Tag Archives: document

Storing Encrypted Credentials In Git

Post Syndicated from Bozho original https://techblog.bozho.net/storing-encrypted-credentials-in-git/

We all know that we should not commit any passwords or keys to the repo with our code (no matter if public or private). Yet, thousands of production passwords can be found on GitHub (and probably thousands more in internal company repositories). Some have tried to fix that by removing the passwords (once they learned it’s not a good idea to store them publicly), but passwords have remained in the git history.

Knowing what not to do is the first and very important step. But how do we store production credentials. Database credentials, system secrets (e.g. for HMACs), access keys for 3rd party services like payment providers or social networks. There doesn’t seem to be an agreed upon solution.

I’ve previously argued with the 12-factor app recommendation to use environment variables – if you have a few that might be okay, but when the number of variables grow (as in any real application), it becomes impractical. And you can set environment variables via a bash script, but you’d have to store it somewhere. And in fact, even separate environment variables should be stored somewhere.

This somewhere could be a local directory (risky), a shared storage, e.g. FTP or S3 bucket with limited access, or a separate git repository. I think I prefer the git repository as it allows versioning (Note: S3 also does, but is provider-specific). So you can store all your environment-specific properties files with all their credentials and environment-specific configurations in a git repo with limited access (only Ops people). And that’s not bad, as long as it’s not the same repo as the source code.

Such a repo would look like this:

project
└─── production
|   |   application.properites
|   |   keystore.jks
└─── staging
|   |   application.properites
|   |   keystore.jks
└─── on-premise-client1
|   |   application.properites
|   |   keystore.jks
└─── on-premise-client2
|   |   application.properites
|   |   keystore.jks

Since many companies are using GitHub or BitBucket for their repositories, storing production credentials on a public provider may still be risky. That’s why it’s a good idea to encrypt the files in the repository. A good way to do it is via git-crypt. It is “transparent” encryption because it supports diff and encryption and decryption on the fly. Once you set it up, you continue working with the repo as if it’s not encrypted. There’s even a fork that works on Windows.

You simply run git-crypt init (after you’ve put the git-crypt binary on your OS Path), which generates a key. Then you specify your .gitattributes, e.g. like that:

secretfile filter=git-crypt diff=git-crypt
*.key filter=git-crypt diff=git-crypt
*.properties filter=git-crypt diff=git-crypt
*.jks filter=git-crypt diff=git-crypt

And you’re done. Well, almost. If this is a fresh repo, everything is good. If it is an existing repo, you’d have to clean up your history which contains the unencrypted files. Following these steps will get you there, with one addition – before calling git commit, you should call git-crypt status -f so that the existing files are actually encrypted.

You’re almost done. We should somehow share and backup the keys. For the sharing part, it’s not a big issue to have a team of 2-3 Ops people share the same key, but you could also use the GPG option of git-crypt (as documented in the README). What’s left is to backup your secret key (that’s generated in the .git/git-crypt directory). You can store it (password-protected) in some other storage, be it a company shared folder, Dropbox/Google Drive, or even your email. Just make sure your computer is not the only place where it’s present and that it’s protected. I don’t think key rotation is necessary, but you can devise some rotation procedure.

git-crypt authors claim to shine when it comes to encrypting just a few files in an otherwise public repo. And recommend looking at git-remote-gcrypt. But as often there are non-sensitive parts of environment-specific configurations, you may not want to encrypt everything. And I think it’s perfectly fine to use git-crypt even in a separate repo scenario. And even though encryption is an okay approach to protect credentials in your source code repo, it’s still not necessarily a good idea to have the environment configurations in the same repo. Especially given that different people/teams manage these credentials. Even in small companies, maybe not all members have production access.

The outstanding questions in this case is – how do you sync the properties with code changes. Sometimes the code adds new properties that should be reflected in the environment configurations. There are two scenarios here – first, properties that could vary across environments, but can have default values (e.g. scheduled job periods), and second, properties that require explicit configuration (e.g. database credentials). The former can have the default values bundled in the code repo and therefore in the release artifact, allowing external files to override them. The latter should be announced to the people who do the deployment so that they can set the proper values.

The whole process of having versioned environment-speific configurations is actually quite simple and logical, even with the encryption added to the picture. And I think it’s a good security practice we should try to follow.

The post Storing Encrypted Credentials In Git appeared first on Bozho's tech blog.

ISP Questions Impartiality of Judges in Copyright Troll Cases

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/isp-questions-impartiality-of-judges-in-copyright-troll-cases-180602/

Following in the footsteps of similar operations around the world, two years ago the copyright trolling movement landed on Swedish shores.

The pattern was a familiar one, with trolls harvesting IP addresses from BitTorrent swarms and tracing them back to Internet service providers. Then, after presenting evidence to a judge, the trolls obtained orders that compelled ISPs to hand over their customers’ details. From there, the trolls demanded cash payments to make supposed lawsuits disappear.

It’s a controversial business model that rarely receives outside praise. Many ISPs have tried to slow down the flood but most eventually grow tired of battling to protect their customers. The same cannot be said of Swedish ISP Bahnhof.

The ISP, which is also a strong defender of privacy, has become known for fighting back against copyright trolls. Indeed, to thwart them at the very first step, the company deletes IP address logs after just 24 hours, which prevents its customers from being targeted.

Bahnhof says that the copyright business appeared “dirty and corrupt” right from the get go, so it now operates Utpressningskollen.se, a web portal where the ISP publishes data on Swedish legal cases in which copyright owners demand customer data from ISPs through the Patent and Market Courts.

Over the past two years, Bahnhof says it has documented 76 cases of which six are still ongoing, 11 have been waived and a majority 59 have been decided in favor of mainly movie companies. Bahnhof says that when it discovered that 59 out of the 76 cases benefited one party, it felt a need to investigate.

In a detailed report compiled by Bahnhof Communicator Carolina Lindahl and sent to TF, the ISP reveals that it examined the individual decision-makers in the cases before the Courts and found five judges with “questionable impartiality.”

“One of the judges, we can call them Judge 1, has closed 12 of the cases, of which two have been waived and the other 10 have benefitted the copyright owner, mostly movie companies,” Lindahl notes.

“Judge 1 apparently has written several articles in the magazine NIR – Nordiskt Immateriellt Rättsskydd (Nordic Intellectual Property Protection) – which is mainly supported by Svenska Föreningen för Upphovsrätt, the Swedish Association for Copyright (SFU).

“SFU is a member-financed group centered around copyright that publishes articles, hands out scholarships, arranges symposiums, etc. On their website they have a public calendar where Judge 1 appears regularly.”

Bahnhof says that the financiers of the SFU are Sveriges Television AB (Sweden’s national public TV broadcaster), Filmproducenternas Rättsförening (a legally-oriented association for filmproducers), BMG Chrysalis Scandinavia (a media giant) and Fackförbundet för Film och Mediabranschen (a union for the movie and media industry).

“This means that Judge 1 is involved in a copyright association sponsored by the film and media industry, while also judging in copyright cases with the film industry as one of the parties,” the ISP says.

Bahnhof’s also has criticism for Judge 2, who participated as an event speaker for the Swedish Association for Copyright, and Judge 3 who has written for the SFU-supported magazine NIR. According to Lindahl, Judge 4 worked for a bureau that is partly owned by a board member of SFU, who also defended media companies in a “high-profile” Swedish piracy case.

That leaves Judge 5, who handled 10 of the copyright troll cases documented by Bahnhof, waiving one and deciding the remaining nine in favor of a movie company plaintiff.

“Judge 5 has been questioned before and even been accused of bias while judging a high-profile piracy case almost ten years ago. The accusations of bias were motivated by the judge’s membership of SFU and the Swedish Association for Intellectual Property Rights (SFIR), an association with several important individuals of the Swedish copyright community as members, who all defend, represent, or sympathize with the media industry,” Lindahl says.

Bahnhof hasn’t named any of the judges nor has it provided additional details on the “high-profile” case. However, anyone who remembers the infamous trial of ‘The Pirate Bay Four’ a decade ago might recall complaints from the defense (1,2,3) that several judges involved in the case were members of pro-copyright groups.

While there were plenty of calls to consider them biased, in May 2010 the Supreme Court ruled otherwise, a fact Bahnhof recognizes.

“Judge 5 was never sentenced for bias by the court, but regardless of the court’s decision this is still a judge who shares values and has personal connections with [the media industry], and as if that weren’t enough, the judge has induced an additional financial aspect by participating in events paid for by said party,” Lindahl writes.

“The judge has parties and interest holders in their personal network, a private engagement in the subject and a financial connection to one party – textbook characteristics of bias which would make anyone suspicious.”

The decision-makers of the Patent and Market Court and their relations.

The ISP notes that all five judges have connections to the media industry in the cases they judge, which isn’t a great starting point for returning “objective and impartial” results. In its summary, however, the ISP is scathing of the overall system, one in which court cases “almost looked rigged” and appear to be decided in favor of the movie company even before reaching court.

In general, however, Bahnhof says that the processes show a lack of individual attention, such as the court blindly accepting questionable IP address evidence supplied by infamous anti-piracy outfit MaverickEye.

“The court never bothers to control the media company’s only evidence (lists generated by MaverickMonitor, which has proven to be an unreliable software), the court documents contain several typos of varying severity, and the same standard texts are reused in several different cases,” the ISP says.

“The court documents show a lack of care and control, something that can easily be taken advantage of by individuals with shady motives. The findings and discoveries of this investigation are strengthened by the pure numbers mentioned in the beginning which clearly show how one party almost always wins.

“If this is caused by bias, cheating, partiality, bribes, political agenda, conspiracy or pure coincidence we can’t say for sure, but the fact that this process has mainly generated money for the film industry, while citizens have been robbed of their personal integrity and legal certainty, indicates what forces lie behind this machinery,” Bahnhof’s Lindahl concludes.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Amazon SageMaker Updates – Tokyo Region, CloudFormation, Chainer, and GreenGrass ML

Post Syndicated from Randall Hunt original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/sagemaker-tokyo-summit-2018/

Today, at the AWS Summit in Tokyo we announced a number of updates and new features for Amazon SageMaker. Starting today, SageMaker is available in Asia Pacific (Tokyo)! SageMaker also now supports CloudFormation. A new machine learning framework, Chainer, is now available in the SageMaker Python SDK, in addition to MXNet and Tensorflow. Finally, support for running Chainer models on several devices was added to AWS Greengrass Machine Learning.

Amazon SageMaker Chainer Estimator


Chainer is a popular, flexible, and intuitive deep learning framework. Chainer networks work on a “Define-by-Run” scheme, where the network topology is defined dynamically via forward computation. This is in contrast to many other frameworks which work on a “Define-and-Run” scheme where the topology of the network is defined separately from the data. A lot of developers enjoy the Chainer scheme since it allows them to write their networks with native python constructs and tools.

