Tag Archives: email

Deep Learning to Find Malicious Email Attachments

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/02/deep_learning_t.html

Google presented its system of using deep-learning techniques to identify malicious email attachments:

At the RSA security conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, Google’s security and anti-abuse research lead Elie Bursztein will present findings on how the new deep-learning scanner for documents is faring against the 300 billion attachments it has to process each week. It’s challenging to tell the difference between legitimate documents in all their infinite variations and those that have specifically been manipulated to conceal something dangerous. Google says that 63 percent of the malicious documents it blocks each day are different than the ones its systems flagged the day before. But this is exactly the type of pattern-recognition problem where deep learning can be helpful.

[…]

The document analyzer looks for common red flags, probes files if they have components that may have been purposefully obfuscated, and does other checks like examining macros­ — the tool in Microsoft Word documents that chains commands together in a series and is often used in attacks. The volume of malicious documents that attackers send out varies widely day to day. Bursztein says that since its deployment, the document scanner has been particularly good at flagging suspicious documents sent in bursts by malicious botnets or through other mass distribution methods. He was also surprised to discover how effective the scanner is at analyzing Microsoft Excel documents, a complicated file format that can be difficult to assess.

This is the sort of thing that’s pretty well optimized for machine-learning techniques.

Companies that Scrape Your Email

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/02/companies_that_.html

Motherboard has a long article on apps — Edison, Slice, and Cleanfox — that spy on your email by scraping your screen, and then sell that information to others:

Some of the companies listed in the J.P. Morgan document sell data sourced from “personal inboxes,” the document adds. A spokesperson for J.P. Morgan Research, the part of the company that created the document, told Motherboard that the research “is intended for institutional clients.”

That document describes Edison as providing “consumer purchase metrics including brand loyalty, wallet share, purchase preferences, etc.” The document adds that the “source” of the data is the “Edison Email App.”

[…]

A dataset obtained by Motherboard shows what some of the information pulled from free email app users’ inboxes looks like. A spreadsheet containing data from Rakuten’s Slice, an app that scrapes a user’s inbox so they can better track packages or get their money back once a product goes down in price, contains the item that an app user bought from a specific brand, what they paid, and an unique identification code for each buyer.

Building Your First Journey in Amazon Pinpoint

Post Syndicated from Brent Meyer original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/messaging-and-targeting/building-your-first-journey-in-amazon-pinpoint/

Note: This post was written by Zach Barbitta, the Product Lead for Pinpoint Journeys, and Josh Kahn, an AWS Solution Architect.

We recently added a new feature called journeys to Amazon Pinpoint. With journeys, you can create fully automated, multi-step customer engagements through an easy to use, drag-and-drop interface.

In this post, we’ll provide a quick overview of the features and capabilities of Amazon Pinpoint journeys. We’ll also provide a blueprint that you can use to build your first journey.

What is a journey?

Think of a journey as being similar to a flowchart. Every journey begins by adding a segment of participants to it. These participants proceed through steps in the journey, which we call activities. Sometimes, participants split into different branches. Some participants end their journeys early, while some proceed through several steps. The experience of going down one path in the journey can be very different from the experience of going down a different path. In a journey, you determine the outcomes that are most relevant for your customers, and then create the structure that leads to those outcomes.

Your journey can contain several different types of activities, each of which does something different when journey participants arrive on it. For example, when participants arrive on an Email activity, they receive an email. When they land on a Random Split activity, they’re randomly separated into one of up to five different groups. You can also separate customers based on their attributes, or based on their interactions with previous steps in the journey, by using a Yes/no Split or a Multivariate Split activity. There are six different types of activities that you can add to your journeys. You can find more information about these activity types in our User Guide.

The web-based Amazon Pinpoint management console includes an easy-to-use, drag-and-drop interface for creating your journeys. You can also create journeys programmatically by using the Amazon Pinpoint API, the AWS CLI, or an AWS SDK. Best of all, you can use the API to modify journeys that you created in the console, and vice-versa.

Planning our journey

The flexible nature of journeys makes it easy to create customer experiences that are timely, personalized, and relevant. In this post, we’ll assume the role of a music streaming service. We’ll create a journey that takes our customers through the following steps:

  1. When customers sign up, we’ll send them an email that highlights some of the cool features they’ll get by using our service.
  2. After 1 week, we’ll divide customers into two separate groups based whether or not they opened the email we sent them when they signed up.
  3. To the group of customers who opened the first message, we’ll send an email that contains additional tips and tricks.
  4. To the group who didn’t open the first message, we’ll send an email that reiterates the basic information that we mentioned in the first message.

The best part about journeys in Amazon Pinpoint is that you can set them up in just a few minutes, without having to do any coding, and without any specialized training (unless you count reading this blog post as training).

After we launch this journey, we’ll be able to view metrics through the same interface that we used to create the journey. For example, for each split activity, we’ll be able to see how many participants were sent down each path. For each Email activity, we’ll be able to view the total number of sends, deliveries, opens, clicks, bounces, and unsubscribes. We’ll also be able to view these metrics as aggregated totals for the entire journey. These metrics can help you discover what worked and what didn’t work in your journey, so that you can build more effective journeys in the future.

First steps

There are a few prerequisites that we have to complete before we can start creating the journey.

Create Endpoints

When a new user signs up for your service, you have to create an endpoint record for that user. One way to do this is by using AWS Amplify (if you use Amplify’s built-in analytics tools, Amplify creates Amazon Pinpoint endpoints). You can also use AWS Lambda to call Amazon Pinpoint’s UpdateEndpoint API. The exact method that you use to create these endpoints is up to your engineering team.

When your app creates new endpoints, they should include a user attribute that identifies them as someone who should participate in the journey. We’ll use this attribute to create our segment of journey participants.

If you just want to get started without engaging your engineering team, you can import a segment of endpoints to use in your journey. To learn more, see Importing Segments in the Amazon Pinpoint User Guide.

Verify an Email Address

In Amazon Pinpoint, you have to verify the email addresses that you use to send email. By verifying an email address, you prove that you own it, and you grant Amazon Pinpoint permission to send your email from that address. For more information, see Verifying Email Identities in the Amazon Pinpoint User Guide.

Create a Template

Before you can send email from a journey, you have to create email templates. Email templates are pre-defined message bodies that you can use to send email messages to your customers. You can learn more about creating email templates in the Amazon Pinpoint User Guide.

To create the journey that we discussed earlier, we’ll need at least three email templates: one that contains the basic information that we want to share with new customers, one with more advanced content for users who opened the first email, and another that reiterates the content in the first message.

Create a Segment

Finally, you need to create the segment of users who will participate in the journey. If your service creates an endpoint record that includes a specific user attribute, you can use this attribute to create your segment. You can learn more about creating segments in the Amazon Pinpoint User Guide.

Building the Journey

Now that we’ve completed the prerequisites, we can start building our journey. We’ll break the process down into a few quick steps.

Set it up

Start by signing in to the Amazon Pinpoint console. In the navigation pane on the right side of the page, choose Journeys, and then choose Create a journey. In the upper left corner of the page, you’ll see an area where you can enter a name for the journey. Give the journey a name that helps you identify it.

Add participants

Every journey begins with a Journey entry activity. In this activity, you define the segment that will participate in the journey. On the Journey entry activity, choose Set entry condition. In the list, choose the segment that contains the participants for the journey.

On this activity, you can also control how often new participants are added to the journey. Because new customers could sign up for our service at any time, we want to update the segment regularly. For this example, we’ll set up the journey to look for new segment members once every hour.

Send the initial email

Now we can configure the first message that we’ll send in our journey. Under the Journey entry activity that you just configured, choose Add activity, and then choose Send email. Choose the email template that you want to use in the email, and then specify the email address that you want to send the email from.

