Tag Archives: integrit

[$] Securing the container image supply chain

Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/754443/rss

“Security is hard” is a tautology, especially in the fast-moving world
of container orchestration. We have previously covered various aspects of
Linux container
security through, for example, the Clear Containers implementation
or the broader question of Kubernetes and
security, but those are mostly concerned with container isolation; they do not address the
question of trusting a container’s contents. What is a container running?
Who built it and when? Even assuming we have good programmers and solid
isolation layers, propagating that good code around a Kubernetes cluster
and making strong assertions on the integrity of that supply chain is far
from trivial. The 2018 KubeCon
+ CloudNativeCon Europe event featured some projects that could
eventually solve that problem.

Announcing Local Build Support for AWS CodeBuild

Post Syndicated from Karthik Thirugnanasambandam original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/devops/announcing-local-build-support-for-aws-codebuild/

Today, we’re excited to announce local build support in AWS CodeBuild.

AWS CodeBuild is a fully managed build service. There are no servers to provision and scale, or software to install, configure, and operate. You just specify the location of your source code, choose your build settings, and CodeBuild runs build scripts for compiling, testing, and packaging your code.

In this blog post, I’ll show you how to set up CodeBuild locally to build and test a sample Java application.

By building an application on a local machine you can:

  • Test the integrity and contents of a buildspec file locally.
  • Test and build an application locally before committing.
  • Identify and fix errors quickly from your local development environment.

Prerequisites

In this post, I am using AWS Cloud9 IDE as my development environment.

If you would like to use AWS Cloud9 as your IDE, follow the express setup steps in the AWS Cloud9 User Guide.

The AWS Cloud9 IDE comes with Docker and Git already installed. If you are going to use your laptop or desktop machine as your development environment, install Docker and Git before you start.

Steps to build CodeBuild image locally

Run git clone https://github.com/aws/aws-codebuild-docker-images.git to download this repository to your local machine.

$ git clone https://github.com/aws/aws-codebuild-docker-images.git

Lets build a local CodeBuild image for JDK 8 environment. The Dockerfile for JDK 8 is present in /aws-codebuild-docker-images/ubuntu/java/openjdk-8.

Edit the Dockerfile to remove the last line ENTRYPOINT [“dockerd-entrypoint.sh”] and save the file.

Run cd ubuntu/java/openjdk-8 to change the directory in your local workspace.

Run docker build -t aws/codebuild/java:openjdk-8 . to build the Docker image locally. This command will take few minutes to complete.

$ cd aws-codebuild-docker-images
$ cd ubuntu/java/openjdk-8
$ docker build -t aws/codebuild/java:openjdk-8 .

Steps to setup CodeBuild local agent

Run the following Docker pull command to download the local CodeBuild agent.

$ docker pull amazon/aws-codebuild-local:latest --disable-content-trust=false

Now you have the local agent image on your machine and can run a local build.

Run the following git command to download a sample Java project.

$ git clone https://github.com/karthiksambandam/sample-web-app.git

Steps to use the local agent to build a sample project

Let’s build the sample Java project using the local agent.

Execute the following Docker command to run the local agent and build the sample web app repository you cloned earlier.

$ docker run -it -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock -e "IMAGE_NAME=aws/codebuild/java:openjdk-8" -e "ARTIFACTS=/home/ec2-user/environment/artifacts" -e "SOURCE=/home/ec2-user/environment/sample-web-app" amazon/aws-codebuild-local

Note: We need to provide three environment variables namely  IMAGE_NAME, SOURCE and ARTIFACTS.

IMAGE_NAME: The name of your build environment image.

SOURCE: The absolute path to your source code directory.

ARTIFACTS: The absolute path to your artifact output folder.

When you run the sample project, you get a runtime error that says the YAML file does not exist. This is because a buildspec.yml file is not included in the sample web project. AWS CodeBuild requires a buildspec.yml to run a build. For more information about buildspec.yml, see Build Spec Example in the AWS CodeBuild User Guide.