Luckily, using Chainer with SageMaker is just as easy as using a TensorFlow or MXNet estimator. In fact, it might even be a bit easier since it’s likely you can take your existing scripts and use them to train on SageMaker with very few modifications. With TensorFlow or MXNet users have to implement a train function with a particular signature. With Chainer your scripts can be a little bit more portable as you can simply read from a few environment variables like SM_MODEL_DIR, SM_NUM_GPUS, and others. We can wrap our existing script in a if __name__ == '__main__': guard and invoke it locally or on sagemaker.


import argparse
import os

if __name__ =='__main__':

    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()

    # hyperparameters sent by the client are passed as command-line arguments to the script.
    parser.add_argument('--epochs', type=int, default=10)
    parser.add_argument('--batch-size', type=int, default=64)
    parser.add_argument('--learning-rate', type=float, default=0.05)

    # Data, model, and output directories
    parser.add_argument('--output-data-dir', type=str, default=os.environ['SM_OUTPUT_DATA_DIR'])
    parser.add_argument('--model-dir', type=str, default=os.environ['SM_MODEL_DIR'])
    parser.add_argument('--train', type=str, default=os.environ['SM_CHANNEL_TRAIN'])
    parser.add_argument('--test', type=str, default=os.environ['SM_CHANNEL_TEST'])

    args, _ = parser.parse_known_args()

    # ... load from args.train and args.test, train a model, write model to args.model_dir.

Then, we can run that script locally or use the SageMaker Python SDK to launch it on some GPU instances in SageMaker. The hyperparameters will get passed in to the script as CLI commands and the environment variables above will be autopopulated. When we call fit the input channels we pass will be populated in the SM_CHANNEL_* environment variables.


from sagemaker.chainer.estimator import Chainer
# Create my estimator
chainer_estimator = Chainer(
    entry_point='example.py',
    train_instance_count=1,
    train_instance_type='ml.p3.2xlarge',
    hyperparameters={'epochs': 10, 'batch-size': 64}
)
# Train my estimator
chainer_estimator.fit({'train': train_input, 'test': test_input})

# Deploy my estimator to a SageMaker Endpoint and get a Predictor
predictor = chainer_estimator.deploy(
    instance_type="ml.m4.xlarge",
    initial_instance_count=1
)

Now, instead of bringing your own docker container for training and hosting with Chainer, you can just maintain your script. You can see the full sagemaker-chainer-containers on github. One of my favorite features of the new container is built-in chainermn for easy multi-node distribution of your chainer training jobs.

There’s a lot more documentation and information available in both the README and the example notebooks.

AWS GreenGrass ML with Chainer

AWS GreenGrass ML now includes a pre-built Chainer package for all devices powered by Intel Atom, NVIDIA Jetson, TX2, and Raspberry Pi. So, now GreenGrass ML provides pre-built packages for TensorFlow, Apache MXNet, and Chainer! You can train your models on SageMaker then easily deploy it to any GreenGrass-enabled device using GreenGrass ML.

JAWS UG

I want to give a quick shout out to all of our wonderful and inspirational friends in the JAWS UG who attended the AWS Summit in Tokyo today. I’ve very much enjoyed seeing your pictures of the summit. Thanks for making Japan an amazing place for AWS developers! I can’t wait to visit again and meet with all of you.

– Randall

How to rotate your Twitter API key and bearer token automatically with AWS Secrets Manager

Post Syndicated from Apurv Awasthi original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/how-to-rotate-your-twitter-api-key-and-bearer-token-automatically-with-aws-secrets-manager/

Previously, I showed you how to rotate Amazon RDS database credentials automatically with AWS Secrets Manager. In addition to database credentials, AWS Secrets Manager makes it easier to rotate, manage, and retrieve API keys, OAuth tokens, and other secrets throughout their lifecycle. You can configure Secrets Manager to rotate these secrets automatically, which can help you meet your compliance needs. You can also use Secrets Manager to rotate secrets on demand, which can help you respond quickly to security events. In this post, I show you how to store an API key in Secrets Manager and use a custom Lambda function to rotate the key automatically. I’ll use a Twitter API key and bearer token as an example; you can reference this example to rotate other types of API keys.

The instructions are divided into four main phases:

  1. Store a Twitter API key and bearer token in Secrets Manager.
  2. Create a custom Lambda function to rotate the bearer token.
  3. Configure your application to retrieve the bearer token from Secrets Manager.
  4. Configure Secrets Manager to use the custom Lambda function to rotate the bearer token automatically.

For the purpose of this post, I use the placeholder Demo/Twitter_Api_Key to denote the API key, the placeholder Demo/Twitter_bearer_token to denote the bearer token, and placeholder Lambda_Rotate_Bearer_Token to denote the custom Lambda function. Be sure to replace these placeholders with the resource names from your account.

Phase 1: Store a Twitter API key and bearer token in Secrets Manager

Twitter enables developers to register their applications and retrieve an API key, which includes a consumer_key and consumer_secret. Developers use these to generate a bearer token that applications can then use to authenticate and retrieve information from Twitter. At any given point of time, you can use an API key to create only one valid bearer token.

Start by storing the API key in Secrets Manager. Here’s how:

  1. Open the Secrets Manager console and select Store a new secret.
     
    Figure 1: The "Store a new secret" button in the AWS Secrets Manager console

    Figure 1: The “Store a new secret” button in the AWS Secrets Manager console

  2. Select Other type of secrets (because you’re storing an API key).
  3. Input the consumer_key and consumer_secret, and then select Next.
     
    Figure 2: Select the consumer_key and the consumer_secret

    Figure 2: Select the consumer_key and the consumer_secret

  4. Specify values for Secret Name and Description, then select Next. For this example, I use Demo/Twitter_API_Key.
     
    Figure 3: Set values for "Secret Name" and "Description"

    Figure 3: Set values for “Secret Name” and “Description”

  5. On the next screen, keep the default setting, Disable automatic rotation, because you’ll use the same API key to rotate bearer tokens programmatically and automatically. Applications and employees will not retrieve this API key. Select Next.
     
    Figure 4: Keep the default "Disable automatic rotation" setting

    Figure 4: Keep the default “Disable automatic rotation” setting

  6. Review the information on the next screen and, if everything looks correct, select Store. You’ve now successfully stored a Twitter API key in Secrets Manager.

Next, store the bearer token in Secrets Manager. Here’s how:

  1. From the Secrets Manager console, select Store a new secret, select Other type of secrets, input details (access_token, token_type, and ARN of the API key) about the bearer token, and then select Next.
     
    Figure 5: Add details about the bearer token

    Figure 5: Add details about the bearer token

  2. Specify values for Secret Name and Description, and then select Next. For this example, I use Demo/Twitter_bearer_token.
     
    Figure 6: Again set values for "Secret Name" and "Description"

    Figure 6: Again set values for “Secret Name” and “Description”

  3. Keep the default rotation setting, Disable automatic rotation, and then select Next. You’ll enable rotation after you’ve updated the application to use Secrets Manager APIs to retrieve secrets.
  4. Review the information and select Store. You’ve now completed storing the bearer token in Secrets Manager.
    I take note of the sample code provided on the review page. I’ll use this code to update my application to retrieve the bearer token using Secrets Manager APIs.
     
    Figure 7: The sample code you can use in your app

    Figure 7: The sample code you can use in your app

Phase 2: Create a custom Lambda function to rotate the bearer token

While Secrets Manager supports rotating credentials for databases hosted on Amazon RDS natively, it also enables you to meet your unique rotation-related use cases by authoring custom Lambda functions. Now that you’ve stored the API key and bearer token, you’ll create a Lambda function to rotate the bearer token. For this example, I’ll create my Lambda function using Python 3.6.

  1. Open the Lambda console and select Create function.
     
    Figure 8: In the Lambda console, select "Create function"

    Figure 8: In the Lambda console, select “Create function”

  2. Select Author from scratch. For this example, I use the name Lambda_Rotate_Bearer_Token for my Lambda function. I also set the Runtime environment as Python 3.6.
     
    Figure 9: Create a new function from scratch

    Figure 9: Create a new function from scratch

  3. This Lambda function requires permissions to call AWS resources on your behalf. To grant these permissions, select Create a custom role. This opens a console tab.
  4. Select Create a new IAM Role and specify the value for Role Name. For this example, I use Role_Lambda_Rotate_Twitter_Bearer_Token.
     
    Figure 10: For "IAM Role," select "Create a new IAM role"

    Figure 10: For “IAM Role,” select “Create a new IAM role”

  5. Next, to define the IAM permissions, copy and paste the following IAM policy in the View Policy Document text-entry field. Be sure to replace the placeholder ARN-OF-Demo/Twitter_API_Key with the ARN of your secret. 
    
{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            “Sid”: “AllowLambdaToStoreAndRetrieveSecrets”
"Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "secretsmanager:DescribeSecret",
                "secretsmanager:GetSecretValue",
                "secretsmanager:PutSecretValue",
                "secretsmanager:UpdateSecretVersionStage"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        },
        {
            “Sid”: “GenerateARandomStringToExecuteRotation”
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "secretsmanager:GetRandomPassword"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        },
        {
            “Sid”: “AccessToNetworkInterface”
            "Action": [
                "ec2:CreateNetworkInterface",
                "ec2:DeleteNetworkInterface",
                "ec2:DescribeNetworkInterfaces",
                "ec2:DetachNetworkInterface"
            ],
            "Resource": "*",
            "Effect": "Allow"
        },
        {
            “Sid”: “RecordProgressInLogsForEasierDebugging”
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "logs:CreateLogGroup",
                "logs:CreateLogStream",
                "logs:PutLogEvents"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        },
        {
            “Sid”: “GetMasterCredential”
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "secretsmanager:GetSecretValue"
            ],
            "Resource": ARN-OF-Demo/Twitter_API_Key
        }
    ]
}

    Here’s what it will look like:
     

    Figure 11: The IAM policy pasted in the "View Policy Document" text-entry field

    Figure 11: The IAM policy pasted in the “View Policy Document” text-entry field

  6. Now, select Allow. This brings me back to the Lambda console with the appropriate Role selected.
  7. Select Create function.
     
    Figure 12: Select the "Create function" button in the lower-right corner

    Figure 12: Select the “Create function” button in the lower-right corner

  8. Copy the following Python code and paste it in the Function code section. 
    
import base64
import json
import logging
import os

import boto3
from botocore.vendored import requests

logger = logging.getLogger()
logger.setLevel(logging.INFO)

def lambda_handler(event, context):
    """Secrets Manager Twitter Bearer Token Handler

    This handler uses the master-user rotation scheme to rotate a bearer token of a Twitter app.

    The Secret PlaintextString is expected to be a JSON string with the following format:
    {
        'access_token': ,
        'token_type': ,
        'masterarn': 
    }

    Args:
        event (dict): Lambda dictionary of event parameters. These keys must include the following:
            - SecretId: The secret ARN or identifier
            - ClientRequestToken: The ClientRequestToken of the secret version
            - Step: The rotation step (one of createSecret, setSecret, testSecret, or finishSecret)

        context (LambdaContext): The Lambda runtime information

    Raises:
        ResourceNotFoundException: If the secret with the specified arn and stage does not exist

        ValueError: If the secret is not properly configured for rotation

        KeyError: If the secret json does not contain the expected keys

    """
    arn = event['SecretId']
    token = event['ClientRequestToken']
    step = event['Step']

    # Setup the client and environment variables
    service_client = boto3.client('secretsmanager', endpoint_url=os.environ['SECRETS_MANAGER_ENDPOINT'])
    oauth2_token_url = os.environ['TWITTER_OAUTH2_TOKEN_URL']
    oauth2_invalid_token_url = os.environ['TWITTER_OAUTH2_INVALID_TOKEN_URL']
    tweet_search_url = os.environ['TWITTER_SEARCH_URL']

    # Make sure the version is staged correctly
    metadata = service_client.describe_secret(SecretId=arn)
    if not metadata['RotationEnabled']:
        logger.error("Secret %s is not enabled for rotation" % arn)
        raise ValueError("Secret %s is not enabled for rotation" % arn)
    versions = metadata['VersionIdsToStages']
    if token not in versions:
        logger.error("Secret version %s has no stage for rotation of secret %s." % (token, arn))
        raise ValueError("Secret version %s has no stage for rotation of secret %s." % (token, arn))
    if "AWSCURRENT" in versions[token]:
        logger.info("Secret version %s already set as AWSCURRENT for secret %s." % (token, arn))
        return
    elif "AWSPENDING" not in versions[token]:
        logger.error("Secret version %s not set as AWSPENDING for rotation of secret %s." % (token, arn))
        raise ValueError("Secret version %s not set as AWSPENDING for rotation of secret %s." % (token, arn))

    # Call the appropriate step
    if step == "createSecret":
        create_secret(service_client, arn, token, oauth2_token_url, oauth2_invalid_token_url)

    elif step == "setSecret":
        set_secret(service_client, arn, token, oauth2_token_url)

    elif step == "testSecret":
        test_secret(service_client, arn, token, tweet_search_url)

    elif step == "finishSecret":
        finish_secret(service_client, arn, token)

    else:
        logger.error("lambda_handler: Invalid step parameter %s for secret %s" % (step, arn))
        raise ValueError("Invalid step parameter %s for secret %s" % (step, arn))


def create_secret(service_client, arn, token, oauth2_token_url, oauth2_invalid_token_url):
    """Get a new bearer token from Twitter 

    This method invalidates existing bearer token for the Twitter app and retrieves a new one from Twitter.
    If a secret version with AWSPENDING stage exists, updates it with the newly retrieved bearer token and if 
    the AWSPENDING stage does not exist, creates a new version of the secret with that stage label. 

