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Tecuane

98 karma · joined March 23, 2018

British-Australian senior information security consultant, specialising in red-team scenario development/execution and tailored access operations. Go programmer. Opinions are actually yours.

https://elliot.pro/ | https://twitter.com/7ecuane

--

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/elliotspeck; my proof: https://keybase.io/elliotspeck/sigs/3PX7d7z1UckOUjAPe-lWmenB-Fbs5Yh4X1dRXiZ3qKQ ]

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Tecuane··on Melbourne professor quits after government pressure about reporting data breach
Relevant article, for the curious: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/malcolm-turnbull-prime-mi...
Tecuane··on DigitalOcean raises $100M in debt as it scales toward revenue of $300M
DO's branding and a lot of their offering is pretty good, but their locations for non-US customers are much worse than many of their competitors. For instance (and a particular point for me), they still don't have any presence in Australia after over half a decade of it being marked as "under review" on their customer feedback page.

Having geographical locations to back up the quality of the offering is a step forward IMO.

Tecuane··on Systemd Home Directories
> Inside of the home directory a file ~/.identity contains the JSON formatted user record of the user. It follows the format defined in JSON User Records.

Why couldn't this have gone into ~/.config/? There's enough garbage cluttering my home directory.

Tecuane··on NULL license plate not such a bright idea
Passwords for Blizzard accounts are also case-insensitive, as they are converted to upper case before hashing. Try it!

I first found this while working on a WoW server emulator in around 2009, but I believe it's been the case since Battle.net 1.0 was launched in 1996. In order to preserve backwards compatibility, it's never been changed.

Tecuane··on I Miss Rails
I feel like as a collective set of industries across development and security we have been telling people for years not to reinvent the wheel because it's easier to stand on the shoulders of giants. Despite this, there seems to be an increasing push (from, for example, Go programmers) to go back to DIY. Is this not tearing away all the work we've done to stop people building their own auth, their own crypto, their own file read/write mechanisms and use ones that are battle-tested and safe?
Tecuane··on Apple's Reinvention as a Services Company Starts for Real Monday
This sort of thing could not appeal to me any more, honestly. I've been trying to work out the most cost-efficient way of doing exactly this.

Of course, I am aware that _the_ most cost-efficient way is to accept that having the brand new and shiny every year is - for the most part - utterly pointless, but hey.

Tecuane··on Farewell from Paradise Bay
I've played WoW for something like 11 years, from its peak in around 2008-2010 and through its slow decline since. Logging in now and having the reality that this game is actually genuinely fading away is difficult for me to properly process. The gp comment mentioned how non-transient games such as Pokémon are, and how games that do actually fade away are a new thing. I hadn't really thought about this before until the last couple of WoW expansions and its effects on the playerbase.

It makes me really sad to think about; WoW (and video gaming in general) has been a huge part of my life and tinkering with video games under the hood was the kickstarter for my career. I don't know if I will ever find a replacement for it when it's gone.

Tecuane··on So Long, MSDN Blog
My understanding of the policy matches the parent comment from communications I've had. Is this a recent policy change?
Tecuane··on A few simple steps to vastly increase your privacy online
I believe that at one stage the Quad9 resolvers were owned by IBM. A brief look at the site indicates it was transferred to CleanerDNS, which is a 501(c)(3). Do you know how much involvement IBM still has in the project, if any?
Tecuane··on Go 1.12 Released
This is a rather unique take on Go that I haven't seen before. A quick scan of your post history indicates you feel quite strongly (negatively) about Go. May I ask what inspired this particular take, and what language background you have?
Tecuane··on Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time
That would probably be ICANN[1], and most authoritative name servers follow the policies set out there as the guiding committee is part of ICANN[2].

There are alternative DNS roots, though. I participated in running one myself for a time.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICANN

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_name_server#Root_server_s...

Tecuane··on Letter from Tim Cook to Apple Investors
> I wish there were fully functional privacy focussed ROMs that was shipped by Android OEMs.

I'm sure everyone on this discussion board knows why this will never be the case, unfortunately.

With that said, are there any regularly-updated aftermarket ROMs that are privacy-focused? I've had a rough look at LineageOS[1] - a continuation of CyanogenMod - and it seems to mostly fit the bill.

I'm aware of CopperheadOS, but they had a "touch" of infighting about half a year ago[2] and mostly dissolved.

I too am moving away from Apple products, for the same reason. They are reaching expense levels (especially in my country) that I simply can't justify when I can get a HP or Lenovo business-grade laptop with drastically better hardware specifications and install simply OpenSUSE on it. Without going all-in on the Apple ecosystem to fully reap the rewards, it's simply not worth it for me to use any of them.