Let’s add a buildspec.yml file with the following content to the sample-web-app folder and then rebuild the project.

version: 0.2

phases:
  build:
    commands:
      - echo Build started on `date`
      - mvn install

artifacts:
  files:
    - target/javawebdemo.war


$ docker run -it -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock -e "IMAGE_NAME=aws/codebuild/java:openjdk-8" -e "ARTIFACTS=/home/ec2-user/environment/artifacts" -e "SOURCE=/home/ec2-user/environment/sample-web-app" amazon/aws-codebuild-local

This time your build should be successful. Upon successful execution, look in the /artifacts folder for the final built artifacts.zip file to validate.

Conclusion:

In this blog post, I showed you how to quickly set up the CodeBuild local agent to build projects right from your local desktop machine or laptop. As you see, local builds can improve developer productivity by helping you identify and fix errors quickly.

I hope you found this post useful. Feel free to leave your feedback or suggestions in the comments.

[$] A kernel integrity subsystem update

Post Syndicated from jake original https://lwn.net/Articles/753276/rss

At the 2018 Linux Storage, Filesystem, and Memory-Management Summit, Mimi
Zohar gave a presentation in the
filesystem track on the Linux integrity subsystem. There is a lot
of talk that the integrity subsystem (usually referred to as “IMA”, which
is the integrity
measurement architecture, though there is more to the subsystem) is
complex and
not documented well, she
said. So she wanted to give an overview of the subsystem and then to
discuss some filesystem-related concerns.

[$] File-level integrity

Post Syndicated from jake original https://lwn.net/Articles/752614/rss

At the 2018 Linux Storage, Filesystem, and Memory Management Summit, Ted
Ts’o introduced an integrity feature akin to dm-verity that targets Android,
at least to start with. It is meant to protect the integrity of files on
the system so that any tampering would be detectable. The
initial use case would be for a certain special type of Android file, but other
systems may find uses for it as well.

TSB Bank Disaster

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/04/tsb_bank_disast.html

This seems like an absolute disaster:

The very short version is that a UK bank, TSB, which had been merged into and then many years later was spun out of Lloyds Bank, was bought by the Spanish bank Banco Sabadell in 2015. Lloyds had continued to run the TSB systems and was to transfer them over to Sabadell over the weekend. It’s turned out to be an epic failure, and it’s not clear if and when this can be straightened out.

It is bad enough that bank IT problem had been so severe and protracted a major newspaper, The Guardian, created a live blog for it that has now been running for two days.

The more serious issue is the fact that customers still can’t access online accounts and even more disconcerting, are sometimes being allowed into other people’s accounts, says there are massive problems with data integrity. That’s a nightmare to sort out.

Even worse, the fact that this situation has persisted strongly suggests that Lloyds went ahead with the migration without allowing for a rollback.

This seems to be a mistake, and not enemy action.

If YouTube-Ripping Sites Are Illegal, What About Tools That Do a Similar Job?

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/if-youtube-ripping-sites-are-illegal-what-about-tools-that-do-a-similar-job-180407/

In 2016, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry published research which claimed that half of 16 to 24-year-olds use stream-ripping tools to copy music from sites like YouTube.

While this might not have surprised those who regularly participate in the activity, IFPI said that volumes had become so vast that stream-ripping had overtaken pirate site music downloads. That was a big statement.

Probably not coincidentally, just two weeks later IFPI, RIAA, and BPI announced legal action against the world’s largest YouTube ripping site, YouTube-MP3.

“YTMP3 rapidly and seamlessly removes the audio tracks contained in videos streamed from YouTube that YTMP3’s users access, converts those audio tracks to an MP3 format, copies and stores them on YTMP3’s servers, and then distributes copies of the MP3 audio files from its servers to its users in the United States, enabling its users to download those MP3 files to their computers, tablets, or smartphones,” the complaint read.

The labels sued YouTube-MP3 for direct infringement, contributory infringement, vicarious infringement, inducing others to infringe, plus circumvention of technological measures on top. The case was big and one that would’ve been intriguing to watch play out in court, but that never happened.

A year later in September 2017, YouTubeMP3 settled out of court. No details were made public but YouTube-MP3 apparently took all the blame and the court was asked to rule in favor of the labels on all counts.