    Args:
        service_client (client): The secrets manager service client

        arn (string): The secret ARN or other identifier

        token (string): The ClientRequestToken associated with the secret version

        oauth2_token_url (string): The Twitter API endpoint to request a bearer token

        oauth2_invalid_token_url (string): The Twitter API endpoint to invalidate a bearer token

    Raises:
        ValueError: If the current secret is not valid JSON

        KeyError: If the secret json does not contain the expected keys

        ResourceNotFoundException: If the current secret is not found

    """
    # Make sure the current secret exists and try to get the master arn from the secret
    try:
      current_secret_dict = get_secret_dict(service_client, arn, "AWSCURRENT")
      master_arn = current_secret_dict['masterarn']
      logger.info("createSecret: Successfully retrieved secret for %s." % arn)
    except service_client.exceptions.ResourceNotFoundException:
      return
    # create bearer token credentials to be passed as authorization string to Twitter
    bearer_token_credentials = encode_credentials(service_client, master_arn, "AWSCURRENT")
    # get the bearer token from Twitter
    bearer_token_from_twitter = get_bearer_token(bearer_token_credentials,oauth2_token_url)
    # invalidate the current bearer token
    invalidate_bearer_token(oauth2_invalid_token_url,bearer_token_credentials,bearer_token_from_twitter)
    # get a new bearer token from Twitter
    new_bearer_token = get_bearer_token(bearer_token_credentials, oauth2_token_url)
    # if a secret version with AWSPENDING stage exists, update it with the lastest bearer token
    # if the AWSPENDING stage does not exist, then create the version with AWSPENDING stage
    try:
      pending_secret_dict = get_secret_dict(service_client, arn, "AWSPENDING", token)
      pending_secret_dict['access_token'] = new_bearer_token
      service_client.put_secret_value(SecretId=arn, ClientRequestToken=token, SecretString=json.dumps(pending_secret_dict), VersionStages=['AWSPENDING'])
      logger.info("createSecret: Successfully invalidated the bearer token of the secret %s and updated the pending version" % arn)
    except service_client.exceptions.ResourceNotFoundException:
      current_secret_dict['access_token'] = new_bearer_token
      service_client.put_secret_value(SecretId=arn, ClientRequestToken=token, SecretString=json.dumps(current_secret_dict), VersionStages=['AWSPENDING'])
      logger.info("createSecret: Successfully invalidated the bearer token of the secret %s and and created the pending version." % arn)

def set_secret(service_client, arn, token, oauth2_token_url):
    """Validate the pending secret with that in Twitter

    This method checks wether the bearer token in Twitter is the same as the one in the version with AWSPENDING stage.

    Args:
        service_client (client): The secrets manager service client

        arn (string): The secret ARN or other identifier

        token (string): The ClientRequestToken associated with the secret version

        oauth2_token_url (string): The Twitter API endopoint to get a bearer token

    Raises:
        ResourceNotFoundException: If the secret with the specified arn and stage does not exist

        ValueError: If the secret is not valid JSON or master credentials could not be used to login to DB

        KeyError: If the secret json does not contain the expected keys

    """
    # First get the pending version of the bearer token and compare it with that in Twitter
    pending_secret_dict = get_secret_dict(service_client, arn, "AWSPENDING")
    master_arn = pending_secret_dict['masterarn']
    # create bearer token credentials to be passed as authorization string to Twitter
    bearer_token_credentials = encode_credentials(service_client, master_arn, "AWSCURRENT")
    # get the bearer token from Twitter
    bearer_token_from_twitter = get_bearer_token(bearer_token_credentials, oauth2_token_url)
    # if the bearer tokens are same, invalidate the bearer token in Twitter
    # if not, raise an exception that bearer token in Twitter was changed outside Secrets Manager
    if pending_secret_dict['access_token'] == bearer_token_from_twitter:
      logger.info("createSecret: Successfully verified the bearer token of arn %s" % arn)
    else:
      raise ValueError("The bearer token of the Twitter app was changed outside Secrets Manager. Please check.")
    
def test_secret(service_client, arn, token, tweet_search_url):
    """Test the pending secret by calling a Twitter API

    This method tries to use the bearer token in the secret version with AWSPENDING stage and search for tweets
    with 'aws secrets manager' string. 

    Args:
        service_client (client): The secrets manager service client

        arn (string): The secret ARN or other identifier

        token (string): The ClientRequestToken associated with the secret version

    Raises:
        ResourceNotFoundException: If the secret with the specified arn and stage does not exist

        ValueError: If the secret is not valid JSON or pending credentials could not be used to login to the database

        KeyError: If the secret json does not contain the expected keys

    """
    # First get the pending version of the bearer token and compare it with that in Twitter
    pending_secret_dict = get_secret_dict(service_client, arn, "AWSPENDING", token)
    # Now verify you can search for tweets using the bearer token
    if verify_bearer_token(pending_secret_dict['access_token'], tweet_search_url):
        logger.info("testSecret: Successfully authorized with the pending secret in %s." % arn)
        return
    else:
        logger.error("testSecret: Unable to authorize with the pending secret of secret ARN %s" % arn)
        raise ValueError("Unable to connect to Twitter with pending secret of secret ARN %s" % arn)

def finish_secret(service_client, arn, token):
    """Finish the rotation by marking the pending secret as current

    This method moves the secret from the AWSPENDING stage to the AWSCURRENT stage.

    Args:
        service_client (client): The secrets manager service client

        arn (string): The secret ARN or other identifier

        token (string): The ClientRequestToken associated with the secret version

    Raises:
        ResourceNotFoundException: If the secret with the specified arn and stage does not exist

    """
    # First describe the secret to get the current version
    metadata = service_client.describe_secret(SecretId=arn)
    current_version = None
    for version in metadata["VersionIdsToStages"]:
        if "AWSCURRENT" in metadata["VersionIdsToStages"][version]:
            if version == token:
                # The correct version is already marked as current, return
                logger.info("finishSecret: Version %s already marked as AWSCURRENT for %s" % (version, arn))
                return
            current_version = version
            break

    # Finalize by staging the secret version current
    service_client.update_secret_version_stage(SecretId=arn, VersionStage="AWSCURRENT", MoveToVersionId=token, RemoveFromVersionId=current_version)
    logger.info("finishSecret: Successfully set AWSCURRENT stage to version %s for secret %s." % (version, arn))
def encode_credentials(service_client, arn, stage):
  """Encodes the Twitter credentials
  This helper function encodes the Twitter credentials (consumer_key and consumer_secret) 

  Args:
    service_client (client):The secrets manager service client

    arn (string): The secret ARN or other identifier

    stage (stage): The stage identifying the secret version
  
  Returns:
    encoded_credentials (string): base64 encoded authorization string for Twitter

  Raises:
    KeyError: If the secret json does not contain the expected keys
  """
  required_fields = ['consumer_key','consumer_secret']
  master_secret_dict = get_secret_dict(service_client, arn, stage)
  for field in required_fields:
    if field not in master_secret_dict:
      raise KeyError("%s key is missing from the secret JSON" % field)
  encoded_credentials = base64.urlsafe_b64encode(
    '{}:{}'.format(master_secret_dict['consumer_key'], master_secret_dict['consumer_secret']).encode('ascii')).decode('ascii')
  return encoded_credentials
def get_bearer_token(encoded_credentials, oauth2_token_url):
  """Gets a bearer token from Twitter

  This helper function retrieves the current bearer token from Twitter, given a set of credentials.

  Args:
    encoded_credentials (string): Twitter credentials for authentication

    oauth2_token_url (string): REST API endpoint to request a bearer token from Twitter

  Raises:
    KeyError: If the secret json does not contain the expected keys
  """
  headers = {
      'Authorization': 'Basic {}'.format(encoded_credentials),
      'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded;charset=UTF-8',
  }
  data = 'grant_type=client_credentials'
  response = requests.post(oauth2_token_url, headers=headers, data=data)
  response_data = response.json()
  if response_data['token_type'] == 'bearer':
      bearer_token = response_data['access_token']
      return bearer_token
  else:
      raise RuntimeError('unexpected token type: {}'.format(response_data['token_type']))
def invalidate_bearer_token(oauth2_invalid_token_url, bearer_token_credentials, bearer_token):
    """Invalidates a Bearer Token of a Twitter App

    This helper function invalidates a bearer token of a Twitter app. 
    If successful, it returns the invalidated bearer token, else None

    Args:
        oauth2_invalid_token_url (string): The Twitter API endpoint to invalidate a bearer token

        bearer_token_credentials (string): encoded consumer key and consumer secret to authenticate with Twitter

        bearer_token (string): The bearer token to be invalidated

    Returns:
        invalidated_bearer_token: The invalidated bearer token

    Raises:
        ResourceNotFoundException: If the secret with the specified arn and stage does not exist

        ValueError: If the secret is not valid JSON

        KeyError: If the secret json does not contain the expected keys

    """
    headers = {
      'Authorization': 'Basic {}'.format(bearer_token_credentials),
      'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded;charset=UTF-8',
    }
    data = 'access_token=' + bearer_token
    invalidate_response = requests.post(oauth2_invalid_token_url, headers=headers, data=data)
    invalidate_response_data = invalidate_response.json()
    if invalidate_response_data:
      return
    else:
      raise RuntimeError('Invalidate bearer token request failed')
def verify_bearer_token(bearer_token, tweet_search_url):
  """Verifies access to Twitter APIs using a bearer token

  This helper function verifies that the bearer token is valid by calling Twitter's search/tweets API endpoint

  Args:
      bearer_token (string): The current bearer token for the application

  Returns:
      True or False

  Raises:
      KeyError: If the response of search tweets API call fails
  """
  headers = {
    'Authorization' : 'Bearer {}'.format(bearer_token),
    'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded;charset=UTF-8',
  }
  search_results = requests.get(tweet_search_url, headers=headers)
  try:
    search_results.json()['statuses']
    return True
  except:
    return False

def get_secret_dict(service_client, arn, stage, token=None):
    """Gets the secret dictionary corresponding for the secret arn, stage, and token

    This helper function gets credentials for the arn and stage passed in and returns the dictionary by parsing the JSON string

    Args:
        service_client (client): The secrets manager service client

        arn (string): The secret ARN or other identifier

        token (string): The ClientRequestToken associated with the secret version, or None if no validation is desired

        stage (string): The stage identifying the secret version

    Returns:
        SecretDictionary: Secret dictionary

    Raises:
        ResourceNotFoundException: If the secret with the specified arn and stage does not exist

        ValueError: If the secret is not valid JSON

    """
    # Only do VersionId validation against the stage if a token is passed in
    if token:
        secret = service_client.get_secret_value(SecretId=arn, VersionId=token, VersionStage=stage)
    else:
        secret = service_client.get_secret_value(SecretId=arn, VersionStage=stage)
    plaintext = secret['SecretString']

    # Parse and return the secret JSON string
    return json.loads(plaintext)

    Here’s what it will look like:
     

    Figure 13: The Python code pasted in the "Function code" section

    Figure 13: The Python code pasted in the “Function code” section

  9. On the same page, provide the following environment variables:

    Here’s what it will look like:
     

    Figure 14: Add the environment variables

    Figure 14: Add the environment variables

    Note: Resources used in this example are in US East (Ohio) region. If you intend to use another AWS Region, change the SECRETS_MANAGER_ENDPOINT set in the Environment variables to the appropriate region.

