James'Techblog

Programming is fundamental with computing. Most people today only surf the web, check bank statements, pirate movies, etc. Programming is the back end for every piece of software that facilitates these fun past times. Not all programming languages are the same, there is HTML to handle websites, Css to handle web design, Php can be used for login credentials and other nifty things, there is even a language for handling simple, everyday tasks. Machine code: Machine code was used prior to any known compiled language as it communicated with the CPU directly and it was the language that the CPU spoke. Machine code would use numbers, preferably binary, to manage data that was input into the computer. The time of the first GUI applications were still a long way off. Computers during this time, were merely used to handle data calculations. Machine language was used in the construction of computers and people who understood binary could do almost anything with the machines at the tim...

Earlier today, I published an article here on Blogger about the recent flaws found in kernels and processor firmware. I was a bit vague and unclear, but after doing more reading, I can give you a small set of instructions in regards to possible workarounds for now. These are just temporary and they may include a potential increase in RAM usage for those using these applications. Google-Chrome has yet to release their own workarounds inside the browser for the mentioned vulnerabilities on their side, however, the Chromium project released a small post about how users could reduce the attack vector in the browser by enabling one or two possible back end features themselves. Here I will attempt to better explain what this is and how to reduce your own vulnerability, assuming that you’re on Chrome or another chromium based browser. The recent vulnerabilities are targeted at all processor architectures and as I previously mentioned, do make use of Kernel memory via going through the ...

The Linux firewall is managed by a service called Iptables. Iptables is a net-filter built into the Linux or Unix kernel. It is used even when third party applications are called. Iptables was initially released in 1998, but since has had a rewrite in favor of a new utility to be written into the kernel. People still use Iptables, most companies utilize this over third party applications just because they don’t want a middle man in between them and the computer’s settings. It is also more powerful using Iptables over third party applications as well because you’re interacting directly with the Kernel. Some third party applications that I frequently use include UFW for command line working with the firewall and GUFW for a gui for t he same command line firewall. Fedora and Red Hat have their own firewall service as firewall daemon. The Linux firewall is more robust than the Windows firewall in that it doesn’t try to discriminate traffic. It tells the user in the form of logs who is tal...

A few articles have already been written about these two kernel vulnerabilities within Linux. At time of this writing, several kernels have been released to kernel.org which help mitigate exploitation of the kernel via way of user apps which can then gain access to privileged, root user memory allocated for the kernel itself. Spectre and Meltdown both seem to utilize what is known as “speculative execution” to allow an attacker to see passwords or keys that the chip(processor) handles. This would allow anyone watching a free ride into your accounts. These flaws are based on the processor itself and have an affect on Windows, Mac and Linux. Sadly, the best possible solution would be to replace all the chips currently in use by PC’s, but this is not really an option for everyone. Outside of this, many applications, browsers and the like have made strides to mitigate these attacks. Microsoft has already released patches. These vulnerabilities are serious, so you should update as soon as...

 I did a bit of a review on Vivaldi before. I said that the browser was good and had a great team behind it, I also spoke briefly about the endless array of features within it. What I didn’t mention is codecs support and how it differs heavily from Opera in this regard. Most browser rely heavily upon the Operating system for codecs as well as their own supporting library packages. Most of these have libraries for extra codecs in the AUR on an Arch-based distribution. This is fine, but installing packages from the AUR takes a lot of time and installing FF mpeg codecs for Vivaldi takes even longer. What I did to avoid this step was to install opera and it’s extra codec support which are both found in the standard repositories right now in Manjaro. I then proceeded to go into the terminal and find where the new library was placed for Opera. In my case, it was in /usr/lib/opera/ and under the directory of lib_extra. I went into this directory via terminal and used t he comma...