This certainly gave the impression that what YouTube-MP3 did was illegal and a strong message was sent out to other companies thinking of offering a similar service. However, other onlookers clearly saw the labels’ lawsuit as something to be studied and learned from.

One of those was the operator of NotMP3downloader.com, a site that offers Free MP3 Recorder for YouTube, a tool offering similar functionality to YouTube-MP3 while supposedly avoiding the same legal pitfalls.

Part of that involves audio being processed on the user’s machine – not by stream-ripping as such – but by stream-recording. A subtle difference perhaps, but the site’s operator thinks it’s important.

“After examining the claims made by the copyright holders against youtube-mp3.org, we identified that the charges were based on the three main points. [None] of them are applicable to our product,” he told TF this week.

The first point involves YouTube-MP3’s acts of conversion, storage and distribution of content it had previously culled from YouTube. Copies of unlicensed tracks were clearly held on its own servers, a potent direct infringement risk.

“We don’t have any servers to download, convert or store a copyrighted or any other content from YouTube. Therefore, we do not violate any law or prohibition implied in this part,” NotMP3downloader’s operator explains.

Then there’s the act of “stream-ripping” itself. While YouTube-MP3 downloaded digital content from YouTube using its own software, NotMP3downloader claims to do things differently.

“Our software doesn’t download any streaming content directly, but only launches a web browser with the video specified by a user. The capturing happens from a local machine’s sound card and doesn’t deal with any content streamed through a network,” its operator notes.

This part also seems quite important. YouTube-MP3 was accused of unlawfully circumventing technological measures implemented by YouTube to prevent people downloading or copying content. By opening up YouTube’s own website and viewing content in the way the site demands, NotMP3downloader says it does not “violate the website’s integrity nor performs direct download of audio or video files.”

Like the Betamax video recorder before it that enabled recording from analog TV, NotMP3downloader enables a user to record a YouTube stream on their local machine. This, its makers claim, means the software is completely legal and defeats all the claims made by the labels in the YouTube-MP3 lawsuit.

“What YouTube does is broadcasting content through the Internet. Thus, there is nothing wrong if users are allowed to watch such content later as they may want,” the NotMP3downloader team explain.

“It is worth noting that in Sony Corp. of America v. United City Studios, Inc. (464 U.S. 417) the United States Supreme Court held that such practice, also known as time-shifting, was lawful representing fair use under the US Copyright Act and causing no substantial harm to the copyright holder.”

While software that can record video and sounds locally are nothing new, the developments in the YouTube-MP3 case and this response from NotMP3downloader raises interesting questions.

We put some of them to none other than former RIAA Executive Vice President, Neil Turkewitz, who now works as President of Turkewitz Consulting Group.

Turkewitz stressed that he doesn’t speak for the industry as a whole or indeed the RIAA but it’s clear that his passion for protecting creators persists. He told us that in this instance, reliance on the Betamax decision is “misplaced”.

“The content is different, the activity is different, and the function is different,” Turkewitz told TF.

“The Sony decision must be understood in its context — the time shifting of audiovisual programming being broadcast from point to multipoint. The making available of content by a point-to-point interactive service like YouTube isn’t broadcasting — or at a minimum, is not a form of broadcasting akin to that considered by the Supreme Court in Sony.

“More fundamentally, broadcasting (right of communication to the public) is one of only several rights implicated by the service. And of course, issues of liability will be informed by considerations of purpose, effect and perceived harm. A court’s judgment will also be affected by whether it views the ‘innovation’ as an attempt to circumvent the requirements of law. The decision of the Supreme Court in ABC v. Aereo is certainly instructive in that regard.”

And there are other issues too. While YouTube itself is yet to take any legal action to deter users from downloading rather than merely streaming content, its terms of service are quite specific and seem to cover all eventualities.

“[Y]ou agree not to access Content or any reason other than your personal, non-commercial use solely as intended through and permitted by the normal functionality of the Service, and solely for Streaming,” YouTube’s ToS reads.

“‘Streaming’ means a contemporaneous digital transmission of the material by YouTube via the Internet to a user operated Internet enabled device in such a manner that the data is intended for real-time viewing and not intended to be downloaded (either permanently or temporarily), copied, stored, or redistributed by the user.