    You’ve now created a Lambda function that can rotate the bearer token:
     

    Figure 15: The new Lambda function

    Figure 15: The new Lambda function

  10. Before you can configure Secrets Manager to use this Lambda function, you need to update the function policy of the Lambda function. A function policy permits AWS services, such as Secrets Manager, to invoke a Lambda function on behalf of your application. You can attach a Lambda function policy from the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) or SDK. To attach a function policy, call the add-permission Lambda API from the AWS CLI. 
    
>aws lambda add-permission --function-name Lambda_Rotate_Bearer_Token --principal secretsmanager.amazonaws.com --action lambda:InvokeFunction --statement-id SecretsManagerAccess

Phase 3: Configure your application to retrieve the bearer token from Secrets Manager

Now that you’ve stored the bearer token in Secrets Manager, update the application to retrieve the bearer token from Secrets Manager instead of hard-coding this information in a configuration file or source code. For this example, I show you how to configure a Python application to retrieve this secret from Secrets Manager.

  1. Connect to your Amazon EC2 instance via Secure Shell (SSH). Previously, you configured the application to retrieve the bearer token from a configuration file. Below is the source code for my application. 
    
import config

def no_secrets_manager_sample()
    
    # Get the bearer token from a config file. 
    Bearer_token = config.bearer_token
    
    # Use the bearer token to authenticate requests to Twitter

  2. Use the sample code from section titled Phase 1 and update the application to retrieve the bearer token from Secrets Manager. The following code sets up the client and retrieves and decrypts the secret Demo/Twitter_bearer_token. 
    
# Use this code snippet in your app.
import boto3
from botocore.exceptions import ClientError


def get_secret():
    secret_name = "Demo/Twitter_bearer_token"
    endpoint_url = "https://secretsmanager.us-east-2.amazonaws.com"
    region_name = "us-east-2"

    session = boto3.session.Session()
    client = session.client(
        service_name='secretsmanager',
        region_name=region_name,
        endpoint_url=endpoint_url
    )

    try:
        get_secret_value_response = client.get_secret_value(
            SecretId=secret_name
        )
    except ClientError as e:
        if e.response['Error']['Code'] == 'ResourceNotFoundException':
            print("The requested secret " + secret_name + " was not found")
        elif e.response['Error']['Code'] == 'InvalidRequestException':
            print("The request was invalid due to:", e)
        elif e.response['Error']['Code'] == 'InvalidParameterException':
            print("The request had invalid params:", e)
    else:
        # Decrypted secret using the associated KMS CMK
        # Depending on whether the secret was a string or binary, one of these fields will be populated
        if 'SecretString' in get_secret_value_response:
            secret = get_secret_value_response['SecretString']
        else:
            binary_secret_data = get_secret_value_response['SecretBinary']
            
        # Your code goes here.

  3. Applications require permissions to access Secrets Manager. My application runs on Amazon EC2 and uses an IAM role to get access to AWS services. I’ll attach the following policy to my IAM role, and you should take a similar action with your IAM role. This policy uses the GetSecretValue action to grant my application permissions to read secrets from Secrets Manager. This policy also uses the resource element to limit my application to read only the Demo/Twitter_bearer_token secret from Secrets Manager. Read the AWS Secrets Manager documentation to understand the minimum IAM permissions required to retrieve a secret. 
    
{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": {
"Sid": "RetrieveBearerToken",
"Effect": "Allow",
"Action": "secretsmanager:GetSecretValue",
"Resource": Input ARN of the secret Demo/Twitter_bearer_token here 
}
}

    Note: To improve the resiliency of your applications, associate your application with two API keys/bearer tokens. This is a higher availability option because you can continue to use one bearer token while Secrets Manager rotates the other token. Read the AWS documentation to learn how AWS Secrets Manager rotates your secrets.

Phase 4: Enable and verify rotation

Now that you’ve stored the secret in Secrets Manager and created a Lambda function to rotate this secret, configure Secrets Manager to rotate the secret Demo/Twitter_bearer_token.

  1. From the Secrets Manager console, go to the list of secrets and choose the secret you created in the first step (in my example, this is named Demo/Twitter_bearer_token).
  2. Scroll to Rotation configuration, and then select Edit rotation.
     
    Figure 16: Select the "Edit rotation" button

    Figure 16: Select the “Edit rotation” button

  3. To enable rotation, select Enable automatic rotation, and then choose how frequently you want Secrets Manager to rotate this secret. For this example, I set the rotation interval to 30 days. I also choose the rotation Lambda function, Lambda_Rotate_Bearer_Token, from the drop-down list.
     
    Figure 17: "Edit rotation configuration" options

    Figure 17: “Edit rotation configuration” options

The banner on the next screen confirms that I have successfully configured rotation and the first rotation is in progress, which enables you to verify that rotation is functioning as expected. Secrets Manager will rotate this credential automatically every 30 days.
 

Figure 18: Confirmation notice

Figure 18: Confirmation notice

Summary

In this post, I showed you how to configure Secrets Manager to manage and rotate an API key and bearer token used by applications to authenticate and retrieve information from Twitter. You can use the steps described in this blog to manage and rotate other API keys, as well.

Secrets Manager helps you protect access to your applications, services, and IT resources without the upfront investment and on-going maintenance costs of operating your own secrets management infrastructure. To get started, open the Secrets Manager console. To learn more, read the Secrets Manager documentation.

If you have comments about this post, submit them in the Comments section below. If you have questions about anything in this post, start a new thread on the Secrets Manager forum or contact AWS Support.

Want more AWS Security news? Follow us on Twitter.

Hiring a Director of Sales

Post Syndicated from Yev original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hiring-a-director-of-sales/

Backblaze is hiring a Director of Sales. This is a critical role for Backblaze as we continue to grow the team. We need a strong leader who has experience in scaling a sales team and who has an excellent track record for exceeding goals by selling Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions. In addition, this leader will need to be highly motivated, as well as able to create and develop a highly-motivated, success oriented sales team that has fun and enjoys what they do.

The History of Backblaze from our CEO
In 2007, after a friend’s computer crash caused her some suffering, we realized that with every photo, video, song, and document going digital, everyone would eventually lose all of their information. Five of us quit our jobs to start a company with the goal of making it easy for people to back up their data.

Like many startups, for a while we worked out of a co-founder’s one-bedroom apartment. Unlike most startups, we made an explicit agreement not to raise funding during the first year. We would then touch base every six months and decide whether to raise or not. We wanted to focus on building the company and the product, not on pitching and slide decks. And critically, we wanted to build a culture that understood money comes from customers, not the magical VC giving tree. Over the course of 5 years we built a profitable, multi-million dollar revenue business — and only then did we raise a VC round.

Fast forward 10 years later and our world looks quite different. You’ll have some fantastic assets to work with:

  • A brand millions recognize for openness, ease-of-use, and affordability.
  • A computer backup service that stores over 500 petabytes of data, has recovered over 30 billion files for hundreds of thousands of paying customers — most of whom self-identify as being the people that find and recommend technology products to their friends.
  • Our B2 service that provides the lowest cost cloud storage on the planet at 1/4th the price Amazon, Google or Microsoft charges. While being a newer product on the market, it already has over 100,000 IT and developers signed up as well as an ecosystem building up around it.
  • A growing, profitable and cash-flow positive company.
  • And last, but most definitely not least: a great sales team.

You might be saying, “sounds like you’ve got this under control — why do you need me?” Don’t be misled. We need you. Here’s why:

  • We have a great team, but we are in the process of expanding and we need to develop a structure that will easily scale and provide the most success to drive revenue.
  • We just launched our outbound sales efforts and we need someone to help develop that into a fully successful program that’s building a strong pipeline and closing business.
  • We need someone to work with the marketing department and figure out how to generate more inbound opportunities that the sales team can follow up on and close.
  • We need someone who will work closely in developing the skills of our current sales team and build a path for career growth and advancement.
  • We want someone to manage our Customer Success program.

So that’s a bit about us. What are we looking for in you?

Experience: As a sales leader, you will strategically build and drive the territory’s sales pipeline by assembling and leading a skilled team of sales professionals. This leader should be familiar with generating, developing and closing software subscription (SaaS) opportunities. We are looking for a self-starter who can manage a team and make an immediate impact of selling our Backup and Cloud Storage solutions. In this role, the sales leader will work closely with the VP of Sales, marketing staff, and service staff to develop and implement specific strategic plans to achieve and exceed revenue targets, including new business acquisition as well as build out our customer success program.

Leadership: We have an experienced team who’s brought us to where we are today. You need to have the people and management skills to get them excited about working with you. You need to be a strong leader and compassionate about developing and supporting your team.

Data driven and creative: The data has to show something makes sense before we scale it up. However, without creativity, it’s easy to say “the data shows it’s impossible” or to find a local maximum. Whether it’s deciding how to scale the team, figuring out what our outbound sales efforts should look like or putting a plan in place to develop the team for career growth, we’ve seen a bit of creativity get us places a few extra dollars couldn’t.

Jive with our culture: Strong leaders affect culture and the person we hire for this role may well shape, not only fit into, ours. But to shape the culture you have to be accepted by the organism, which means a certain set of shared values. We default to openness with our team, our customers, and everyone if possible. We love initiative — without arrogance or dictatorship. We work to create a place people enjoy showing up to work. That doesn’t mean ping pong tables and foosball (though we do try to have perks & fun), but it means people are friendly, non-political, working to build a good service but also a good place to work.

Do the work: Ideas and strategy are critical, but good execution makes them happen. We’re looking for someone who can help the team execute both from the perspective of being capable of guiding and organizing, but also someone who is hands-on themselves.

Additional Responsibilities needed for this role:

  • Recruit, coach, mentor, manage and lead a team of sales professionals to achieve yearly sales targets. This includes closing new business and expanding upon existing clientele.
  • Expand the customer success program to provide the best customer experience possible resulting in upsell opportunities and a high retention rate.
  • Develop effective sales strategies and deliver compelling product demonstrations and sales pitches.
  • Acquire and develop the appropriate sales tools to make the team efficient in their daily work flow.
  • Apply a thorough understanding of the marketplace, industry trends, funding developments, and products to all management activities and strategic sales decisions.
  • Ensure that sales department operations function smoothly, with the goal of facilitating sales and/or closings; operational responsibilities include accurate pipeline reporting and sales forecasts.
  • This position will report directly to the VP of Sales and will be staffed in our headquarters in San Mateo, CA.

Requirements:

  • 7 – 10+ years of successful sales leadership experience as measured by sales performance against goals.
    Experience in developing skill sets and providing career growth and opportunities through advancement of team members.
  • Background in selling SaaS technologies with a strong track record of success.
  • Strong presentation and communication skills.
  • Must be able to travel occasionally nationwide.
  • BA/BS degree required

Think you want to join us on this adventure?
Send an email to jobscontact@backblaze.com with the subject “Director of Sales.” (Recruiters and agencies, please don’t email us.) Include a resume and answer these two questions:

  1. How would you approach evaluating the current sales team and what is your process for developing a growth strategy to scale the team?
  2. What are the goals you would set for yourself in the 3 month and 1-year timeframes?

Thank you for taking the time to read this and I hope that this sounds like the opportunity for which you’ve been waiting.

Backblaze is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

The post Hiring a Director of Sales appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Kidnapping Fraud

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/05/kidnapping_frau.html

Fake kidnapping fraud:

“Most commonly we have unsolicited calls to potential victims in Australia, purporting to represent the people in authority in China and suggesting to intending victims here they have been involved in some sort of offence in China or elsewhere, for which they’re being held responsible,” Commander McLean said.