1. https://lineageos.org/

2. https://www.reddit.com/r/copperheados

Tecuane··on Status.github.com: “We're failing over a data storage system”
> Gitlab supposedly is Google-backed, so I don't want to have my private code there.

This strikes me as odd. May I ask why usage of GCP is a deal-breaker for you? While I can understand not wanting to use Google products directly as a consumer, I believe it would be - for lack of a better term - platform suicide for Google to intercept and perform its usual analytical shenanigans on the data content of transmissions to/from their platform.

Either way, Phacility's Phabricator[1] is $20/user/mo.

1. https://www.phacility.com/pricing/

Tecuane··on Brendan Eich Writes to the US Senate: We Need a GDPR for the United States
I admit I'm not an American citizen, and have never actually stepped foot on American soil, but I do see the "first amendment" and "free speech" arguments being trotted out for almost anything that involves communication between two parties being restricted. This, in my experience has been common in (privately owned) web forums when an American user is banned for misbehaviour, or rules are changed to prohibit certain types of content or speech on those forums.

The text of the amendment, as I'm sure you're aware, reads as follows:

> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

I admit I fail to see how this prohibits introducing a law preventing an organisation from collecting data from individuals without them explicitly opting in to it.

Tecuane··on Show HN: Sublime Merge – A Git client from the makers of Sublime Text
Looks like I have to be "that one", this time:

Given there's a custom Git library in use under the hood, I don't suppose there'll be Mercurial support in the future?

Tecuane··on Evernote lost its CTO, CFO, CPO and HR head as it eyes another fundraise
I used Ulysses but I ended up moving to Bear[1]. It's still. a subscription fee, but much cheaper ($1.49/mo). It's lightweight and perfect for what I use it for - taking notes.

If I was going to suggest something for longer-form writings (e.g., journaling, blog posts) and you find that inadequate, I've heard good things about iA Writer[2].

1. http://www.bear-writer.com

2. https://ia.net/writer

Tecuane··on I don't trust Signal
I really like Wire, for a large number of reasons - privacy and user experience among them. I've talked about it in the past[1].

If you get the time, please give it a proper whirl. With the recent open-sourcing of their server and proper E2EE by default[2] (but abstracted away from the "regular user"), it's shaping up to be a really solid application. As far as I'm aware they use the same double-ratchet protocol as Signal, but you don't need your cellphone number to register (a big thing for some people - myself included).

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16655743

2. https://wire-docs.wire.com/download/Wire+Security+Whitepaper...

Tecuane··on Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?
>I do forget to remap the esc key each time I do this, or the name of the thingie that helps you do that

I don't suppose it's Karabiner[1], is it? This is the one I'm most familiar with, as it's been around under a few names for a very long time.

If so, this is in `brew cask`[2], which I am assuming is somewhere in your script's mix.

1. https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/

2. https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/blob/master/Casks/...

Tecuane··on Telegram: 200M Monthly Active Users
As far as I'm aware they consider it to be a feature, and I don't particularly disagree. The rationale is that if somehow someone else manages to add a device to your account (which you get notified about on your other devices), they cannot see your chat history up until the moment the device was linked.

Once they're all linked you don't have this issue again so it's kind of a one-time thing.

Tecuane··on Telegram: 200M Monthly Active Users
In Matrix, E2EE isn't enabled by default[1], and the option to enable it is in fact marked with a warning that it comes with potentially unwanted side-effects. This isn't the same, and the arguments that call recommending Telegram for E2EE encryption disingenuous apply to Matrix/Riot recommendations too.

One other issue I have with Matrix is the fact that they're in the process of completely rewriting their reference implementation in Go despite the fact that - as far as I remember - the first one, in Python, isn't entirely complete[2]. Combined with the app-bridge song and dance[3] there's too much in flux for me to recommend in good conscience.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly (speaking as a "regular" user - the type needed to achieve mass adoption), the client is horrendous. This is especially apparent when compared with Wire, but I'd go as far as saying it's apparent even when compared with some IRC clients. At least Signal's UI/UX is passable. Encryption didn't catapult Telegram to 200 million monthly users. A slick UI, a half-decent UX, and some good marketing did.

1. Your link - https://about.riot.im/security/

2. https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse#introduction

3. https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-bridge

Tecuane··on Telegram: 200M Monthly Active Users
Wire[1], another E2EE chat application (using libsignal, just like WhatsApp and Signal itself), does not require this. It also has open-sourced its client and server applications[2], and is in the process of documenting how to run them yourself.

It also has a pretty solid API[3].

One downside for JS haters, though, is that while the application isn't a wrapper for the site it is still Electron.

1. https://wire.com/en/security/ 2. https://github.com/wireapp/wire-server 3. https://developer.wire.com