“You shall not copy, reproduce, distribute, transmit, broadcast, display, sell, license, or otherwise exploit any Content for any other purposes without the prior written consent of YouTube or the respective licensors of the Content.”

In this respect, it seems that a user doing anything but real-time streaming of YouTube content is breaching YouTube’s terms of service. The big question then, of course, is whether providing a tool specifically for that purpose represents an infringement of copyright.

The people behind Free MP3 Recorder believe that the “scope of application depends entirely on the end users’ intentions” which seems like a fair argument at first view. But, as usual, copyright law is incredibly complex and there are plenty of opposing views.

We asked the BPI, which took action against YouTubeMP3, for its take on this type of tool. The official response was “No comment” which doesn’t really clarify the position, at least for now.

Needless to say, the Betamax decision – relevant or not – doesn’t apply in the UK. But that only adds more parameters into the mix – and perhaps more opportunities for lawyers to make money arguing for and against tools like this in the future.

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

AWS Achieves Spain’s ENS High Certification Across 29 Services

Post Syndicated from Oliver Bell original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/aws-achieves-spains-ens-high-certification-across-29-services/

AWS has achieved Spain’s Esquema Nacional de Seguridad (ENS) High certification across 29 services. To successfully achieve the ENS High Standard, BDO España conducted an independent audit and attested that AWS meets confidentiality, integrity, and availability standards. This provides the assurance needed by Spanish Public Sector organizations wanting to build secure applications and services on AWS.

The National Security Framework, regulated under Royal Decree 3/2010, was developed through close collaboration between ENAC (Entidad Nacional de Acreditación), the Ministry of Finance and Public Administration and the CCN (National Cryptologic Centre), and other administrative bodies.

The following AWS Services are ENS High accredited across our Dublin and Frankfurt Regions:

  • Amazon API Gateway
  • Amazon DynamoDB
  • Amazon Elastic Container Service
  • Amazon Elastic Block Store
  • Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
  • Amazon Elastic File System
  • Amazon Elastic MapReduce
  • Amazon ElastiCache
  • Amazon Glacier
  • Amazon Redshift
  • Amazon Relational Database Service
  • Amazon Simple Queue Service
  • Amazon Simple Storage Service
  • Amazon Simple Workflow Service
  • Amazon Virtual Private Cloud
  • Amazon WorkSpaces
  • AWS CloudFormation
  • AWS CloudTrail
  • AWS Config
  • AWS Database Migration Service
  • AWS Direct Connect
  • AWS Directory Service
  • AWS Elastic Beanstalk
  • AWS Key Management Service
  • AWS Lambda
  • AWS Snowball
  • AWS Storage Gateway
  • Elastic Load Balancing
  • VM Import/Export

AWS Key Management Service now offers FIPS 140-2 validated cryptographic modules enabling easier adoption of the service for regulated workloads

Post Syndicated from Sreekumar Pisharody original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/aws-key-management-service-now-offers-fips-140-2-validated-cryptographic-modules-enabling-easier-adoption-of-the-service-for-regulated-workloads/

AWS Key Management Service (KMS) now uses FIPS 140-2 validated hardware security modules (HSM) and supports FIPS 140-2 validated endpoints, which provide independent assurances about the confidentiality and integrity of your keys. Having additional third-party assurances about the keys you manage in AWS KMS can make it easier to use the service for regulated workloads.

The process of gaining FIPS 140-2 validation is rigorous. First, AWS KMS HSMs were tested by an independent lab; those results were further reviewed by the Cryptographic Module Validation Program run by NIST. You can view the FIPS 140-2 certificate of the AWS Key Management Service HSM to get more details.

AWS KMS HSMs are designed so that no one, not even AWS employees, can retrieve your plaintext keys. The service uses the FIPS 140-2 validated HSMs to protect your keys when you request the service to create keys on your behalf or when you import them. Your plaintext keys are never written to disk and are only used in volatile memory of the HSMs while performing your requested cryptographic operation. Furthermore, AWS KMS keys are never transmitted outside the AWS Regions they were created. And HSM firmware updates are controlled by multi-party access that is audited and reviewed by an independent group within AWS.

