクチャ         : x86_64                                                                

ベンダ                 : openSUSE                                                              

インストール後のサイズ : 103.1 MiB                                                             

インストール済み       : はい (y)                                                              

状態                   : 最新                                                                  

ソースパッケージ       : podman-1.4.4-lp151.3.6.1.src                                          

概要                   : Daemon-less container engine for managing containers, pods and images

説明                   :                                                                       

   Podman is a container engine for managing pods, containers, and container

   images.

   It is a standalone tool and it directly manipulates containers without the need

   of a container engine daemon.

   Podman is able to interact with container images create in buildah, cri-o, and

   skopeo, as they all share the same datastore backend.

見事、zypperで情報が取得できました。

見返してみれば、「そもそも、zypper info podmanでよくないか?」と思えますが、コマンド名とパッケージ名が違う場合や、コマンドではなく設定ファイルから情報を引き出したい時などに利用できます。

ただ、間にハイフンが入るパッケージ名では、当然うまく動きませんね・・・typeでパスを取得するためにrootになって、brctlで試してみたのですが、rpmのパッケージ名がbridge-utils-1.6-lp151.2.3.x86_64だったため、ハイフンの前がbridgeとなってしまい、zypper infoで情報を取得できませんでした。まだ改良の余地ありです。

このように、いろいろな方法でrpmコマンドで取得できる情報の活用を試してみて下さい。



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HybSeq course 2020

HybSeq course 2020

Intensive 4-days (5th day is not compulsory, but is open for any discussion, if there would be interest) course to learn all theory about HybSeq and practically learn how to analyze HybSeq data, how to solve all problems, and how to evaluate differences among gene trees. Important part is enough time to discuss everything, including practical problems and projects of individual participants.

vojta Čt, 12/19/2019 - 21:25
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Yubikey Yubico na plataforma Linux

Disponibilizo neste post, os procedimento de como configurar o Yubikey para multi fator de autenticação na plataforma Linux.

“O YubiKey combina autenticação baseada em hardware e criptografia de chave pública para eliminar as aquisições de contas. Basta inserir em um slot USB e autenticar com um toque. A autenticação YubiKey é quatro vezes mais rápida do que digitar uma senha de uso único e não requer uma bateria nem conectividade de rede, portanto, ela está sempre ativa e acessível.”

A seguir os comandos para utiliza-lo em autenticação multi fator:

cd /etc/udev/rules.d/
su
wget https://github.com/Yubico/libu2f-host/blob/master/70-u2f.rules
udevadm control --reload-rules
udevadm trigger

E pronto! Basta configurar o seu respectivo applicativo/serviços e outros com YubiKey!