The scammers threaten the students with deportation from Australia or some kind of criminal punishment.

The victims are then coerced into providing their identification details or money to get out of the supposed trouble they’re in.

Commander McLean said there are also cases where the student is told they have to hide in a hotel room, provide compromising photos of themselves and cut off all contact.

This simulates a kidnapping.

“So having tricked the victims in Australia into providing the photographs, and money and documents and other things, they then present the information back to the unknowing families in China to suggest that their children who are abroad are in trouble,” Commander McLean said.

“So quite circular in a sense…very skilled, very cunning.”

Legal Blackmail: Zero Cases Brought Against Alleged Pirates in Sweden

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/legal-blackmail-zero-cases-brought-against-alleged-pirates-in-sweden-180525/

While several countries in Europe have wilted under sustained pressure from copyright trolls for more than ten years, Sweden managed to avoid their controversial attacks until fairly recently.

With Germany a decade-old pit of misery, with many hundreds of thousands of letters – by now probably millions – sent out to Internet users demanding cash, Sweden avoided the ranks of its European partners until two years ago

In September 2016 it was revealed that an organization calling itself Spridningskollen (Distribution Check) headed up by law firm Gothia Law, would begin targeting the public.

Its spokesperson described its letters as “speeding tickets” for pirates, in that they would only target the guilty. But there was a huge backlash and just a couple of months later Spridningskollen headed for the hills, without a single collection letter being sent out.

That was the calm before the storm.

In February 2017, Danish law firm Njord Law was found to be at the center of a new troll operation targeting the subscribers of several ISPs, including Telia, Tele2 and Bredbandsbolaget. Court documents revealed that thousands of IP addresses had been harvested by the law firm’s partners who were determined to link them with real-life people.

Indeed, in a single batch, Njord Law was granted permission from the court to obtain the identities of citizens behind 25,000 IP addresses, from whom it hoped to obtain cash settlements of around US$550. But it didn’t stop there.

Time and again the trolls headed back to court in an effort to reach more people although until now the true scale of their operations has been open to question. However, a new investigation carried out by SVT has revealed that the promised copyright troll invasion of Sweden is well underway with a huge level of momentum.

Data collated by the publication reveals that since 2017, the personal details behind more than 50,000 IP addresses have been handed over by Swedish Internet service providers to law firms representing copyright trolls and their partners. By the end of this year, Njord Law alone will have sent out 35,000 letters to Swede’s whose IP addresses have been flagged as allegedly infringing copyright.

Even if one is extremely conservative with the figures, the levels of cash involved are significant. Taking a settlement amount of just $300 per letter, very quickly the copyright trolls are looking at $15,000,000 in revenues. On the perimeter, assuming $550 will make a supposed lawsuit go away, we’re looking at a potential $27,500,000 in takings.

But of course, this dragnet approach doesn’t have the desired effect on all recipients.

In 2017, Njord Law said that only 60% of its letters received any kind of response, meaning that even fewer would be settling with the company. So what happens when the public ignores the threatening letters?

“Yes, we will [go to court],” said lawyer Jeppe Brogaard Clausen last year.

“We wish to resolve matters as much as possible through education and dialogue without the assistance of the court though. It is very expensive both for the rights holders and for plaintiffs if we go to court.”

But despite the tough-talking, SVT’s investigation has turned up an interesting fact. The nuclear option, of taking people to court and winning a case when they refuse to pay, has never happened.

After trawling records held by the Patent and Market Court and all those held by the District Courts dating back five years, SVT did not find a single case of a troll taking a citizen to court and winning a case. Furthermore, no law firm contacted by the publication could show that such a thing had happened.

“In Sweden, we have not yet taken someone to court, but we are planning to file for the right in 2018,” Emelie Svensson, lawyer at Njord Law, told SVT.

While a case may yet reach the courts, when it does it is guaranteed to be a cut-and-dried one. Letter recipients can often say things to damage their case, even when they’re only getting a letter due to their name being on the Internet bill. These are the people who find themselves under the most pressure to pay, whether they’re guilty or not.

“There is a risk of what is known in English as ‘legal blackmailing’,” says Mårten Schultz, professor of civil law at Stockholm University.

“With [the copyright holders’] legal and economic muscles, small citizens are scared into paying claims that they do not legally have to pay.”

It’s a position shared by Marianne Levine, Professor of Intellectual Property Law at Stockholm University.

“One can only show that an IP address appears in some context, but there is no point in the evidence. Namely, that it is the subscriber who also downloaded illegitimate material,” she told SVT.

Njord Law, on the other hand, sees things differently.

“In Sweden, we have no legal case saying that you are not responsible for your IP address,” Emelie Svensson says.

Whether Njord Law will carry through with its threats will remain to be seen but there can be little doubt that while significant numbers of people keep paying up, this practice will continue and escalate. The trolls have come too far to give up now.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

The devil wears Pravda

Post Syndicated from Robert Graham original https://blog.erratasec.com/2018/05/the-devil-wears-pravda.html

Classic Bond villain, Elon Musk, has a new plan to create a website dedicated to measuring the credibility and adherence to “core truth” of journalists. He is, without any sense of irony, going to call this “Pravda”. This is not simply wrong but evil.

Musk has a point. Journalists do suck, and many suck consistently. I see this in my own industry, cybersecurity, and I frequently criticize them for their suckage.

But what he’s doing here is not correcting them when they make mistakes (or what Musk sees as mistakes), but questioning their legitimacy. This legitimacy isn’t measured by whether they follow established journalism ethics, but whether their “core truths” agree with Musk’s “core truths”.

An example of the problem is how the press fixates on Tesla car crashes due to its “autopilot” feature. Pretty much every autopilot crash makes national headlines, while the press ignores the other 40,000 car crashes that happen in the United States each year. Musk spies on Tesla drivers (hello, classic Bond villain everyone) so he can see the dip in autopilot usage every time such a news story breaks. He’s got good reason to be concerned about this.

He argues that autopilot is safer than humans driving, and he’s got the statistics and government studies to back this up. Therefore, the press’s fixation on Tesla crashes is illegitimate “fake news”, titillating the audience with distorted truth.

But here’s the thing: that’s still only Musk’s version of the truth. Yes, on a mile-per-mile basis, autopilot is safer, but there’s nuance here. Autopilot is used primarily on freeways, which already have a low mile-per-mile accident rate. People choose autopilot only when conditions are incredibly safe and drivers are unlikely to have an accident anyway. Musk is therefore being intentionally deceptive comparing apples to oranges. Autopilot may still be safer, it’s just that the numbers Musk uses don’t demonstrate this.

And then there is the truth calling it “autopilot” to begin with, because it isn’t. The public is overrating the capabilities of the feature. It’s little different than “lane keeping” and “adaptive cruise control” you can now find in other cars. In many ways, the technology is behind — my Tesla doesn’t beep at me when a pedestrian walks behind my car while backing up, but virtually every new car on the market does.

Yes, the press unduly covers Tesla autopilot crashes, but Musk has only himself to blame by unduly exaggerating his car’s capabilities by calling it “autopilot”.

What’s “core truth” is thus rather difficult to obtain. What the press satisfies itself with instead is smaller truths, what they can document. The facts are in such cases that the accident happened, and they try to get Tesla or Musk to comment on it.

What you can criticize a journalist for is therefore not “core truth” but whether they did journalism correctly. When such stories criticize “autopilot”, but don’t do their diligence in getting Tesla’s side of the story, then that’s a violation of journalistic practice. When I criticize journalists for their poor handling of stories in my industry, I try to focus on which journalistic principles they get wrong. For example, the NYTimes reporters do a lot of stories quoting anonymous government sources in clear violation of journalistic principles.

If “credibility” is the concern, then it’s the classic Bond villain here that’s the problem: Musk himself. His track record on business statements is abysmal. For example, when he announced the Model 3 he claimed production targets that every Wall Street analyst claimed were absurd. He didn’t make those targets, he didn’t come close. Model 3 production is still lagging behind Musk’s twice adjusted targets.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla-tracker/

So who has a credibility gap here, the press, or Musk himself?

Not only is Musk’s credibility problem ironic, so is the name he chose, “Pravada”, the Russian word for truth that was the name of the Soviet Union Communist Party’s official newspaper. This is so absurd this has to be a joke, yet Musk claims to be serious about all this.

Yes, the press has a lot of problems, and if Musk were some journalism professor concerned about journalists meeting the objective standards of their industry (e.g. abusing anonymous sources), then this would be a fine thing. But it’s not. It’s Musk who is upset the press’s version of “core truth” does not agree with his version — a version that he’s proven time and time again differs from “real truth”.

Just in case Musk is serious, I’ve already registered “www.antipravda.com” to start measuring the credibility of statements by billionaire playboy CEOs. Let’s see who blinks first.

I stole the title, with permission, from this tweet:

ЕС: Програма за култура 2018

Post Syndicated from nellyo original https://nellyo.wordpress.com/2018/05/23/agenda_culture/

Комисията представя  нова програма за култура.

Оказва се, че за младите европейци културните индустрии са значим вход към пазара на труда – и по-специално в България, Латвия, Румъния, Кипър,  Португалия, Естония
и Испания  по-висок дял  са заети в културата, отколкото в икономиката като цяло. Това е споменаването на България в програмата, иначе се говори за синергии, холистичен подход, трансформативен характер на културата и за Западните Балкани.

Digital  и производни  на думата се срещат 25 пъти в текста, но културно наследство – 35 пъти, има и културен туризъм, кино,  справедливи авторски възнаграждения,   не са стигнали обаче до най-българския специалитет  – да приоритизират комбинация {креативни + рекреативни} индустрии и голф.

 

 

The Practical Effects of GDPR at Backblaze

Post Syndicated from Andy Klein original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-practical-effects-of-gdpr-at-backblaze/


GDPR day, May 25, 2018, is nearly here. On that day, will your inbox explode with update notices, opt-in agreements, and offers from lawyers searching for GDPR violators? Perhaps all the companies on earth that are not GDPR ready will just dissolve into dust. More likely, there will be some changes, but business as usual will continue and we’ll all be more aware of data privacy. Let’s go with the last one.

What’s Different With GDPR at Backblaze

The biggest difference you’ll notice is a completely updated Privacy Policy. Last week we sent out a service email announcing the new Privacy Policy. Some people asked what was different. Basically everything. About 95% of the agreement was rewritten. In the agreement, we added in the appropriate provisions required by GDPR, and hopefully did a better job specifying the data we collect from you, why we collect it, and what we are going to do with it.

As a reminder, at Backblaze your data falls into two catagories. The first type of data is the data you store with us — stored data. These are the files and objects you upload and store, and as needed, restore. We do not share this data. We do not process this data, except as requested by you to store and restore the data. We do not analyze this data looking for keywords, tags, images, etc. No one outside of Backblaze has access to this data unless you explicitly shared the data by providing that person access to one or more files.

The second type of data is your account data. Some of your account data is considered personal data. This is the information we collect from you to provide our Personal Backup, Business Backup and B2 Cloud Storage services. Examples include your email address to provide access to your account, or the name of your computer so we can organize your files like they are arranged on your computer to make restoration easier. We have written a number of Help Articles covering the different ways this information is collected and processed. In addition, these help articles outline the various “rights” granted via GDPR. We will continue to add help articles over the coming weeks to assist in making it easy to work with us to understand and exercise your rights.

What’s New With GDPR at Backblaze

The most obvious addition is the Data Processing Addendum (DPA). This covers how we protect the data you store with us, i.e. stored data. As noted above, we don’t do anything with your data, except store it and keep it safe until you need it. Now we have a separate document saying that.

It is important to note the new Data Processing Addendum is now incorporated by reference into our Terms of Service, which everyone agrees to when they sign up for any of our services. Now all of our customers have a shiny new Data Processing Agreement to go along with the updated Privacy Policy. We promise they are not long or complicated, and we encourage you to read them. If you have any questions, stop by our GDPR help section on our website.