AWS KMS HSMs are validated at level 2 overall and at level 3 in the following areas:

  • Cryptographic Module Specification
  • Roles, Services, and Authentication
  • Physical Security
  • Design Assurance

You can also make AWS KMS requests to API endpoints that terminate TLS sessions using a FIPS 140-2 validated cryptographic software module. To do so, connect to the unique FIPS 140-2 validated HTTPS endpoints in the AWS KMS requests made from your applications. AWS KMS FIPS 140-2 validated HTTPS endpoints are powered by the OpenSSL FIPS Object Module. FIPS 140-2 validated API endpoints are available in all commercial regions where AWS KMS is available.

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ on sale now at $35

Post Syndicated from Eben Upton original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-3-model-bplus-sale-now-35/

Here’s a long post. We think you’ll find it interesting. If you don’t have time to read it all, we recommend you watch this video, which will fill you in with everything you need, and then head straight to the product page to fill yer boots. (We recommend the video anyway, even if you do have time for a long read. ‘Cos it’s fab.)

A BRAND-NEW PI FOR π DAY

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ is now on sale now for $35, featuring: – A 1.4GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU – Dual-band 802.11ac wireless LAN and Bluetooth 4.2 – Faster Ethernet (Gigabit Ethernet over USB 2.0) – Power-over-Ethernet support (with separate PoE HAT) – Improved PXE network and USB mass-storage booting – Improved thermal management Alongside a 200MHz increase in peak CPU clock frequency, we have roughly three times the wired and wireless network throughput, and the ability to sustain high performance for much longer periods.

If you’ve been a Raspberry Pi watcher for a while now, you’ll have a bit of a feel for how we update our products. Just over two years ago, we released Raspberry Pi 3 Model B. This was our first 64-bit product, and our first product to feature integrated wireless connectivity. Since then, we’ve sold over nine million Raspberry Pi 3 units (we’ve sold 19 million Raspberry Pis in total), which have been put to work in schools, homes, offices and factories all over the globe.

Those Raspberry Pi watchers will know that we have a history of releasing improved versions of our products a couple of years into their lives. The first example was Raspberry Pi 1 Model B+, which added two additional USB ports, introduced our current form factor, and rolled up a variety of other feedback from the community. Raspberry Pi 2 didn’t get this treatment, of course, as it was superseded after only one year; but it feels like it’s high time that Raspberry Pi 3 received the “plus” treatment.

So, without further ado, Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ is now on sale for $35 (the same price as the existing Raspberry Pi 3 Model B), featuring:

  • A 1.4GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU
  • Dual-band 802.11ac wireless LAN and Bluetooth 4.2
  • Faster Ethernet (Gigabit Ethernet over USB 2.0)
  • Power-over-Ethernet support (with separate PoE HAT)
  • Improved PXE network and USB mass-storage booting
  • Improved thermal management

Alongside a 200MHz increase in peak CPU clock frequency, we have roughly three times the wired and wireless network throughput, and the ability to sustain high performance for much longer periods.

Behold the shiny

Raspberry Pi 3B+ is available to buy today from our network of Approved Resellers.

New features, new chips

Roger Thornton did the design work on this revision of the Raspberry Pi. Here, he and I have a chat about what’s new.

Introducing the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ is now on sale now for $35, featuring: – A 1.4GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU – Dual-band 802.11ac wireless LAN and Bluetooth 4.2 – Faster Ethernet (Gigabit Ethernet over USB 2.0) – Power-over-Ethernet support (with separate PoE HAT) – Improved PXE network and USB mass-storage booting – Improved thermal management Alongside a 200MHz increase in peak CPU clock frequency, we have roughly three times the wired and wireless network throughput, and the ability to sustain high performance for much longer periods.

The new product is built around BCM2837B0, an updated version of the 64-bit Broadcom application processor used in Raspberry Pi 3B, which incorporates power integrity optimisations, and a heat spreader (that’s the shiny metal bit you can see in the photos). Together these allow us to reach higher clock frequencies (or to run at lower voltages to reduce power consumption), and to more accurately monitor and control the temperature of the chip.

