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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
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A NEW REMOTE SPECTRE FLAW FOUND

A new spectre flaw dubbed NetSpectre has been found. This nasty flaw works in the same way that regular Spectre works by going through cached resources in the CPU and reading important user data. This flaw, however, doesn’t require physical access to your device. NetSpectre leverages the CPU’s natural architecture to execute possible remote code against an unpatched microcode or set of instructions built into the chip. Many operating systems including Windows and Linux have attempted to correct much of this malicious code execution by altering the way their kernels access RAM and CPU. After this you can probably expect even more changes. This is not to be confused with Meltdown which uses the same technique to gain access to the entire system. Spectre itself can only access Kernel memory. Google Chrome and many other apps that use passwords and other login data, have patched their applications already. Many of these patches included altering the timing of the application. Manjaro has a bulletin displaying their ongoing efforts to mitigate this in their kernels. The problem is that some users of Windows and the Like on Intel devices have noticed slight system slow downs. If this continues, you may have to expect more. Some newer AMD chips are unaffected. Newer chips already have a sort of wall up for this type of attack in place, if you run manjaro, some of the kernels on these devices will show that in an attempt to mitigate spectre, some things could not be implemented so it goes back to default retpoline. Pale Moon browser was also not affected by this sort of attack, but the author went ahead and planned for it anyway by changing the timing of and patching his application.

The original article explaining the new attack vector can be found here.
More about the original Meltdown and Spectre here.
And here.
A way you can check Linux for these vulnerabilities is here.
Shameless plug here.

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