Add the split

Under the Email activity, choose Add activity, and then choose Yes/no split. This type of activity looks for all journey participants who meet a condition and sends them all down a path (the “Yes” path). All participants who don’t meet that condition are sent down a “No” path. This is similar to the Multivariate split activity. The difference between the two is that the Multivariate split can produce up to four branches, each with its own criteria, plus an “Else” branch for everyone who doesn’t meet the criteria in the other branches. A Yes/no split activity, on the other hand, can only ever have two branches, “Yes” and “No”. However, unlike the Multivariate split activity, the “Yes” branch in a Yes/no split activity can contain more than one matching criteria.

In this case, we’ll set up the “Yes” branch to look for email click events in the Email activity that occurred earlier in the journey. We also know that the majority of recipients who open the email aren’t going to do so the instant they receive the email. For this reason, we’ll adjust the Condition evaluation setting for the activity to wait for 7 days before looking for open events. This gives our customers plenty of time to receive the message, check their email, open the message, and, if they’re interested in the content of the message, click a link in the message. When you finish setting up the split activity, it should resemble the example shown in the following image.

Continue building the branches

From here, you can continue building the branches of the journey. In each branch, you’ll send a different email template based on the needs of the participants in that branch. Participants in the “Yes” branch will receive an email template that contains more advanced information, while those in the “No” branch will receive a template that revisits the content from the original message.

To learn more about setting up the various types of journey activities, see Setting Up Journey Activities in the Amazon Pinpoint User Guide.

Review the journey

When you finish adding branches and activities to your journey, choose the Review button in the top right corner of the page. When you do, the Review your journey pane opens on the left side of the screen. The Review your journey pane shows you errors that need to be fixed in your journey. It also gives you some helpful recommendations, and provides some best practices that you can use to optimize your journey. You can click any of the notifications in the Review your journey page to move immediately to the journey activity that the message applies to. When you finish addressing the errors and reviewing the recommendations, you can mark the journey as reviewed.

Testing and publishing the journey

After you review the journey, you have a couple options. You can either launch the journey immediately, or test the journey before you launch it.

If you want to test the journey, close the Review your journey pane. Then, on the Actions menu, choose Test. When you test your journey, you have to choose a segment of testers. The segment that you choose should only contain the internal recipients on your team who you want to test the journey before you publish it. You also have the option of changing the wait times in your journey, or skipping them altogether. If you choose a wait time of 1 hour here, it makes it much easier to test the Yes/no split activity (which, in the production version of the journey, contains a 7 day wait). To learn more about testing your journey, including some tips and best practices, see Testing Your Journey in the Amazon Pinpoint User Guide.

When you finish your testing, complete the review process again. On the final page of content in the Review your journey pane, choose Publish. After a short delay, your journey goes live. That’s it! You’ve created and launched your very first journey!

Wrapping up

We’re very excited about Pinpoint Journeys and look forward to seeing what you build with it. If you have questions, leave us a message on the Amazon Pinpoint Developer Forum and check out the Amazon Pinpoint documentation.

US Journalist Detained When Returning to US

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/07/us_journalist_d.html

Pretty horrible story of a US journalist who had his computer and phone searched at the border when returning to the US from Mexico.

After I gave him the password to my iPhone, Moncivias spent three hours reviewing hundreds of photos and videos and emails and calls and texts, including encrypted messages on WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram. It was the digital equivalent of tossing someone’s house: opening cabinets, pulling out drawers, and overturning furniture in hopes of finding something — anything — illegal. He read my communications with friends, family, and loved ones. He went through my correspondence with colleagues, editors, and sources. He asked about the identities of people who have worked with me in war zones. He also went through my personal photos, which I resented. Consider everything on your phone right now. Nothing on mine was spared.

Pomeroy, meanwhile, searched my laptop. He browsed my emails and my internet history. He looked through financial spreadsheets and property records and business correspondence. He was able to see all the same photos and videos as Moncivias and then some, including photos I thought I had deleted.

The EFF has extensive information and advice about device searches at the US border, including a travel guide:

If you are a U.S. citizen, border agents cannot stop you from entering the country, even if you refuse to unlock your device, provide your device password, or disclose your social media information. However, agents may escalate the encounter if you refuse. For example, agents may seize your devices, ask you intrusive questions, search your bags more intensively, or increase by many hours the length of detention. If you are a lawful permanent resident, agents may raise complicated questions about your continued status as a resident. If you are a foreign visitor, agents may deny you entry.

The most important piece of advice is to think about this all beforehand, and plan accordingly.

Using Gmail "Dot Addresses" to Commit Fraud

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/02/using_gmail_dot.html

In Gmail addresses, the dots don’t matter. The account “[email protected]” maps to the exact same address as “[email protected]” and “[email protected]” — and so on. (Note: I own none of those addresses, if they are actually valid.)

This fact can be used to commit fraud:

Recently, we observed a group of BEC actors make extensive use of Gmail dot accounts to commit a large and diverse amount of fraud. Since early 2018, this group has used this fairly simple tactic to facilitate the following fraudulent activities:

  • Submit 48 credit card applications at four US-based financial institutions, resulting in the approval of at least $65,000 in fraudulent credit
  • Register for 14 trial accounts with a commercial sales leads service to collect targeting data for BEC attacks
  • File 13 fraudulent tax returns with an online tax filing service
  • Submit 12 change of address requests with the US Postal Service
  • Submit 11 fraudulent Social Security benefit applications
  • Apply for unemployment benefits under nine identities in a large US state
  • Submit applications for FEMA disaster assistance under three identities

In each case, the scammers created multiple accounts on each website within a short period of time, modifying the placement of periods in the email address for each account. Each of these accounts is associated with a different stolen identity, but all email from these services are received by the same Gmail account. Thus, the group is able to centralize and organize their fraudulent activity around a small set of email accounts, thereby increasing productivity and making it easier to continue their fraudulent behavior.

This isn’t a new trick. It has been previously documented as a way to trick Netflix users.

News article.

Slashdot thread.

Real-Time Attacks Against Two-Factor Authentication

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/12/real-time_attac.html

Attackers are targeting two-factor authentication systems:

Attackers working on behalf of the Iranian government collected detailed information on targets and used that knowledge to write spear-phishing emails that were tailored to the targets’ level of operational security, researchers with security firm Certfa Lab said in a blog post. The emails contained a hidden image that alerted the attackers in real time when targets viewed the messages. When targets entered passwords into a fake Gmail or Yahoo security page, the attackers would almost simultaneously enter the credentials into a real login page. In the event targets’ accounts were protected by 2fa, the attackers redirected targets to a new page that requested a one-time password.

This isn’t new. I wrote about this exact attack in 2005 and 2009.

Facebook Is Using Your Two-Factor Authentication Phone Number to Target Advertising

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/10/facebook_is_usi.html

From Kashmir Hill:

Facebook is not content to use the contact information you willingly put into your Facebook profile for advertising. It is also using contact information you handed over for security purposes and contact information you didn’t hand over at all, but that was collected from other people’s contact books, a hidden layer of details Facebook has about you that I’ve come to call “shadow contact information.” I managed to place an ad in front of Alan Mislove by targeting his shadow profile. This means that the junk email address that you hand over for discounts or for shady online shopping is likely associated with your account and being used to target you with ads.

Here’s the research paper. Hill again:

They found that when a user gives Facebook a phone number for two-factor authentication or in order to receive alerts about new log-ins to a user’s account, that phone number became targetable by an advertiser within a couple of weeks. So users who want their accounts to be more secure are forced to make a privacy trade-off and allow advertisers to more easily find them on the social network.

