Skip to main content

Blocklist-Update.sh

Blocklist-Update.sh is a script that I wrote to manage blocklists from bluetack etc to be used in conjunction with Transmission torrent downloader in Linux/MacOS. The script can be taylored to work with Qbittorrent as well, but the placement of the blocklists means you'd have to redirect the blocklist to go somewhere locally manageable as Transmission uses its own blocklist directory in .config. I believe there are about 10 lists there now. It works well for my needs. It can be ran weekly using crontab in standard user profile.  To download:  blocklist-update.sh To download the others:  Github
Post a Comment

SPECTRE AND MELTDOWN

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 possible. Chrome has yet to release their own mitigations, so if you’re using the browser, or any browser based on it, you can enable a flag in the backend that uses site isolation which prevents a website from seeing what is on the machine. If you’re on Manjaro Linux, you should get a kernel update today that will patch this, if you, like myself, didn’t want to wait, you can enable the unstable or testing mirrors by running sudo pacman-mirrors -b (unstable or testing) and sudo pacman -Syyu. This will ensure that your mirrors are the latest unstable and will resync the repositories as well as update the system. If you’re on Intel or a newer model AMD that supports the newer firmware packages, I’d suggest also getting AMD and Intel Specific firmware upgrades in your distribution as well. These attacks are only possible if you have malware on your system, so running a scan with some antivirus or rootkit application would be a really good thing to do. I recommend Malwarebytes if you’re on Windows. In fact, I not long ago released an article about cleaning and infected PC. Link will be below.

Notable Links:






kernel.org

Update: Pale Moon Browser is not currently vulnerable according the developer Moonchild. He fixed this in a Defense In Depth  fix in October of 2016. According to the developer, more is being added in the upcoming 27.7 release to prevent this.
 http://www.palemoon.org/

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NOSCRIPT CONFIGURATION FOR PALE MOON SPECIFICALLY

I wrote an article before about making Pale Moon more private. I covered a few of the settings and back end changes I make each time I install it. I mentioned Noscript, but I didn’t give any details about how I set it up. First though, you have to get the version already marked for your version of “Firefox” or in this case, Pale Moon. If you went to https://addons.palemoon.org/addon/noscript/ you would probably find the Pale Moon addons page devoted to the newest possible Noscript being marked specifically for Pale Moon. Other versions may work, but these are hybrid addons and the closer we get to Noscript 10, the less I trust it to work with Pale Moon specifically. I just opt to stick with 5.0.6. There have been people asking about what happens when Maone, the developer stops supporting the hybrid versions of Noscript, “Will it work with Pale Moon?” Why yes it will. Noscript blocks scripts, that’s its main function and it will do that as long as Java script exists on a page. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

SSD PARTITION ALIGNMENT

I was searching for more information regarding SSDs last night as that is what I now use, I found an interesting little tip that most users will never have to worry about, but people using Arch Linux, Manjaro or Windows that was cloned from another drive may want to consider checking this. The Partition manager within Linux normally takes good care to ensure that you have some free space to be used by the SSD in the event that a cell becomes worn out or corrupted. Also, Linux generally ensures that a proper amount of unallocated drive space is set aside preceeding the partition. However, on my own image of Manjaro, I discovered that this was not the case. The partition was “out of alignment”. To fix this situation, I found an article on  Lifehacker that went into instructional detail about how to solve this from a live environment or an image of Gparted . Gparted is a separate live environment of Linux that is based on Debian and uses Gparted as the main tool to manage...
Post a Comment
Read more

PALE MOON PRIVACY SETUP

I did a review of Pale Moon back when 27.6.2 came out in linux. I had mostly great things to say about the browser then and my feelings towards it have not changed. Pale Moon is a very useful tool for scowering the net. It has privacy at its core with a few implementations made by Moonchild, the lead developer, built in. I also mentioned the point that Pale Moon has a canvas poisoning feature in the backend, however, I wasn’t very clear about how to turn it on. I thought in this tutorial, I’d show with a series of screen shots, some of the useful settings and preferences that I change to make Pale Moon a bit more private. I also thought I’d take this time to rant a little more about some of the not so savory issues with Firefox which have recently come under scrutiny by various people in the the Linux world. First order of business, if you haven’t heard, Mozilla recently added an extension into their browser which gave people ads. That’s right, they were ads for a specific t...
Post a Comment
Read more