Dual-band wireless LAN and Bluetooth are provided by the Cypress CYW43455 “combo” chip, connected to a Proant PCB antenna similar to the one used on Raspberry Pi Zero W. Compared to its predecessor, Raspberry Pi 3B+ delivers somewhat better performance in the 2.4GHz band, and far better performance in the 5GHz band, as demonstrated by these iperf results from LibreELEC developer Milhouse.

Tx bandwidth (Mb/s) Rx bandwidth (Mb/s)
Raspberry Pi 3B 35.7 35.6
Raspberry Pi 3B+ (2.4GHz) 46.7 46.3
Raspberry Pi 3B+ (5GHz) 102 102

The wireless circuitry is encapsulated under a metal shield, rather fetchingly embossed with our logo. This has allowed us to certify the entire board as a radio module under FCC rules, which in turn will significantly reduce the cost of conformance testing Raspberry Pi-based products.

We’ll be teaching metalwork next.

Previous Raspberry Pi devices have used the LAN951x family of chips, which combine a USB hub and 10/100 Ethernet controller. For Raspberry Pi 3B+, Microchip have supported us with an upgraded version, LAN7515, which supports Gigabit Ethernet. While the USB 2.0 connection to the application processor limits the available bandwidth, we still see roughly a threefold increase in throughput compared to Raspberry Pi 3B. Again, here are some typical iperf results.

Tx bandwidth (Mb/s) Rx bandwidth (Mb/s)
Raspberry Pi 3B 94.1 95.5
Raspberry Pi 3B+ 315 315

We use a magjack that supports Power over Ethernet (PoE), and bring the relevant signals to a new 4-pin header. We will shortly launch a PoE HAT which can generate the 5V necessary to power the Raspberry Pi from the 48V PoE supply.

There… are… four… pins!

Coming soon to a Raspberry Pi 3B+ near you

Raspberry Pi 3B was our first product to support PXE Ethernet boot. Testing it in the wild shook out a number of compatibility issues with particular switches and traffic environments. Gordon has rolled up fixes for all known issues into the BCM2837B0 boot ROM, and PXE boot is now enabled by default.

Clocking, voltages and thermals

The improved power integrity of the BCM2837B0 package, and the improved regulation accuracy of our new MaxLinear MxL7704 power management IC, have allowed us to tune our clocking and voltage rules for both better peak performance and longer-duration sustained performance.

Below 70°C, we use the improvements to increase the core frequency to 1.4GHz. Above 70°C, we drop to 1.2GHz, and use the improvements to decrease the core voltage, increasing the period of time before we reach our 80°C thermal throttle; the reduction in power consumption is such that many use cases will never reach the throttle. Like a modern smartphone, we treat the thermal mass of the device as a resource, to be spent carefully with the goal of optimising user experience.

This graph, courtesy of Gareth Halfacree, demonstrates that Raspberry Pi 3B+ runs faster and at a lower temperature for the duration of an eight‑minute quad‑core Sysbench CPU test.

Note that Raspberry Pi 3B+ does consume substantially more power than its predecessor. We strongly encourage you to use a high-quality 2.5A power supply, such as the official Raspberry Pi Universal Power Supply.

FAQs

We’ll keep updating this list over the next couple of days, but here are a few to get you started.

Are you discontinuing earlier Raspberry Pi models?

No. We have a lot of industrial customers who will want to stick with the existing products for the time being. We’ll keep building these models for as long as there’s demand. Raspberry Pi 1B+, Raspberry Pi 2B, and Raspberry Pi 3B will continue to sell for $25, $35, and $35 respectively.

What about Model A+?

Raspberry Pi 1A+ continues to be the $20 entry-level “big” Raspberry Pi for the time being. We are considering the possibility of producing a Raspberry Pi 3A+ in due course.

What about the Compute Module?

CM1, CM3 and CM3L will continue to be available. We may offer versions of CM3 and CM3L with BCM2837B0 in due course, depending on customer demand.

Are you still using VideoCore?

Yes. VideoCore IV 3D is the only publicly-documented 3D graphics core for ARM‑based SoCs, and we want to make Raspberry Pi more open over time, not less.