E-Mail Vulnerabilities and Disclosure

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/06/e-mail_vulnerab.html

Last week, researchers disclosed vulnerabilities in a large number of encrypted e-mail clients: specifically, those that use OpenPGP and S/MIME, including Thunderbird and AppleMail. These are serious vulnerabilities: An attacker who can alter mail sent to a vulnerable client can trick that client into sending a copy of the plaintext to a web server controlled by that attacker. The story of these vulnerabilities and the tale of how they were disclosed illustrate some important lessons about security vulnerabilities in general and e-mail security in particular.

But first, if you use PGP or S/MIME to encrypt e-mail, you need to check the list on this page and see if you are vulnerable. If you are, check with the vendor to see if they’ve fixed the vulnerability. (Note that some early patches turned out not to fix the vulnerability.) If not, stop using the encrypted e-mail program entirely until it’s fixed. Or, if you know how to do it, turn off your e-mail client’s ability to process HTML e-mail or — even better — stop decrypting e-mails from within the client. There’s even more complex advice for more sophisticated users, but if you’re one of those, you don’t need me to explain this to you.

Consider your encrypted e-mail insecure until this is fixed.

All software contains security vulnerabilities, and one of the primary ways we all improve our security is by researchers discovering those vulnerabilities and vendors patching them. It’s a weird system: Corporate researchers are motivated by publicity, academic researchers by publication credentials, and just about everyone by individual fame and the small bug-bounties paid by some vendors.

Software vendors, on the other hand, are motivated to fix vulnerabilities by the threat of public disclosure. Without the threat of eventual publication, vendors are likely to ignore researchers and delay patching. This happened a lot in the 1990s, and even today, vendors often use legal tactics to try to block publication. It makes sense; they look bad when their products are pronounced insecure.

Over the past few years, researchers have started to choreograph vulnerability announcements to make a big press splash. Clever names — the e-mail vulnerability is called “Efail” — websites, and cute logos are now common. Key reporters are given advance information about the vulnerabilities. Sometimes advance teasers are released. Vendors are now part of this process, trying to announce their patches at the same time the vulnerabilities are announced.

This simultaneous announcement is best for security. While it’s always possible that some organization — either government or criminal — has independently discovered and is using the vulnerability before the researchers go public, use of the vulnerability is essentially guaranteed after the announcement. The time period between announcement and patching is the most dangerous, and everyone except would-be attackers wants to minimize it.

Things get much more complicated when multiple vendors are involved. In this case, Efail isn’t a vulnerability in a particular product; it’s a vulnerability in a standard that is used in dozens of different products. As such, the researchers had to ensure both that everyone knew about the vulnerability in time to fix it and that no one leaked the vulnerability to the public during that time. As you can imagine, that’s close to impossible.

Efail was discovered sometime last year, and the researchers alerted dozens of different companies between last October and March. Some companies took the news more seriously than others. Most patched. Amazingly, news about the vulnerability didn’t leak until the day before the scheduled announcement date. Two days before the scheduled release, the researchers unveiled a teaser — honestly, a really bad idea — which resulted in details leaking.

After the leak, the Electronic Frontier Foundation posted a notice about the vulnerability without details. The organization has been criticized for its announcement, but I am hard-pressed to find fault with its advice. (Note: I am a board member at EFF.) Then, the researchers published — and lots of press followed.

All of this speaks to the difficulty of coordinating vulnerability disclosure when it involves a large number of companies or — even more problematic — communities without clear ownership. And that’s what we have with OpenPGP. It’s even worse when the bug involves the interaction between different parts of a system. In this case, there’s nothing wrong with PGP or S/MIME in and of themselves. Rather, the vulnerability occurs because of the way many e-mail programs handle encrypted e-mail. GnuPG, an implementation of OpenPGP, decided that the bug wasn’t its fault and did nothing about it. This is arguably true, but irrelevant. They should fix it.

Expect more of these kinds of problems in the future. The Internet is shifting from a set of systems we deliberately use — our phones and computers — to a fully immersive Internet-of-things world that we live in 24/7. And like this e-mail vulnerability, vulnerabilities will emerge through the interactions of different systems. Sometimes it will be obvious who should fix the problem. Sometimes it won’t be. Sometimes it’ll be two secure systems that, when they interact in a particular way, cause an insecurity. In April, I wrote about a vulnerability that arose because Google and Netflix make different assumptions about e-mail addresses. I don’t even know who to blame for that one.

It gets even worse. Our system of disclosure and patching assumes that vendors have the expertise and ability to patch their systems, but that simply isn’t true for many of the embedded and low-cost Internet of things software packages. They’re designed at a much lower cost, often by offshore teams that come together, create the software, and then disband; as a result, there simply isn’t anyone left around to receive vulnerability alerts from researchers and write patches. Even worse, many of these devices aren’t patchable at all. Right now, if you own a digital video recorder that’s vulnerable to being recruited for a botnet — remember Mirai from 2016? — the only way to patch it is to throw it away and buy a new one.

Patching is starting to fail, which means that we’re losing the best mechanism we have for improving software security at exactly the same time that software is gaining autonomy and physical agency. Many researchers and organizations, including myself, have proposed government regulations enforcing minimal security standards for Internet-of-things devices, including standards around vulnerability disclosure and patching. This would be expensive, but it’s hard to see any other viable alternative.

Getting back to e-mail, the truth is that it’s incredibly difficult to secure well. Not because the cryptography is hard, but because we expect e-mail to do so many things. We use it for correspondence, for conversations, for scheduling, and for record-keeping. I regularly search my 20-year e-mail archive. The PGP and S/MIME security protocols are outdated, needlessly complicated and have been difficult to properly use the whole time. If we could start again, we would design something better and more user friendly­but the huge number of legacy applications that use the existing standards mean that we can’t. I tell people that if they want to communicate securely with someone, to use one of the secure messaging systems: Signal, Off-the-Record, or — if having one of those two on your system is itself suspicious — WhatsApp. Of course they’re not perfect, as last week’s announcement of a vulnerability (patched within hours) in Signal illustrates. And they’re not as flexible as e-mail, but that makes them easier to secure.

This essay previously appeared on Lawfare.com.

When Joe Public Becomes a Commercial Pirate, a Little Knowledge is Dangerous

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/joe-public-becomes-commercial-pirate-little-knowledge-dangerous-180603/

Back in March and just a few hours before the Anthony Joshua v Joseph Parker fight, I got chatting with some fellow fans in the local pub. While some were intending to pay for the fight, others were going down the Kodi route.

Soon after the conversation switched to IPTV. One of the guys had a subscription and he said that his supplier would be along shortly if anyone wanted a package to watch the fight at home. Of course, I was curious to hear what he had to say since it’s not often this kind of thing is offered ‘offline’.

The guy revealed that he sold more or less exclusively on eBay and called up the page on his phone to show me. The listing made interesting reading.

In common with hundreds of similar IPTV subscription offers easily findable on eBay, the listing offered “All the sports and films you need plus VOD and main UK channels” for the sum of just under £60 per year, which is fairly cheap in the current market. With a non-committal “hmmm” I asked a bit more about the guy’s business and surprisingly he was happy to provide some details.

Like many people offering such packages, the guy was a reseller of someone else’s product. He also insisted that selling access to copyrighted content is OK because it sits in a “gray area”. It’s also easy to keep listings up on eBay, he assured me, as long as a few simple rules are adhered to. Right, this should be interesting.

First of all, sellers shouldn’t be “too obvious” he advised, noting that individual channels or channel lists shouldn’t be listed on the site. Fair enough, but then he said the most important thing of all is to have a disclaimer like his in any listing, written as follows:

“PLEASE NOTE EBAY: THIS IS NOT A DE SCRAMBLER SERVICE, I AM NOT SELLING ANY ILLEGAL CHANNELS OR CHANNEL LISTS NOR DO I REPRESENT ANY MEDIA COMPANY NOR HAVE ACCESS TO ANY OF THEIR CONTENTS. NO TRADEMARK HAS BEEN INFRINGED. DO NOT REMOVE LISTING AS IT IS IN ACCORDANCE WITH EBAY POLICIES.”