Patience, Please

Every company we have dealt with over the last few months is working hard to comply with GDPR. It has been a tough road whether you tried to do it yourself or like Backblaze, hired an EU-based law firm for advice. Over the coming weeks and months as you reach out to discover and assert your rights, please have a little patience. We are all going through a steep learning curve as GDPR gets put into practice. Along the way there are certain to be some growing pains — give us a chance, we all want to get it right.

Regardless, at Backblaze we’ve been diligently protecting our customers’ data for over 11 years and nothing that will happen on May 25th will change that.

The post The Practical Effects of GDPR at Backblaze appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Japan’s Directorate for Signals Intelligence

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/05/japans_director.html

The Intercept has a long article on Japan’s equivalent of the NSA: the Directorate for Signals Intelligence. Interesting, but nothing really surprising.

The directorate has a history that dates back to the 1950s; its role is to eavesdrop on communications. But its operations remain so highly classified that the Japanese government has disclosed little about its work ­ even the location of its headquarters. Most Japanese officials, except for a select few of the prime minister’s inner circle, are kept in the dark about the directorate’s activities, which are regulated by a limited legal framework and not subject to any independent oversight.

Now, a new investigation by the Japanese broadcaster NHK — produced in collaboration with The Intercept — reveals for the first time details about the inner workings of Japan’s opaque spy community. Based on classified documents and interviews with current and former officials familiar with the agency’s intelligence work, the investigation shines light on a previously undisclosed internet surveillance program and a spy hub in the south of Japan that is used to monitor phone calls and emails passing across communications satellites.

The article includes some new documents from the Snowden archive.

AWS IoT 1-Click – Use Simple Devices to Trigger Lambda Functions

Post Syndicated from Jeff Barr original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-iot-1-click-use-simple-devices-to-trigger-lambda-functions/

We announced a preview of AWS IoT 1-Click at AWS re:Invent 2017 and have been refining it ever since, focusing on simplicity and a clean out-of-box experience. Designed to make IoT available and accessible to a broad audience, AWS IoT 1-Click is now generally available, along with new IoT buttons from AWS and AT&T.

I sat down with the dev team a month or two ago to learn about the service so that I could start thinking about my blog post. During the meeting they gave me a pair of IoT buttons and I started to think about some creative ways to put them to use. Here are a few that I came up with:

Help Request – Earlier this month I spent a very pleasant weekend at the HackTillDawn hackathon in Los Angeles. As the participants were hacking away, they occasionally had questions about AWS, machine learning, Amazon SageMaker, and AWS DeepLens. While we had plenty of AWS Solution Architects on hand (decked out in fashionable & distinctive AWS shirts for easy identification), I imagined an IoT button for each team. Pressing the button would alert the SA crew via SMS and direct them to the proper table.

Camera Control – Tim Bray and I were in the AWS video studio, prepping for the first episode of Tim’s series on AWS Messaging. Minutes before we opened the Twitch stream I realized that we did not have a clean, unobtrusive way to ask the camera operator to switch to a closeup view. Again, I imagined that a couple of IoT buttons would allow us to make the request.

Remote Dog Treat Dispenser – My dog barks every time a stranger opens the gate in front of our house. While it is great to have confirmation that my Ring doorbell is working, I would like to be able to press a button and dispense a treat so that Luna stops barking!

Homes, offices, factories, schools, vehicles, and health care facilities can all benefit from IoT buttons and other simple IoT devices, all managed using AWS IoT 1-Click.

All About AWS IoT 1-Click
As I said earlier, we have been focusing on simplicity and a clean out-of-box experience. Here’s what that means:

Architects can dream up applications for inexpensive, low-powered devices.

Developers don’t need to write any device-level code. They can make use of pre-built actions, which send email or SMS messages, or write their own custom actions using AWS Lambda functions.

Installers don’t have to install certificates or configure cloud endpoints on newly acquired devices, and don’t have to worry about firmware updates.

Administrators can monitor the overall status and health of each device, and can arrange to receive alerts when a device nears the end of its useful life and needs to be replaced, using a single interface that spans device types and manufacturers.

I’ll show you how easy this is in just a moment. But first, let’s talk about the current set of devices that are supported by AWS IoT 1-Click.

Who’s Got the Button?
We’re launching with support for two types of buttons (both pictured above). Both types of buttons are pre-configured with X.509 certificates, communicate to the cloud over secure connections, and are ready to use.

The AWS IoT Enterprise Button communicates via Wi-Fi. It has a 2000-click lifetime, encrypts outbound data using TLS, and can be configured using BLE and our mobile app. It retails for $19.99 (shipping and handling not included) and can be used in the United States, Europe, and Japan.

The AT&T LTE-M Button communicates via the LTE-M cellular network. It has a 1500-click lifetime, and also encrypts outbound data using TLS. The device and the bundled data plan is available an an introductory price of $29.99 (shipping and handling not included), and can be used in the United States.

We are very interested in working with device manufacturers in order to make even more shapes, sizes, and types of devices (badge readers, asset trackers, motion detectors, and industrial sensors, to name a few) available to our customers. Our team will be happy to tell you about our provisioning tools and our facility for pushing OTA (over the air) updates to large fleets of devices; you can contact them at [email protected].

AWS IoT 1-Click Concepts
I’m eager to show you how to use AWS IoT 1-Click and the buttons, but need to introduce a few concepts first.

Device – A button or other item that can send messages. Each device is uniquely identified by a serial number.

Placement Template – Describes a like-minded collection of devices to be deployed. Specifies the action to be performed and lists the names of custom attributes for each device.

Placement – A device that has been deployed. Referring to placements instead of devices gives you the freedom to replace and upgrade devices with minimal disruption. Each placement can include values for custom attributes such as a location (“Building 8, 3rd Floor, Room 1337”) or a purpose (“Coffee Request Button”).

Action – The AWS Lambda function to invoke when the button is pressed. You can write a function from scratch, or you can make use of a pair of predefined functions that send an email or an SMS message. The actions have access to the attributes; you can, for example, send an SMS message with the text “Urgent need for coffee in Building 8, 3rd Floor, Room 1337.”

Getting Started with AWS IoT 1-Click
Let’s set up an IoT button using the AWS IoT 1-Click Console:

If I didn’t have any buttons I could click Buy devices to get some. But, I do have some, so I click Claim devices to move ahead. I enter the device ID or claim code for my AT&T button and click Claim (I can enter multiple claim codes or device IDs if I want):

The AWS buttons can be claimed using the console or the mobile app; the first step is to use the mobile app to configure the button to use my Wi-Fi:

Then I scan the barcode on the box and click the button to complete the process of claiming the device. Both of my buttons are now visible in the console:

I am now ready to put them to use. I click on Projects, and then Create a project:

I name and describe my project, and click Next to proceed:

Now I define a device template, along with names and default values for the placement attributes. Here’s how I set up a device template (projects can contain several, but I just need one):

The action has two mandatory parameters (phone number and SMS message) built in; I add three more (Building, Room, and Floor) and click Create project:

I’m almost ready to ask for some coffee! The next step is to associate my buttons with this project by creating a placement for each one. I click Create placements to proceed. I name each placement, select the device to associate with it, and then enter values for the attributes that I established for the project. I can also add additional attributes that are peculiar to this placement:

I can inspect my project and see that everything looks good:

I click on the buttons and the SMS messages appear:

I can monitor device activity in the AWS IoT 1-Click Console:

And also in the Lambda Console:

The Lambda function itself is also accessible, and can be used as-is or customized:

As you can see, this is the code that lets me use {{*}}include all of the placement attributes in the message and {{Building}} (for example) to include a specific placement attribute.

Now Available
I’ve barely scratched the surface of this cool new service and I encourage you to give it a try (or a click) yourself. Buy a button or two, build something cool, and let me know all about it!

Pricing is based on the number of enabled devices in your account, measured monthly and pro-rated for partial months. Devices can be enabled or disabled at any time. See the AWS IoT 1-Click Pricing page for more info.

To learn more, visit the AWS IoT 1-Click home page or read the AWS IoT 1-Click documentation.

— Jeff;

 

Accessing Cell Phone Location Information

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/05/accessing_cell_.html

The New York Times is reporting about a company called Securus Technologies that gives police the ability to track cell phone locations without a warrant:

The service can find the whereabouts of almost any cellphone in the country within seconds. It does this by going through a system typically used by marketers and other companies to get location data from major cellphone carriers, including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon, documents show.

Another article.

Boing Boing post.

Pirate IPTV Service Gave Customer Details to Premier League, But What’s the Risk?

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-iptv-service-gave-customer-details-to-premier-league-but-whats-the-risk-180515/

In a report last weekend, we documented what appear to be the final days of pirate IPTV provider Ace Hosting.

From information provided by several sources including official liquidation documents, it became clear that a previously successful and profitable Ace had succumbed to pressure from the Premier League, which accused the service of copyright infringement.

The company had considerable funds in the bank – £255,472.00 to be exact – but it also had debts of £717,278.84, including £260,000 owed to HMRC and £100,000 to the Premier League as part of a settlement agreement.

Information received by TF late Sunday suggested that £100K was the tip of the iceberg as far as the Premier League was concerned and in a statement yesterday, the football outfit confirmed that was the case.

“A renowned pirate of Premier League content to consumers has been forced to liquidate after agreeing to pay £600,000 for breaching the League’s copyright,” the Premier League announced.

“Ace IPTV, run by Craig Driscoll and Ian Isaac, was selling subscriptions to illegal Premier League streams directly to consumers which allowed viewing on a range of devices, including notorious Kodi-type boxes, as well as to smaller resellers in the UK and abroad.”

Sources familiar with the case suggest that while Ace Hosting Limited didn’t have the funds to pay the Premier League the full £600K, Ace’s operators agreed to pay (and have already paid, to some extent at least) what were essentially their own funds to cover amounts above the final £100K, which is due to be paid next year.

But that’s not the only thing that’s been handed over to the Premier League.

“Ace voluntarily disclosed the personal details of their customers, which the League will now review in compliance with data protection legislation. Further investigations will be conducted, and action taken where appropriate,” the Premier League added.

So, the big question now is how exposed Ace’s former subscribers are.

The truth is that only the Premier League knows for sure but TF has been able to obtain information from several sources which indicate that former subscribers probably aren’t the Premier League’s key interest and even if they were, information obtained on them would be of limited use.

According to a source with knowledge of how a system like Ace’s works, there is a separation of data which appears to help (at least to some degree) with the subscriber’s privacy.

“The system used to manage accounts and take payment is actually completely separate from the software used to manage streams and the lines themselves. They are never usually even on the same server so are two very different databases,” he told TF.

“So at best the only information that has voluntarily been provided to the [Premier League], is just your email, name and address (assuming you even used real details) and what hosting package or credits you bought.”

While this information is bad enough, the action against Ace is targeted, in that it focuses on the Premier League’s content and how Ace (and therefore its users) infringed on the football outfit’s copyrights. So, proving that subscribers actually watched any Premier League content would be an ideal position but it’s not straightforward, despite the potential for detailed logging.

“The management system contains no history of what you watched, when you watched it, when you signed in and so on. That is all contained in a different database on a different server.

“Because every connection is recorded [on the second server], it can create some two million entries a day and as such most providers either turn off this feature or delete the logs daily as having so many entries slows down the system down used for actual streams,” he explains.

Our source says that this data would likely to have been the first to be deleted and is probably “long gone” by now. However, even if the Premier League had obtained it, it’s unlikely they would be able to do much with it due to data protection laws.

“The information was passed to the [Premier League] voluntarily by ACE which means this information has been given from one entity to another without the end users’ consent, not part of the [creditors’ voluntary liquidation] and without a court order to support it. Data Protection right now is taken very seriously in the EU,” he notes.

At this point, it’s probably worth noting that while the word “voluntarily” has been used several times to explain the manner in which Ace handed over its subscribers’ details to the Premier League, the same word can be used to describe the manner in which the £600K settlement amount will be paid.