Credits

A project like this requires a vast amount of focused work from a large team over an extended period. Particular credit is due to Roger Thornton, who designed the board and ran the exhaustive (and exhausting) RF compliance campaign, and to the team at the Sony UK Technology Centre in Pencoed, South Wales. A partial list of others who made major direct contributions to the BCM2837B0 chip program, CYW43455 integration, LAN7515 and MxL7704 developments, and Raspberry Pi 3B+ itself follows:

James Adams, David Armour, Jonathan Bell, Maria Blazquez, Jamie Brogan-Shaw, Mike Buffham, Rob Campling, Cindy Cao, Victor Carmon, KK Chan, Nick Chase, Nigel Cheetham, Scott Clark, Nigel Clift, Dominic Cobley, Peter Coyle, John Cronk, Di Dai, Kurt Dennis, David Doyle, Andrew Edwards, Phil Elwell, John Ferdinand, Doug Freegard, Ian Furlong, Shawn Guo, Philip Harrison, Jason Hicks, Stefan Ho, Andrew Hoare, Gordon Hollingworth, Tuomas Hollman, EikPei Hu, James Hughes, Andy Hulbert, Anand Jain, David John, Prasanna Kerekoppa, Shaik Labeeb, Trevor Latham, Steve Le, David Lee, David Lewsey, Sherman Li, Xizhe Li, Simon Long, Fu Luo Larson, Juan Martinez, Sandhya Menon, Ben Mercer, James Mills, Max Passell, Mark Perry, Eric Phiri, Ashwin Rao, Justin Rees, James Reilly, Matt Rowley, Akshaye Sama, Ian Saturley, Serge Schneider, Manuel Sedlmair, Shawn Shadburn, Veeresh Shivashimper, Graham Smith, Ben Stephens, Mike Stimson, Yuree Tchong, Stuart Thomson, John Wadsworth, Ian Watch, Sarah Williams, Jason Zhu.

If you’re not on this list and think you should be, please let me know, and accept my apologies.

The post Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ on sale now at $35 appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Torrent Tracking Evidence is Flawed and Unreliable, Alleged Pirate Argues

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/torrent-tracking-evidence-is-flawed-and-unreliable-alleged-pirate-argues-180307/

Besides winning several prestigious awards, the people behind the movie Dallas Buyers Club are also known for their vigorous pursuit of online pirates.

The film’s copyright holders have sued thousands of people in recent years, resulting in numerous out-of-court settlements.

In Oregon, however, one defendant has proven to be a tough adversary. In a lawsuit that’s been ongoing for three years, defendant John Huszar was sued for an alleged copyright infringement that occurred via his Tor exit node.

Tor is an anonymity tool and operating a relay or exit node basically means that the traffic of hundreds or thousands of users hit the Internet from your IP-address. When pirates use Tor, it will then appear as if the traffic comes from this connection.

During the course of the legal proceedings, Huszar repeatedly denied that he personally downloaded a pirated copy of the film. However, he faces substantial damages because he failed to respond to a request for admissions, which stated that he distributed the film. This generally means that it’s seen by the court as true.

With this admission, Dallas Buyers Club (DBC) requested a ruling in its favor. A few months ago, the film company argued that the Tor exit node operator admitted willful infringement, which could cost him up to $150,000 in damages.

The Tor exit node operator then fought back pointing out several disputed claims and asked for a ruling in its favor. However, according to the filmmakers, this simply came too late, more than a year after the Court ordered the admissions.

Huszar is not letting DBC off easy though. Before the court ruled on the filmmakers’ request, the defendant submitted a request for summary judgment of non-infringement a few days ago.

Among other things, the defense argues that DBC misled the court about the quality and integrity of the evidence gathering software ‘MaverickMonitor,’ which was created by the German company MaverickEye.

The defendant asked Dr. Kal Toth, a qualified software verification expert, to take a look at the system to see if it’s as reliable as claimed. According to his findings, it is not possible to “conclude that MaverickMonitor detects the IP addresses of infringing BitTorrent users correctly, consistently and reliably.”

From the declaration

In addition, the defense points out that DBC’s own expert never ran the software, suggesting that the filmmakers have no idea how it works.