Apparently, this paragraph is crucial to keeping listings up on eBay and is the equivalent of kryptonite when it comes to deflecting copyright holders, police, and Trading Standards. Sure enough, a few seconds with Google reveals the same wording on dozens of eBay listings and those offering IPTV subscriptions on external platforms.

It is, of course, absolutely worthless but the IPTV seller insisted otherwise, noting he’d sold “thousands” of subscriptions through eBay without any problems. While a similar logic can be applied to garlic and vampires, a second disclaimer found on many other illicit IPTV subscription listings treads an even more bizarre path.

“THE PRODUCTS OFFERED CAN NOT BE USED TO DESCRAMBLE OR OTHERWISE ENABLE ACCESS TO CABLE OR SATELLITE TELEVISION PROGRAMS THAT BYPASSES PAYMENT TO THE SERVICE PROVIDER. RECEIVING SUBSCRIPTION/BASED TV AIRTIME IS ILLEGAL WITHOUT PAYING FOR IT.”

This disclaimer (which apparently no sellers displaying it have ever read) seems to be have been culled from the Zgemma site, which advertises a receiving device which can technically receive pirate IPTV services but wasn’t designed for the purpose. In that context, the disclaimer makes sense but when applied to dedicated pirate IPTV subscriptions, it’s absolutely ridiculous.

It’s unclear why so many sellers on eBay, Gumtree, Craigslist and other platforms think that these disclaimers are useful. It leads one to the likely conclusion that these aren’t hardcore pirates at all but regular people simply out to make a bit of extra cash who have received bad advice.

What is clear, however, is that selling access to thousands of otherwise subscription channels without permission from copyright owners is definitely illegal in the EU. The European Court of Justice says so (1,2) and it’s been backed up by subsequent cases in the Netherlands.

While the odds of getting criminally prosecuted or sued for reselling such a service are relatively slim, it’s worrying that in 2018 people still believe that doing so is made legal by the inclusion of a paragraph of text. It’s even more worrying that these individuals apparently have no idea of the serious consequences should they become singled out for legal action.

Even more surprisingly, TorrentFreak spoke with a handful of IPTV suppliers higher up the chain who also told us that what they are doing is legal. A couple claimed to be protected by communication intermediary laws, others didn’t want to go into details. Most stopped responding to emails on the topic. Perhaps most tellingly, none wanted to go on the record.

The big take-home here is that following some important EU rulings, knowingly linking to copyrighted content for profit is nearly always illegal in Europe and leaves people open for targeting by copyright holders and the authorities. People really should be aware of that, especially the little guy making a little extra pocket money on eBay.

Of course, people are perfectly entitled to carry on regardless and test the limits of the law when things go wrong. At this point, however, it’s probably worth noting that IPTV provider Ace Hosting recently handed over £600,000 rather than fight the Premier League (1,2) when they clearly had the money to put up a defense.

Given their effectiveness, perhaps they should’ve put up a disclaimer instead?

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

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.

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.

Monitoring your Amazon SNS message filtering activity with Amazon CloudWatch

Post Syndicated from Rachel Richardson original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/monitoring-your-amazon-sns-message-filtering-activity-with-amazon-cloudwatch/

This post is courtesy of Otavio Ferreira, Manager, Amazon SNS, AWS Messaging.

Amazon SNS message filtering provides a set of string and numeric matching operators that allow each subscription to receive only the messages of interest. Hence, SNS message filtering can simplify your pub/sub messaging architecture by offloading the message filtering logic from your subscriber systems, as well as the message routing logic from your publisher systems.

After you set the subscription attribute that defines a filter policy, the subscribing endpoint receives only the messages that carry attributes matching this filter policy. Other messages published to the topic are filtered out for this subscription. In this way, the native integration between SNS and Amazon CloudWatch provides visibility into the number of messages delivered, as well as the number of messages filtered out.

CloudWatch metrics are captured automatically for you. To get started with SNS message filtering, see Filtering Messages with Amazon SNS.

Message Filtering Metrics

The following six CloudWatch metrics are relevant to understanding your SNS message filtering activity:

  • NumberOfMessagesPublished – Inbound traffic to SNS. This metric tracks all the messages that have been published to the topic.
  • NumberOfNotificationsDelivered – Outbound traffic from SNS. This metric tracks all the messages that have been successfully delivered to endpoints subscribed to the topic. A delivery takes place either when the incoming message attributes match a subscription filter policy, or when the subscription has no filter policy at all, which results in a catch-all behavior.
  • NumberOfNotificationsFilteredOut – This metric tracks all the messages that were filtered out because they carried attributes that didn’t match the subscription filter policy.
  • NumberOfNotificationsFilteredOut-NoMessageAttributes – This metric tracks all the messages that were filtered out because they didn’t carry any attributes at all and, consequently, didn’t match the subscription filter policy.
  • NumberOfNotificationsFilteredOut-InvalidAttributes – This metric keeps track of messages that were filtered out because they carried invalid or malformed attributes and, thus, didn’t match the subscription filter policy.
  • NumberOfNotificationsFailed – This last metric tracks all the messages that failed to be delivered to subscribing endpoints, regardless of whether a filter policy had been set for the endpoint. This metric is emitted after the message delivery retry policy is exhausted, and SNS stops attempting to deliver the message. At that moment, the subscribing endpoint is likely no longer reachable. For example, the subscribing SQS queue or Lambda function has been deleted by its owner. You may want to closely monitor this metric to address message delivery issues quickly.

Message filtering graphs

Through the AWS Management Console, you can compose graphs to display your SNS message filtering activity. The graph shows the number of messages published, delivered, and filtered out within the timeframe you specify (1h, 3h, 12h, 1d, 3d, 1w, or custom).

SNS message filtering for CloudWatch Metrics

To compose an SNS message filtering graph with CloudWatch:

  1. Open the CloudWatch console.
  2. Choose Metrics, SNS, All Metrics, and Topic Metrics.
  3. Select all metrics to add to the graph, such as:
    • NumberOfMessagesPublished
    • NumberOfNotificationsDelivered
    • NumberOfNotificationsFilteredOut
  4. Choose Graphed metrics.
  5. In the Statistic column, switch from Average to Sum.
  6. Title your graph with a descriptive name, such as “SNS Message Filtering”

After you have your graph set up, you may want to copy the graph link for bookmarking, emailing, or sharing with co-workers. You may also want to add your graph to a CloudWatch dashboard for easy access in the future. Both actions are available to you on the Actions menu, which is found above the graph.

Summary

SNS message filtering defines how SNS topics behave in terms of message delivery. By using CloudWatch metrics, you gain visibility into the number of messages published, delivered, and filtered out. This enables you to validate the operation of filter policies and more easily troubleshoot during development phases.

SNS message filtering can be implemented easily with existing AWS SDKs by applying message and subscription attributes across all SNS supported protocols (Amazon SQS, AWS Lambda, HTTP, SMS, email, and mobile push). CloudWatch metrics for SNS message filtering is available now, in all AWS Regions.

For information about pricing, see the CloudWatch pricing page.

For more information, see:

Integrating JFrog Artifactory with AWS CodePipeline

Post Syndicated from Erin McGill original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/devops/integrating-jfrog-artifactory-with-aws-codepipeline/

When I talk with customers and partners, I find that they are in different stages in the adoption of DevOps methodologies. They are automating the creation of application artifacts and the deployment of their applications to different infrastructure environments. In many cases, they are creating and supporting multiple applications using a variety of coding languages and artifacts.

The management of these processes and artifacts can be challenging, but using the right tools and methodologies can simplify the process.