No one forces someone to pay or hand something over, that’s what the courts are for, and the aim here was to avoid that eventuality.

Other pieces of information culled from various sources suggest that PayPal payment information, limited to amounts only, was also handed over to the Premier League. And, perhaps most importantly (and perhaps predictably) as far as former subscribers are concerned, the football group was more interested in Ace’s upwards supplier chain (the ‘wholesale’ stream suppliers used, for example) than those buying the service.

Finally, while the Premier League is now seeking to send a message to customers that these services are risky to use, it’s difficult to argue with the assertion that it’s unsafe to hand over personal details to an illegal service.

“Ace IPTV’s collapse also highlighted the risk consumers take with their personal data when they sign up to illegal streaming services,” Premier League notes.

TF spoke with three IPTV providers who all confirmed that they don’t care what names and addresses people use to sign up with and that no checks are carried out to make sure they’re correct. However, one concedes that in order to run as a business, this information has to be requested and once a customer types it in, it’s possible that it could be handed over as part of a settlement.

“I’m not going to tell people to put in dummy details, how can I? It’s up to people to use their common sense. If they’re still worried they should give Sky their money because if our backs are against the wall, what do you think is going to happen?” he concludes.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

From Framework to Function: Deploying AWS Lambda Functions for Java 8 using Apache Maven Archetype

Post Syndicated from Ryosuke Iwanaga original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/from-framework-to-function-deploying-aws-lambda-functions-for-java-8-using-apache-maven-archetype/

As a serverless computing platform that supports Java 8 runtime, AWS Lambda makes it easy to run any type of Java function simply by uploading a JAR file. To help define not only a Lambda serverless application but also Amazon API Gateway, Amazon DynamoDB, and other related services, the AWS Serverless Application Model (SAM) allows developers to use a simple AWS CloudFormation template.

AWS provides the AWS Toolkit for Eclipse that supports both Lambda and SAM. AWS also gives customers an easy way to create Lambda functions and SAM applications in Java using the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI). After you build a JAR file, all you have to do is type the following commands:

aws cloudformation package 
aws cloudformation deploy

To consolidate these steps, customers can use Archetype by Apache Maven. Archetype uses a predefined package template that makes getting started to develop a function exceptionally simple.

In this post, I introduce a Maven archetype that allows you to create a skeleton of AWS SAM for a Java function. Using this archetype, you can generate a sample Java code example and an accompanying SAM template to deploy it on AWS Lambda by a single Maven action.

Prerequisites

Make sure that the following software is installed on your workstation:

  • Java
  • Maven
  • AWS CLI
  • (Optional) AWS SAM CLI

Install Archetype

After you’ve set up those packages, install Archetype with the following commands:

git clone https://github.com/awslabs/aws-serverless-java-archetype
cd aws-serverless-java-archetype
mvn install

These are one-time operations, so you don’t run them for every new package. If you’d like, you can add Archetype to your company’s Maven repository so that other developers can use it later.

With those packages installed, you’re ready to develop your new Lambda Function.

Start a project

Now that you have the archetype, customize it and run the code:

cd /path/to/project_home
mvn archetype:generate \
  -DarchetypeGroupId=com.amazonaws.serverless.archetypes \
  -DarchetypeArtifactId=aws-serverless-java-archetype \
  -DarchetypeVersion=1.0.0 \
  -DarchetypeRepository=local \ # Forcing to use local maven repository
  -DinteractiveMode=false \ # For batch mode
  # You can also specify properties below interactively if you omit the line for batch mode
  -DgroupId=YOUR_GROUP_ID \
  -DartifactId=YOUR_ARTIFACT_ID \
  -Dversion=YOUR_VERSION \
  -DclassName=YOUR_CLASSNAME

You should have a directory called YOUR_ARTIFACT_ID that contains the files and folders shown below:

├── event.json
├── pom.xml
├── src
│   └── main
│       ├── java
│       │   └── Package
│       │       └── Example.java
│       └── resources
│           └── log4j2.xml
└── template.yaml

The sample code is a working example. If you install SAM CLI, you can invoke it just by the command below:

cd YOUR_ARTIFACT_ID
mvn -P invoke verify
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO]
[INFO] ---------------------------< com.riywo:foo >----------------------------
[INFO] Building foo 1.0
[INFO] --------------------------------[ jar ]---------------------------------
...
[INFO] --- maven-jar-plugin:3.0.2:jar (default-jar) @ foo ---
[INFO] Building jar: /private/tmp/foo/target/foo-1.0.jar
[INFO]
[INFO] --- maven-shade-plugin:3.1.0:shade (shade) @ foo ---
[INFO] Including com.amazonaws:aws-lambda-java-core:jar:1.2.0 in the shaded jar.
[INFO] Replacing /private/tmp/foo/target/lambda.jar with /private/tmp/foo/target/foo-1.0-shaded.jar
[INFO]
[INFO] --- exec-maven-plugin:1.6.0:exec (sam-local-invoke) @ foo ---
2018/04/06 16:34:35 Successfully parsed template.yaml
2018/04/06 16:34:35 Connected to Docker 1.37
2018/04/06 16:34:35 Fetching lambci/lambda:java8 image for java8 runtime...
java8: Pulling from lambci/lambda
Digest: sha256:14df0a5914d000e15753d739612a506ddb8fa89eaa28dcceff5497d9df2cf7aa
Status: Image is up to date for lambci/lambda:java8
2018/04/06 16:34:37 Invoking Package.Example::handleRequest (java8)
2018/04/06 16:34:37 Decompressing /tmp/foo/target/lambda.jar
2018/04/06 16:34:37 Mounting /private/var/folders/x5/ldp7c38545v9x5dg_zmkr5kxmpdprx/T/aws-sam-local-1523000077594231063 as /var/task:ro inside runtime container
START RequestId: a6ae19fe-b1b0-41e2-80bc-68a40d094d74 Version: $LATEST
Log output: Greeting is 'Hello Tim Wagner.'
END RequestId: a6ae19fe-b1b0-41e2-80bc-68a40d094d74
REPORT RequestId: a6ae19fe-b1b0-41e2-80bc-68a40d094d74	Duration: 96.60 ms	Billed Duration: 100 ms	Memory Size: 128 MB	Max Memory Used: 7 MB

{"greetings":"Hello Tim Wagner."}


[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 10.452 s
[INFO] Finished at: 2018-04-06T16:34:40+09:00
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

This maven goal invokes sam local invoke -e event.json, so you can see the sample output to greet Tim Wagner.

To deploy this application to AWS, you need an Amazon S3 bucket to upload your package. You can use the following command to create a bucket if you want:

aws s3 mb s3://YOUR_BUCKET --region YOUR_REGION

Now, you can deploy your application by just one command!

mvn deploy \
    -DawsRegion=YOUR_REGION \
    -Ds3Bucket=YOUR_BUCKET \
    -DstackName=YOUR_STACK
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO]
[INFO] ---------------------------< com.riywo:foo >----------------------------
[INFO] Building foo 1.0
[INFO] --------------------------------[ jar ]---------------------------------
...
[INFO] --- exec-maven-plugin:1.6.0:exec (sam-package) @ foo ---
Uploading to aws-serverless-java/com.riywo:foo:1.0/924732f1f8e4705c87e26ef77b080b47  11657 / 11657.0  (100.00%)
Successfully packaged artifacts and wrote output template to file target/sam.yaml.
Execute the following command to deploy the packaged template
aws cloudformation deploy --template-file /private/tmp/foo/target/sam.yaml --stack-name <YOUR STACK NAME>
[INFO]
[INFO] --- maven-deploy-plugin:2.8.2:deploy (default-deploy) @ foo ---
[INFO] Skipping artifact deployment
[INFO]
[INFO] --- exec-maven-plugin:1.6.0:exec (sam-deploy) @ foo ---

Waiting for changeset to be created..
Waiting for stack create/update to complete
Successfully created/updated stack - archetype
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 37.176 s
[INFO] Finished at: 2018-04-06T16:41:02+09:00
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Maven automatically creates a shaded JAR file, uploads it to your S3 bucket, replaces template.yaml, and creates and updates the CloudFormation stack.

To customize the process, modify the pom.xml file. For example, to avoid typing values for awsRegion, s3Bucket or stackName, write them inside pom.xml and check in your VCS. Afterward, you and the rest of your team can deploy the function by typing just the following command:

mvn deploy

Options

Lambda Java 8 runtime has some types of handlers: POJO, Simple type and Stream. The default option of this archetype is POJO style, which requires to create request and response classes, but they are baked by the archetype by default. If you want to use other type of handlers, you can use handlerType property like below:

## POJO type (default)
mvn archetype:generate \
 ...
 -DhandlerType=pojo

## Simple type - String
mvn archetype:generate \
 ...
 -DhandlerType=simple

### Stream type
mvn archetype:generate \
 ...
 -DhandlerType=stream

See documentation for more details about handlers.

Also, Lambda Java 8 runtime supports two types of Logging class: Log4j 2 and LambdaLogger. This archetype creates LambdaLogger implementation by default, but you can use Log4j 2 if you want:

## LambdaLogger (default)
mvn archetype:generate \
 ...
 -Dlogger=lambda

## Log4j 2
mvn archetype:generate \
 ...
 -Dlogger=log4j2

If you use LambdaLogger, you can delete ./src/main/resources/log4j2.xml. See documentation for more details.

Conclusion

So, what’s next? Develop your Lambda function locally and type the following command: mvn deploy !

With this Archetype code example, available on GitHub repo, you should be able to deploy Lambda functions for Java 8 in a snap. If you have any questions or comments, please submit them below or leave them on GitHub.

Leaking securely, for White House staffers

Post Syndicated from Robert Graham original https://blog.erratasec.com/2018/05/how-to-leak-securely-for-white-house.html

Spencer Ackerman has this interesting story about a guy assigned to crack down on unauthorized White House leaks. It’s necessarily light on technical details, so I thought I’d write up some guesses, either as a guide for future reporters asking questions, or for people who want to better know the risks when leak information.