In this post, I will show you how you can automate the creation and storage of application artifacts through the implementation of a pipeline and custom deploy action in AWS CodePipeline. The example includes a Node.js code base stored in an AWS CodeCommit repository. A Node Package Manager (npm) artifact is built from the code base, and the build artifact is published to a JFrog Artifactory npm repository.

I frequently recommend AWS CodePipeline, the AWS continuous integration and continuous delivery tool. You can use it to quickly innovate through integration and deployment of new features and bug fixes by building a workflow that automates the build, test, and deployment of new versions of your application. And, because AWS CodePipeline is extensible, it allows you to create a custom action that performs customized, automated actions on your behalf.

JFrog’s Artifactory is a universal binary repository manager where you can manage multiple applications, their dependencies, and versions in one place. Artifactory also enables you to standardize the way you manage your package types across all applications developed in your company, no matter the code base or artifact type.

If you already have a Node.js CodeCommit repository, a JFrog Artifactory host, and would like to automate the creation of the pipeline, including the custom action and CodeBuild project, you can use this AWS CloudFormation template to create your AWS CloudFormation stack.

The project code can be found in this GitHub repository: https://github.com/aws-samples/aws-codepipeline-custom-job-worker-for-jfrog-artifactory.

 

The AWS CodePipeline workflow

This figure shows the path defined in the pipeline for this project. It starts with a change to Node.js source code committed to a private code repository in AWS CodeCommit. With this change, CodePipeline triggers AWS CodeBuild to create the npm package from the node.js source code. After the build, CodePipeline triggers the custom action job worker to commit the build artifact to the designated artifact repository in Artifactory.

 

This blog post assumes you have already:

·      Created a CodeCommit repository that contains a Node.js project.

·      Configured a two-stage pipeline in AWS CodePipeline.

The Source stage of the pipeline is configured to poll the Node.js CodeCommit repository. The Build stage is configured to use a CodeBuild project to build the npm package using a buildspec.yml file located in the code repository.

If you do not have a Node.js repository, you can create a CodeCommit repository that contains this simple ‘Hello World’ project. This project also includes a buildspec.yml file that is used when you define your CodeBuild project. It defines the steps to be taken by CodeBuild to create the npm artifact.

If you do not already have a pipeline set up in CodePipeline, you can use this template to create a pipeline with a CodeCommit source action and a CodeBuild build action through the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI). If you do not want to install the AWS CLI on your local machine, you can use AWS Cloud9, our managed integrated development environment (IDE), to interact with AWS APIs.

In your development environment, open your favorite editor and fill out the template with values appropriate to your project. For information, see the readme in the GitHub repository.

Use this CLI command to create the pipeline from the template:

aws codepipeline create-pipeline --cli-input-json file://source-build-actions-codepipeline.json --region 'us-west-2'

It creates a pipeline that has a CodeCommit source action and a CodeBuild build action.

Integrating JFrog Artifactory

JFrog Artifactory provides default repositories for your project needs. For my NPM package repository, I am using the default virtual npm repository (named npm) that is available in Artifactory Pro. You might want to consider creating a repository per project but for the example used in this post, using the default lets me get started without having to configure a new repository.

I can use the steps in the Set Me Up -> npm section on the landing page to configure my worker to interact with the default NPM repository.

 

 

 

Custom actions in AWS CodePipeline

A custom action in AWS CodePipeline contains:

·      custom action definition

Describes the required values to run the custom action. I will define my custom action in the ‘Deploy’ category, identify the provider as ‘Artifactory’, of version ‘1’, and specify a variety of configurationProperties whose values will be defined when this stage is added to my pipeline.

·      custom action job worker

Polls CodePipeline for a job, scanning for its action-definition properties. In this blog post, after a job has been found, the job worker does the work required to publish the npm artifact to the Artifactory repository.

 

My custom action definition in JSON:

{
    "category": "Deploy",
    "configurationProperties": [{
        "name": "TypeOfArtifact",
        "required": true,
        "key": true,
        "secret": false,
        "description": "Package type, ex. npm for node packages",
        "type": "String"
    },
    {   "name": "RepoKey",
        "required": true,
        "key": true,
	"secret": false,
	"type": "String",
	"description": "Name of the repository in which this artifact should be stored"
    },
    {   "name": "UserName",
        "required": true,
        "key": true,
	"secret": false,
	"type": "String",
	"description": "Username for authenticating with the repository"
    },
    {   "name": "Password",
        "required": true,
        "key": true,
	"secret": true,
	"type": "String",
	"description": "Password for authenticating with the repository"
    },
    {   "name": "EmailAddress",
        "required": true,
        "key": true,
	"secret": false,
	"type": "String",
	"description": "Email address used to authenticate with the repository"
    },
    {   "name": "ArtifactoryHost",
        "required": true,
        "key": true,
	"secret": false,
	"type": "String",
	"description": "Public address of Artifactory host, ex: https://myexamplehost.com or http://myexamplehost.com:8080"
    }],
    "provider": "Artifactory",
    "version": "1",
    "settings": {
        "entityUrlTemplate": "{Config:ArtifactoryHost}/artifactory/webapp/#/artifacts/browse/tree/General/{Config:RepoKey}"
    },
    "inputArtifactDetails": {
        "maximumCount": 5,
        "minimumCount": 1
    },
    "outputArtifactDetails": {
        "maximumCount": 5,
        "minimumCount": 0
    }
}

There are seven sections to the custom action definition:

  • category: This is the stage in which you will be creating this action. It can be Source, Build, Deploy, Test, Invoke, Approval. Except for source actions, the category section simply allows us to organize our actions. I am setting the category for my action as ‘Deploy’ because I’m using it to publish my node artifact to my Artifactory instance.
  • configurationProperties: These are the parameters or variables required for your project to authenticate and commit your artifact. In the case of my custom worker, I need:
    • TypeOfArtifact: In this case, npm, because it’s for the Node Package Manager.
    • RepoKey: The name of the repository. In this case, it’s the default npm.
    • UserName and Password for the user to authenticate with the Artifactory repository.
    • EmailAddress used to authenticate with the repository.
    • Artifactory host name or IP address.
  • provider: The name you define for your custom action stage. I have named the provider Artifactory.
  • version: Version number for the custom action. Because this is the first version, I set the version number to 1.
  • entityUrlTemplate: This URL is presented to your users for the deploy stage along with the title you define in your provider. The link takes the user to their artifact repository page in the Artifactory host.
  • inputArtifactDetails: The number of artifacts to expect from the previous stage in the pipeline.
  • outputArtifactDetails: The number of artifacts that should be the result from the custom action stage. Later in this blog post, I define 0 for my output artifacts because I am publishing the artifact to the Artifactory repository as the final action.

After I define the custom action in a JSON file, I use the AWS CLI to create the custom action type in CodePipeline:

aws codepipeline create-custom-action-type --cli-input-json file://artifactory_custom_action_deploy_npm.json --region='us-west-2'

After I create the custom action type in the same region as my pipeline, I edit the pipeline to add a Deploy stage and configure it to use the custom action I created for Artifactory:

 

 

 

 

I have created a custom worker for the actions required to commit the npm artifact to the Artifactory repository. The worker is in Python and it runs in a loop on an Amazon EC2 instance. My custom worker polls for a deploy job and publishes the NPM artifact to the Artifactory repository.

 

The EC2 instance is running Amazon Linux and has an IAM instance role attached that gives the worker permission to access CodePipeline. The worker process is as follows:

  1. Take the configuration properties from the custom worker and poll CodePipeline for a custom action job.
  2. After there is a job in the job queue with the appropriate category, provider, and version, acknowledge the job.
  3. Download the zipped artifact created in the previous Build stage from the provided S3 buckets with the provided temporary credentials.
  4. Unzip the artifact into a temporary directory.
  5. A user-defined Artifactory user name and password is used to receive a temporary API key from Artifactory.
  6. To avoid having to write the password to a file, use that temporary API key and user name to authenticate with the NPM repository.
  7. Publish the Node.js package to the specified repository.

Because I am running my custom worker on an Amazon Linux EC2 instance, I installed npm with the following command:

sudo yum install nodejs npm --enablerepo=epel

For my custom worker, I used pip to install the required Python libraries:

pip install boto3 requests

For a full Python package list, see requirements.txt in the GitHub repository.

Let’s take a look at some of the code snippets from the worker.

First, the worker polls for jobs:

def action_type():
    ActionType = {
        'category': 'Deploy',
        'owner': 'Custom',
        'provider': 'Artifactory',
        'version': '1' }
    return(ActionType)

def poll_for_jobs():
    try:
        artifactory_action_type = action_type()
        print(artifactory_action_type)
        jobs = codepipeline.poll_for_jobs(actionTypeId=artifactory_action_type)
        while not jobs['jobs']:
            time.sleep(10)
            jobs = codepipeline.poll_for_jobs(actionTypeId=artifactory_action_type)
            if jobs['jobs']:
                print('Job found')
        return jobs['jobs'][0]
    except ClientError as e:
        print("Received an error: %s" % str(e))
        raise

 

When there is a job in the queue, the poller returns a number of values from the queue such as jobId, the input and output S3 buckets for artifacts, temporary credentials to access the S3 buckets, and other configuration details from the stage in the pipeline.

 

Here is an example of the return response:

{
	'jobs': [
		{
			'nonce': '3',
			'data': {
				'inputArtifacts': [
					{
						'name': 'Output',
						'location': {
							'type': 'S3',
							's3Location': {
								'objectKey': 'ArtifactoryNPMwithCo/Output/Key,
							'bucketName': '123456789012-codepipelineartifact-us-west-2'
							}
						}
					}
				],
				'pipelineContext': {
						'action': {
							'name': 'Deploy'
						},
						'pipelineName': 'ArtifactoryNPMwithCodeDeploy',
						'stage': {
							'name': 'Deploy'
						}
				},
				'actionTypeId': {
					'category': 'Deploy',
					'owner': 'Custom',
					'version': '1',
					'provider': 'Artifactory'
				},
				'outputArtifacts': [
					{
						'name': 'ArtifactoryOut',
						'location': {
							'type': 'S3',
							's3Location': {
								'objectKey': 'ArtifactoryNPMwithCo/Artifactor/Key,
								'bucketName': '123456789012-codepipelineartifact-us-west-2'
							}
						}
					}
				],
				'actionConfiguration': {
					'configuration': {
						'UserName': 'admin',
						'ArtifactoryHost': 'https://artifactory.myexamplehost.com',
						'Password': 'xxx',
						'EmailAddress': '[email protected]',
						'TypeOfArtifact': 'npm',
						'RepoKey': 'npm'
					}
				},
				'artifactCredentials': {
					'secretAccessKey': 'SECRET',
			               'sessionToken':‘FQoDYXdz...XdndMF',
					'accessKeyId': 'ACCESSKEY'
					}
				},
				'id': 'a0eb',
				'accountId': '123456789012
			}
		],
		'ResponseMetadata': {
			'RetryAttempts': 0,
			'HTTPStatusCode': 200,
			'RequestId': a88b-cdbd5d08b9de',
			'HTTPHeaders': {
				'x-amzn-requestid': '77343c2d-eff4’,
				'content-length': '2461',
				'content-type': 'application/x-amz-json-1.1'
			}
		}
}

 

After successfully receiving the job details, the worker sends an acknowledgement to CodePipeline to ensure that the work on the job is not duplicated by other workers watching for the same job:

def job_acknowledge(jobId, nonce):
    try:
        print('Acknowledging job')
        result = codepipeline.acknowledge_job(jobId=jobId, nonce=nonce)
        return result
    except Exception as e:
        print("Received an error when trying to acknowledge the job: %s" % str(e))
        raise

With the job now acknowledged, the worker publishes the source code artifact into the desired repository. The worker gets the value of the artifact S3 bucket and objectKey from the inputArtifacts in the response from the poll_for_jobs API request. Next, the worker creates a new directory in /tmp and downloads the S3 object into this directory:

def get_bucket_location(bucketName, init_client):
    region = init_client.get_bucket_location(Bucket=bucketName)['LocationConstraint']
    if not region:
        region = 'us-east-1'
    return region


def get_s3_artifact(bucketName, objectKey, ak, sk, st):
    init_s3 = boto3.client('s3')
    region = get_bucket_location(bucketName, init_s3)
    session = Session(aws_access_key_id=ak,
                      aws_secret_access_key=sk,
                      aws_session_token=st)

    s3 = session.resource('s3',
                          region_name=region,
                          config=botocore.client.Config(signature_version='s3v4'))
    try:
        tempdirname = tempfile.mkdtemp()
    except OSError as e:
        print('Could not write temp directory %s' % tempdirname)
        raise
    bucket = s3.Bucket(bucketName)
    obj = bucket.Object(objectKey)
    filename = tempdirname + '/' + objectKey
    try:
        if os.path.dirname(objectKey):
            directory = os.path.dirname(filename)
            os.makedirs(directory)
        print('Downloading the %s object and writing it to disk in %s location' % (objectKey, tempdirname))
        with open(filename, 'wb') as data:
            obj.download_fileobj(data)
    except ClientError as e:
        print('Downloading the object and writing the file to disk raised this error: ' + str(e))
        raise
    return(filename, tempdirname)

 

 

Because the downloaded artifact from S3 is a zip file, the worker must unzip it first. To have a clean area in which to work, I extract the downloaded zip archive into a new directory:

def unzip_codepipeline_artifact(artifact, origtmpdir):
    # create a new temp directory
    # Unzip artifact into new directory
    try:
        newtempdir = tempfile.mkdtemp()
        print('Extracting artifact %s into temporary directory %s' % (artifact, newtempdir))
        zip_ref = zipfile.ZipFile(artifact, 'r')
        zip_ref.extractall(newtempdir)
        zip_ref.close()
        shutil.rmtree(origtmpdir)
        return(os.listdir(newtempdir), newtempdir)
    except OSError as e:
        if e.errno != errno.EEXIST:
            shutil.rmtree(newtempdir)
            raise

The worker now has the npm package that I want to store in my Artifactory NPM repository.

To authenticate with the NPM repository, the worker requests a temporary token from the Artifactory host. After receiving this temporary token, it creates a .npmrc file in the worker user’s home directory that includes a hash of the user name and temporary token. After it has authenticated, the worker runs npm config set registry <URL OF REPOSITORY> to configure the npm registry value to be the Artifactory host.  Next, the worker runs npm publish –registry <URL OF REPOSITORY>, which publishes the node package to the NPM repository in the Artifactory host.

def push_to_npm(configuration, artifact_list, temp_dir, jobId):
    reponame = configuration['RepoKey']
    art_type = configuration['TypeOfArtifact']
    print("Putting artifact into NPM repository " + reponame)
    token, hostname, username = gen_artifactory_auth_token(configuration)
    npmconfigfile = create_npmconfig_file(configuration, username, token)
    url = hostname + '/artifactory/api/' + art_type + '/' + reponame
    print("Changing directory to " + str(temp_dir))
    os.chdir(temp_dir)
    try:
        print("Publishing following files to the repository: %s " % os.listdir(temp_dir))
        print("Sending artifact to Artifactory NPM registry URL: " + url)
        subprocess.call(["npm", "config", "set", "registry", url])
        req = subprocess.call(["npm", "publish", "--registry", url])
        print("Return code from npm publish: " + str(req))
        if req != 0:
            err_msg = "npm ERR! Recieved non OK response while sending response to Artifactory. Return code from npm publish: " + str(req)
            signal_failure(jobId, err_msg)
        else:
            signal_success(jobId)
    except requests.exceptions.RequestException as e:
       print("Received an error when trying to commit artifact %s to repository %s: " % (str(art_type), str(configuration['RepoKey']), str(e)))
       raise
    return(req, npmconfigfile)

 

If the return value from publishing to the repository is not 0, the worker signals a failure to CodePipeline. If the value is 0, the worker signals success to CodePipeline to indicate that the stage of the pipeline has been completed successfully.