It should come as no surprise that your work email and phone are already monitored. They can get every email you’ve sent or received, even if you’ve deleted it. They can get every text message you’ve sent or received, the metadata of every phone call sent or received, and so forth.
To a lesser extent, this also applies to your well-known personal phone and email accounts. Law enforcement can get the metadata (which includes text messages) for these things without a warrant. In the above story, the person doing the investigation wasn’t law enforcement, but I’m not sure that’s a significant barrier if they can pass things onto the Secret Service or something.
The danger here isn’t that you used these things to leak, it’s that you’ve used these things to converse with the reporter before you made the decision to leak. That’s what happened in the Reality Winner case: she communicated with The Intercept before she allegedly leaked a printed document to them via postal mail. While it wasn’t conclusive enough to convict her, the innocent emails certainly put the investigators on her trail.
The path to leaking often starts this way: innocent actions before the decision to leak was made that will come back to haunt the person afterwards. That includes emails. That also includes Google searches. That includes websites you visit (like this one). I’m not sure how to solve this, except that if you’ve been in contact with The Intercept, and then you decide to leak, send it to anybody but The Intercept.
By the way, the other thing that caught Reality Winner is the records they had of her accessing files and printing them on a printer. Depending where you work, they may have a record of every file you’ve accessed, every intranet page you visited. Because of the way printers put secret dots on documents, investigators know precisely which printer and time the document leaked to The Intercept was printed.
Photographs suffer the same problem: your camera and phone tag the photographs with GPS coordinates and time the photograph was taken, as well as information about the camera. This accidentally exposed John McAfee’s hiding location when Vice took pictures of him a few years ago. Some people leak by taking pictures of the screen — use a camera without GPS for this (meaning, a really old camera you bought from a pawnshop).
These examples should impress upon you the dangers of not understanding technology. As soon as you do something to evade surveillance you know about, you may get caught by surveillance you don’t know about.
If you nonetheless want to continue forward, the next step may be to get a “burner phone”. You can get an adequate Android “prepaid” phone for cash at the local Walmart, electronics store, or phone store.
There’s some problems with such phones, though. They can often be tracked back to the store that sold them, and the store will have security cameras that record you making the purchase. License plate readers and GPS tracking on your existing phone may also place you at that Walmart.
I don’t know how to resolve these problems. Perhaps the best is grow a beard and on the last day of your vacation, color your hair, take a long bike/metro ride (without your existing phone) to a store many miles away and pick up a phone, then shave and change your color back again. I don’t know — there’s a good chance any lame attempt you or I might think of has already been experienced by law enforcement, so they are likely ahead of you. Maybe ask your local drug dealer where they get their burner phones, and if they can sell you one. Of course, that just means when they get caught for drug dealing, they can reduce their sentence by giving up the middle class person who bought a phone from them.
Lastly, they may age out old security videos, so simply waiting six months before using the phone might work. That means prepaying for an entire year.
Note that I’m not going to link to examples of cheap burner phones on this page. Web browsers will sometimes prefetch some information from links in a webpage, so simply including links in this page can condemn you as having interest in burner phones. You are already in enough trouble for having visited this web page.
Burner phones have GPS. Newer the technology, like the latest Android LTE phones, have pretty accurate GPS that the police can query (without a warrant). If you take the phone home and turn it on, they’ll then be able to trace back the phone to your home. Carrying the phone around with you has the same problem, with the phone’s location correlating with your existing phone (which presumably you also carry) or credit card receipts. Rumors are that Petraeus was partly brought down by tracking locations where he used his credit card, namely, matching the hotel he was in with Internet address information.
Older phones that support 3G or even 2G have poorer GPS capabilities. They’ll still located you to the nearest cell tower, but not as accurately to your exact location.
A better strategy than a burner phone would be a burner laptop computer used with WiFi. You can get a cheap one for $200 at Amazon.com. My favorite are the 11 inch ones with a full sized keyboard and Windows 10. Better yet, get an older laptop for cash from a pawn shop.
You can install chat apps on this like “Signal Desktop”, “Wire Desktop”,  or “WhatsApp” that will allow you to securely communicate. Or use “Discord”, which isn’t really encrypted, but it’s popular among gamers so therefore less likely to stand out. You can sit in a bar with free WiFi and a USB headset and talk to reporters without having a phone. If the reporter you want to leak to doesn’t have those apps (either on their own laptop or phone) then you don’t want to talk to them.
Needless to say, don’t cross the streams. Don’t log onto your normal accounts like Facebook. If you create fake Facebook accounts, don’t follow the same things. Better yet, configure your browser to discard all information (especially “cookies”) every time you log off, so you can’t be tracked. Install ad blockers, or use the “Brave” web browser, to remove even more trackers. A common trick among hackers is to change the “theme” to a red background, as a constant subliminal reminder that you using your dangerous computer, and never to do anything that identifies the real you.
Put tape over the camera. I’m not sure it’s a really big danger, but put tape over the camera. If they infect you enough to get your picture, they’ve also infected you enough to record any audio on your computer. Remember that proper encryption is end-to-end (they can’t eavesdrop in transit), but if they hack the ends (your laptop, or the reporter’s) they can still record the audio.
Note that when your burner laptop is in “sleep” mode, it can still be talking to the local wifi. Before taking it home, make sure it’s off. Go into the settings and configure it so that when the lid is closed, the computer is turned completely off.
It goes without saying: don’t use that burner laptop from home. Luckily, free wifi is everyone, so the local cafe, bar, or library can be used.
The next step is to also use a VPN or Tor to mask your Internet address. If there’s an active investigation into the reporter, they’ll get the metadata, the Internet address of the bar/cafe you are coming from. A good VPN provider or especially Tor will stop this. Remember that these providers increase latency, making phone calls a bit harder, but they are a lot safer.
Remember that Ross Ulbricht (owner of dark website market Silk Road) was caught in a library. They’d traced back his Internet address and grabbed his laptop out of his hands. Having it turn off (off off, not sleep off) when the lid is closed is one way to reduce this risk. Configuring your web browser to flush all cookies and passwords on restart is another. If they catch you in mid conversation with your secret contact, though, they’ll at least be able to hear your side of the conversation, and know who you are talking to.
The best measure, though it takes some learning, is “Tails live”. It’s a Linux distribution preconfigured with Tor and various secure chat apps that’ll boot from the USB or SD card. When you turn off the computer, nothing will be saved, so there will be no evidence saved to the disk for investigators to retrieve later.
While we are talking about Tor, it should be noted that many news organizations (NYTimes, Washington Post, The Intercept, etc.) support “SecureDrop” accessed only through Tor for receiving anonymous tips. Burner laptops you use from bars from Tails is the likely your most secure way of doing things.
Summary

The point of this post was not to provide a howto guide, but to discuss many of the technological issues involved. In a story about White House people investigating leaks, I’d like to see something in this technological direction. I’d like to know exactly how they were investigating leaks. Certainly, they were investigating all work computers, accounts, and phones. Where they also able to get to non-work computers, accounts, phones? Did they have law enforcement powers? What could they do about burner phones and laptops?
In any case, if you do want a howto guide, the discussion above should put some fear into you how easily you can inadvertently make a mistake.

Pirate IPTV Service Goes Bust After Premier League Deal, Exposing Users

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-iptv-service-goes-bust-after-premier-league-deal-exposing-users-180913/

For those out of the loop, unauthorized IPTV services offering many thousands of unlicensed channels have been gaining in popularity in recent years. They’re relatively cheap, fairly reliable, and offer acceptable levels of service.

They are, however, a huge thorn in the side of rightsholders who are desperate to bring them to their knees. One such organization is the UK’s Premier League, which has been disrupting IPTV services over the past year, hoping they’ll shut down.

Most have simply ridden the wave of blocks but one provider, Ace Hosting in the UK, showed signs of stress last year, revealing that it would no longer sell new subscriptions. There was little doubt in most people’s minds that the Premier League had gotten uncomfortably close to the IPTV provider.

Now, many months later, the amazing story can be told. It’s both incredible and shocking and will leave many shaking their heads in disbelief. First up, some background.

Doing things ‘properly’ – incorporation of a pirate service…

Considering how most operators of questionable services like to stay in the shade, it may come as a surprise to learn that Ace Hosting Limited is a proper company. Incorporated and registered at Companies House on January 3, 2017, Ace has two registered directors – family team Ian and Judith Isaac.

In common with several other IPTV operators in the UK who are also officially registered with the authorities, Ace Hosting has never filed any meaningful accounts. There’s a theory that the corporate structure is basically one of convenience, one that allows for the handling of large volumes of cash while limiting liability. The downside, of course, is that people are often more easily identified, in part due to the comprehensive paper trail.

Thanks to what can only be described as a slow-motion train wreck, the Ace Hosting debacle is revealing a bewildering set of circumstances. Last December, when Ace said it would stop signing up new members due to legal pressure, a serious copyright threat had already been filed against it.

Premier League v Ace Hosting

Documents seen by TorrentFreak reveal that the Premier League sent legal threats to Ace Hosting on December 15, 2017, just days before the subscription closure announcement. Somewhat surprisingly, Ace apparently felt it could pay the Premier League a damages amount and keep on trading.

But early March 2018, with the Premier League threatening Ace with all kinds of bad things, the company made a strange announcement.

“The ISPs in the UK and across Europe have recently become much more aggressive in blocking our service while football games are in progress,” Ace said in a statement.

“In order to get ourselves off of the ISP blacklist we are going to black out the EPL games for all users (including VPN users) starting on Monday. We believe that this will enable us to rebuild the bypass process and successfully provide you with all EPL games.”

It seems doubtful that Ace really intended to thumb its nose at the Premier League but it had continued to sell subscriptions since receiving threats in December, so all things seemed possible. But on March 24 that all changed, when Ace effectively announced its closure.

Premier League 1, Ace Hosting 0

“It is with sorrow that we announce that we are no longer accepting renewals, upgrades to existing subscriptions or the purchase of new credits. We plan to support existing subscriptions until they expire,” the team wrote.

“EPL games including highlights continue to be blocked and are not expected to be reinstated before the end of the season.”

Indeed, just days later the Premier League demanded a six-figure settlement sum from Ace Hosting, presumably to make a lawsuit disappear. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

“When the proposed damages amount was received it was clear that the Company would not be able to cover the cost and that there was a very high probability that even with a negotiated settlement that the Company was insolvent,” documents relating to Ace’s liquidation read.

At this point, Ace says it immediately ceased trading but while torrent sites usually shut down and disappear into the night, Ace’s demise is now a matter of record.

Creditors – the good, the bad, and the ugly

On April 11, 2018, Ace’s directors contacted business recovery and insolvency specialists Begbies Traynor (Central) LLP to obtain advice on the company’s financial position. Begbies Traynor was instructed by Ace on April 23 and on May 8, Ace Hosting director Ian Isaac determined that his company could not pay its debts.

First the good news. According to an official report, Ace Hosting has considerable cash in the bank – £255,472.00 to be exact. Now the bad news – Ace has debts of £717,278.84. – the details of which are intriguing to say the least.

First up, Ace has ‘trade creditors’ to whom it owes £104,356. The vast majority of this sum is a settlement Ace agreed to pay to the Premier League.

“The directors entered into a settlement agreement with the Football Association Premier League Limited prior to placing the Company into liquidation as a result of a purported copyright infringement. However, there is a residual claim from the Football Association Premier League Limited which is included within trade creditors totaling £100,000,” Ace’s statement of affairs reads.

Bizarrely (given the nature of the business, at least) Ace also owes £260,000 to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) in unpaid VAT and corporation tax, which is effectively the government’s cut of the pirate IPTV business’s labors.

Former Ace Hosting subscriber? Your cash is as good as gone

Finally – and this is where things get a bit sweaty for Joe Public – there are 15,768 “consumer creditors”, split between ‘retail’ and ‘business’ customers of the service. Together they are owed a staggering £353,000.

Although the documentation isn’t explicit, retail customers appear to be people who have purchased an Ace IPTV subscription that still had time to run when the service closed down. Business customers seem likely to be resellers of the service, who purchased ‘credits’ and didn’t get time to sell them before Ace disappeared.

The poison chalice here is that those who are owed money by Ace can actually apply to get some of it back, but that could be extremely risky.

“Creditor claims have not yet been adjudicated but we estimate that the majority of customers who paid for subscription services will receive less than £3 if there is a distribution to unsecured creditors. Furthermore, customer details will be passed to the relevant authorities if there is any suggestion of unlawful conduct,” documentation reads.

We spoke with a former Ace customer who had this to say about the situation.

“It was generally a good service notwithstanding their half-arsed attempts to evade the EPL block. At its heart there were people who seemed to know how to operate a decent service, although the customer-facing side of things was not the greatest,” he said.

“And no, I won’t be claiming a refund. I went into it with my eyes fully open so I don’t hold anyone responsible, except myself. In any case, anyone who wants a refund has to complete a claim form and provide proof of ID (LOL).”

The bad news for former subscribers continues…potentially

While it’s likely that most people will forgo their £3, the bad news isn’t over for subscribers. Begbies Traynor is warning that the liquidators will decide whether to hand over subscribers’ personal details to the Premier League and/or the authorities.

In any event, sometime in the next couple of weeks the names and addresses of all subscribers will be made “available for inspection” at an address in Wiltshire for two days, meaning that any interested parties could potentially gain access to sensitive information.

The bottom line is that Ace Hosting is in the red to the tune of £461,907 and will eventually disappear into the bowels of history. Whether its operators will have to answer for their conduct will remain to be seen but it seems unimaginable at this stage that things will end well.

Subscribers probably won’t get sucked in but in a story as bizarre as this one, anything could yet happen.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.