For the custom worker code, see npm_job_worker.py in the GitHub repository.

I run my custom worker on an EC2 instance using the command python npm_job_worker.py, with an optional --version flag that can be used to specify worker versions other than 1. Then I trigger a release change in my pipeline:

From my custom worker output logs, I have just committed a package named node_example at version 1.0.3:

On artifact: index.js
Committing to the repo: https://artifactory.myexamplehost.com/artifactory/api/npm/npm
Sending artifact to Artifactory URL: https:// artifactoryhost.myexamplehost.com/artifactory/api/npm/npm
npm config: 0
npm http PUT https://artifactory.myexamplehost.com/artifactory/api/npm/npm/node_example
npm http 201 https://artifactory.myexamplehost.com/artifactory/api/npm/npm/node_example
+ [email protected]
Return code from npm publish: 0
Signaling success to CodePipeline

After that has been built successfully, I can find my artifact in my Artifactory repository:

To help you automate this process, I have created this AWS CloudFormation template that automates the creation of the CodeBuild project, the custom action, and the CodePipeline pipeline. It also launches the Amazon EC2-based custom job worker in an AWS Auto Scaling group. This template requires you to have a VPC and CodeCommit repository for your Node.js project. If you do not currently have a VPC in which you want to run your custom worker EC2 instances, you can use this AWS QuickStart to create one. If you do not have an existing Node.js project, I’ve provided a sample project in the GitHub repository.

Conclusion

I‘ve shown you the steps to integrate your JFrog Artifactory repository with your CodePipeline workflow. I’ve shown you how to create a custom action in CodePipeline and how to create a custom worker that works in your CI/CD pipeline. To dig deeper into custom actions and see how you can integrate your Artifactory repositories into your AWS CodePipeline projects, check out the full code base on GitHub.

If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to reach out to us through the AWS CodePipeline forum.

Erin McGill is a Solutions Architect in the AWS Partner Program with a focus on DevOps and automation tooling.

Use Slack ChatOps to Deploy Your Code – How to Integrate Your Pipeline in AWS CodePipeline with Your Slack Channel

Post Syndicated from Rumi Olsen original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/devops/use-slack-chatops-to-deploy-your-code-how-to-integrate-your-pipeline-in-aws-codepipeline-with-your-slack-channel/

Slack is widely used by DevOps and development teams to communicate status. Typically, when a build has been tested and is ready to be promoted to a staging environment, a QA engineer or DevOps engineer kicks off the deployment. Using Slack in a ChatOps collaboration model, the promotion can be done in a single click from a Slack channel. And because the promotion happens through a Slack channel, the whole development team knows what’s happening without checking email.

In this blog post, I will show you how to integrate AWS services with a Slack application. I use an interactive message button and incoming webhook to promote a stage with a single click.

To follow along with the steps in this post, you’ll need a pipeline in AWS CodePipeline. If you don’t have a pipeline, the fastest way to create one for this use case is to use AWS CodeStar. Go to the AWS CodeStar console and select the Static Website template (shown in the screenshot). AWS CodeStar will create a pipeline with an AWS CodeCommit repository and an AWS CodeDeploy deployment for you. After the pipeline is created, you will need to add a manual approval stage.

You’ll also need to build a Slack app with webhooks and interactive components, write two Lambda functions, and create an API Gateway API and a SNS topic.

As you’ll see in the following diagram, when I make a change and merge a new feature into the master branch in AWS CodeCommit, the check-in kicks off my CI/CD pipeline in AWS CodePipeline. When CodePipeline reaches the approval stage, it sends a notification to Amazon SNS, which triggers an AWS Lambda function (ApprovalRequester).

The Slack channel receives a prompt that looks like the following screenshot. When I click Yes to approve the build promotion, the approval result is sent to CodePipeline through API Gateway and Lambda (ApprovalHandler). The pipeline continues on to deploy the build to the next environment.

Create a Slack app

For App Name, type a name for your app. For Development Slack Workspace, choose the name of your workspace. You’ll see in the following screenshot that my workspace is AWS ChatOps.

After the Slack application has been created, you will see the Basic Information page, where you can create incoming webhooks and enable interactive components.

To add incoming webhooks:

  1. Under Add features and functionality, choose Incoming Webhooks. Turn the feature on by selecting Off, as shown in the following screenshot.
  2. Now that the feature is turned on, choose Add New Webhook to Workspace. In the process of creating the webhook, Slack lets you choose the channel where messages will be posted.
  3. After the webhook has been created, you’ll see its URL. You will use this URL when you create the Lambda function.

If you followed the steps in the post, the pipeline should look like the following.

Write the Lambda function for approval requests

This Lambda function is invoked by the SNS notification. It sends a request that consists of an interactive message button to the incoming webhook you created earlier.  The following sample code sends the request to the incoming webhook. WEBHOOK_URL and SLACK_CHANNEL are the environment variables that hold values of the webhook URL that you created and the Slack channel where you want the interactive message button to appear.

# This function is invoked via SNS when the CodePipeline manual approval action starts.
# It will take the details from this approval notification and sent an interactive message to Slack that allows users to approve or cancel the deployment.

import os
import json
import logging
import urllib.parse

from base64 import b64decode
from urllib.request import Request, urlopen
from urllib.error import URLError, HTTPError

# This is passed as a plain-text environment variable for ease of demonstration.
# Consider encrypting the value with KMS or use an encrypted parameter in Parameter Store for production deployments.
SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL = os.environ['SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL']
SLACK_CHANNEL = os.environ['SLACK_CHANNEL']

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

def lambda_handler(event, context):
    print("Received event: " + json.dumps(event, indent=2))
    message = event["Records"][0]["Sns"]["Message"]
    
    data = json.loads(message) 
    token = data["approval"]["token"]
    codepipeline_name = data["approval"]["pipelineName"]
    
    slack_message = {
        "channel": SLACK_CHANNEL,
        "text": "Would you like to promote the build to production?",
        "attachments": [
            {
                "text": "Yes to deploy your build to production",
                "fallback": "You are unable to promote a build",
                "callback_id": "wopr_game",
                "color": "#3AA3E3",
                "attachment_type": "default",
                "actions": [
                    {
                        "name": "deployment",
                        "text": "Yes",
                        "style": "danger",
                        "type": "button",
                        "value": json.dumps({"approve": True, "codePipelineToken": token, "codePipelineName": codepipeline_name}),
                        "confirm": {
                            "title": "Are you sure?",
                            "text": "This will deploy the build to production",
                            "ok_text": "Yes",
                            "dismiss_text": "No"
                        }
                    },
                    {
                        "name": "deployment",
                        "text": "No",
                        "type": "button",
                        "value": json.dumps({"approve": False, "codePipelineToken": token, "codePipelineName": codepipeline_name})
                    }  
                ]
            }
        ]
    }

    req = Request(SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL, json.dumps(slack_message).encode('utf-8'))

    response = urlopen(req)
    response.read()
    
    return None

 

Create a SNS topic

Create a topic and then create a subscription that invokes the ApprovalRequester Lambda function. You can configure the manual approval action in the pipeline to send a message to this SNS topic when an approval action is required. When the pipeline reaches the approval stage, it sends a notification to this SNS topic. SNS publishes a notification to all of the subscribed endpoints. In this case, the Lambda function is the endpoint. Therefore, it invokes and executes the Lambda function. For information about how to create a SNS topic, see Create a Topic in the Amazon SNS Developer Guide.

Write the Lambda function for handling the interactive message button

This Lambda function is invoked by API Gateway. It receives the result of the interactive message button whether or not the build promotion was approved. If approved, an API call is made to CodePipeline to promote the build to the next environment. If not approved, the pipeline stops and does not move to the next stage.

The Lambda function code might look like the following. SLACK_VERIFICATION_TOKEN is the environment variable that contains your Slack verification token. You can find your verification token under Basic Information on Slack manage app page. When you scroll down, you will see App Credential. Verification token is found under the section.

# This function is triggered via API Gateway when a user acts on the Slack interactive message sent by approval_requester.py.

from urllib.parse import parse_qs
import json
import os
import boto3

SLACK_VERIFICATION_TOKEN = os.environ['SLACK_VERIFICATION_TOKEN']

#Triggered by API Gateway
#It kicks off a particular CodePipeline project
def lambda_handler(event, context):
	#print("Received event: " + json.dumps(event, indent=2))
	body = parse_qs(event['body'])
	payload = json.loads(body['payload'][0])

	# Validate Slack token
	if SLACK_VERIFICATION_TOKEN == payload['token']:
		send_slack_message(json.loads(payload['actions'][0]['value']))
		
		# This will replace the interactive message with a simple text response.
		# You can implement a more complex message update if you would like.
		return  {
			"isBase64Encoded": "false",
			"statusCode": 200,
			"body": "{\"text\": \"The approval has been processed\"}"
		}
	else:
		return  {
			"isBase64Encoded": "false",
			"statusCode": 403,
			"body": "{\"error\": \"This request does not include a vailid verification token.\"}"
		}


def send_slack_message(action_details):
	codepipeline_status = "Approved" if action_details["approve"] else "Rejected"
	codepipeline_name = action_details["codePipelineName"]
	token = action_details["codePipelineToken"] 

	client = boto3.client('codepipeline')
	response_approval = client.put_approval_result(
							pipelineName=codepipeline_name,
							stageName='Approval',
							actionName='ApprovalOrDeny',
							result={'summary':'','status':codepipeline_status},
							token=token)
	print(response_approval)

 

Create the API Gateway API

  1. In the Amazon API Gateway console, create a resource called InteractiveMessageHandler.
  2. Create a POST method.
    • For Integration type, choose Lambda Function.
    • Select Use Lambda Proxy integration.
    • From Lambda Region, choose a region.
    • In Lambda Function, type a name for your function.
  3.  Deploy to a stage.

For more information, see Getting Started with Amazon API Gateway in the Amazon API Developer Guide.

Now go back to your Slack application and enable interactive components.

To enable interactive components for the interactive message (Yes) button:

  1. Under Features, choose Interactive Components.
  2. Choose Enable Interactive Components.
  3. Type a request URL in the text box. Use the invoke URL in Amazon API Gateway that will be called when the approval button is clicked.

Now that all the pieces have been created, run the solution by checking in a code change to your CodeCommit repo. That will release the change through CodePipeline. When the CodePipeline comes to the approval stage, it will prompt to your Slack channel to see if you want to promote the build to your staging or production environment. Choose Yes and then see if your change was deployed to the environment.

Conclusion

That is it! You have now created a Slack ChatOps solution using AWS CodeCommit, AWS CodePipeline, AWS Lambda, Amazon API Gateway, and Amazon Simple Notification Service.

Now that you know how to do this Slack and CodePipeline integration, you can use the same method to interact with other AWS services using API Gateway and Lambda. You can also use Slack’s slash command to initiate an action from a Slack channel, rather than responding in the way demonstrated in this post.

timeShift(GrafanaBuzz, 1w) Issue 46

Post Syndicated from Blogs on Grafana Labs Blog original https://grafana.com/blog/2018/05/24/timeshiftgrafanabuzz-1w-issue-46/

Welcome to TimeShift The day has finally arrived; GDPR is officially in effect! These new policies are meant to provide more transparency about the data companies collect on users, and how that data is used. I for one am just excited that the onslaught of "We’ve updated our privacy policy" emails arriving in my pummeled inbox is nearing its end.
Grafana Labs is no exception. We encourage you to check out our privacy policy, and if you have any questions, feel free to contact us at [email protected]

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.

ExtraTorrent Replacement Displays Warning On Predecessor’s Shutdown Anniversary

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/extratorrent-replacement-displays-warning-on-predecessors-shutdown-anniversary-180518/

Exactly one year ago, millions of users in the BitTorrent community went into mourning with the shock depature of one of its major players.

ExtraTorrent was founded in back in November 2006, at a time when classic platforms such as TorrentSpy and Mininova were dominating the torrent site landscape. But with dedication and determination, the site amassed millions of daily visitors, outperforming every other torrent site apart from the mighty Pirate Bay.

Then, on May 17, 2017, everything came crashing down.

“ExtraTorrent has shut down permanently,” a note in the site read. “ExtraTorrent with all mirrors goes offline. We permanently erase all data. Stay away from fake ExtraTorrent websites and clones. Thx to all ET supporters and torrent community. ET was a place to be….”

While ExtraTorrent staff couldn’t be more clear in advising people to stay away from clones, few people listened to their warnings. Within hours, new sites appeared claiming to be official replacements for the much-loved torrent site and people flocked to them in their millions.

One of those was ExtraTorrent.ag, a torrent site connected to the operators of EZTV.ag, which appeared as a replacement in the wake of the official EZTV’s demise. Graphically very similar to the original ExtraTorrent, the .ag ‘replacement’ had none of its namesake’s community or unique content. But that didn’t dent its popularity.

ExtraTorrent.ag

At the start of this week, ExtraTorrent.ag was one of the most popular torrent sites on the Internet. With an Alexa rank of around 2,200, it would’ve clinched ninth position in our Top 10 Torrent Sites report earlier this year. However, after registering the site’s domain a year ago, something seems to have gone wrong.

Yesterday, on the anniversary of ExtraTorrent’s shutdown and exactly a year after the ExtraTorrent.ag domain was registered, ExtraTorrent.ag disappeared only to be replaced by a generic landing page, as shown below.

ExtraTorrent.ag landing page

This morning, however, there appear to be additional complications. Accessing with Firefox produces the page above but attempting to do so with Chrome produces an ominous security warning.

Chrome warning

Indeed, those protected by MalwareBytes won’t be able to access the page at all, since ExtraTorrent.ag redirects to the domain FindBetterResults.com, which the anti-malware app flags as malicious.

The change was reported to TF by the operator of domain unblocking site Unblocked.lol, which offers torrent site proxies as well as access to live TV and sports.

“I noticed when I started receiving emails saying ExtraTorrent was redirecting to some parked domain. When I jumped on the PC and checked myself it was just redirecting to a blank page,” he informs us.

“First I thought they’d blocked our IP address so I used some different ones. But I soon discovered the domain was in fact parked.”

So what has happened to this previously-functioning domain?

Whois records show that ExtraTorrent.ag was created on May 17, 2017 and appears to have been registered for a year. Yesterday, on May 17, 2018, the domain was updated to list what could potentially be a new owner, with an expiry date of May 17, 2019.

Once domains have expired, they usually enter an ‘Auto-Renew Grace Period’ for up to 45 days. This is followed by a 30-day ‘Redemption Grace Period’. At the end of this second period, domains cannot be renewed and are released for third-parties to register. That doesn’t appear to have been the case here.

So, to find out more about the sudden changes we reached out to the email address listed in the WHOIS report but received no response. Should we hear more we’ll update this report but in the meantime the Internet has lost one of its largest torrent sites and gained a rather pointless landing page with potential security risks.

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