“Bizarrely, DBC’s fact and expert witness, Robert Young, testified that he never installed and ran the MaverickMonitor software on any server despite being designated by DBC as its designee on software.

“DBC, a company that used software to sue thousands of people, has no idea how this software works,” the defense argues in its motion.

Huszar’s legal team argues that the BitTorrent monitoring system that was used to sue thousands of people is “flawed and unreliable.” While it may produce accurate findings, there could be many false positives as well, their motion explains.

“Perhaps Maverickmonitor worked 50% of the time. The problem is that we have no idea for this case which side of the coin was up for Huszar, nor does DBC, or MaverickMonitor.

“It is, technically speaking, simply the equivalent of a random number generator, and as such any data generated from the MaverickMonitor system should be excluded,” the motion adds.

While the filmmakers have the admission as their main ammunition, the Tor exit node operator points the finger at the evidence gathering software, hoping to find the court on his side.

“[H]ere Huszar demonstrated with an inspection of the code that MaverickMonitor’s claim of ‘100% accuracy’ is a complete fraud. Huszar respectfully requests this Court grant his motion for summary judgment and deem him the prevailing party,” the motion concludes.

It’s now up to the court to decide which side prevails.

—

A copy of the motion for summary judgment is available here (pdf).

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MPAA Wants Filmmakers to Pay Licenses, Not Rip Blu-rays

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-wants-filmmakers-to-pay-licenses-not-rip-blu-rays-180227/

Technically speaking it’s not hard to rip a DVD or Blu-ray disc nowadays, and the same is true for ripping content from Netflix or YouTube.

However, in the US people can break the law when they do this. The DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions specifically forbid it.

There are some exemptions, such as educational and other types of fair use, but the line between legal and illegal is not always clear, some argue.

Filmmakers, for example, are allowed to use small pieces of other copyrighted films under some conditions. However, this only applies to the documentary genre.

This is confusing and creates uncertainty, according to the International Documentary Association, Kartemquin Films, Independent Filmmaker Project, University of Film and Video Association, and several other organizations.

Late last year they penned a submission to the Copyright Office, which is currently considering updates to the exemptions, where they argued that all filmmakers should be allowed by break DRM and rip Blu-rays. The documentary exemptions have been in place for years now and haven’t harmed rightsholders in any way, they said.

“There is no reason this would change if the ‘documentary’ limitation were removed. All filmmakers regularly need access to footage on DVDs and without an exemption to DVDs, many non-infringing uses simply cannot be made,” the groups noted.

Not everyone agrees with this assessment though. A group of “joint creators and copyright owners” which includes Hollywood’s MPAA, the RIAA, and ESA informs the Copyright Office that such an exemption is too broad and a threat to the interests of the major movie studios.

The MPAA and the other groups point out that the exemption could be used by filmmakers to avoid paying licensing fees, which can be quite expensive.

“Many of the filmmakers who have participated in the rulemaking assert that license fees are often higher than they are willing to pay,” the Joint Creators and Copyright Owners write.

“While unfortunate, the fact that a copyright owner has chosen to make works available on terms that are not palatable to a particular user does not make that user’s proposed use fair or justify granting an exemption.”

If the filmmakers don’t have enough budget to license a video, they should look for alternatives. Simply taking it without paying would hurt the bottom line of movie studios, the filing suggests.

“Many filmmakers work licensing fees into their budgets. There is clearly a market for licensing footage from motion pictures, and it is clear that unlicensed uses harm that market.

“MPAA members actively exploit the market for licensing film clips for these types of uses. Each year, MPAA member companies license, collectively, thousands of clips for use in a variety of works,” the group writes.

The Copyright Office has limited the exemption to the documentary genre for a good reason, the creators argue, since non-documentaries are less likely to warrant a finding of fair use.

In addition, they also refute the claim that the documentary category is “vague.” They note that the International Documentary Association, which argued this, has an award ceremony for the same category, for example.

Finally, the MPAA and other creators respond to calls to extend the current exemptions to 4K content, such as AACS2 protected Ultra HD discs. They see no need for this, as the filmmakers and other groups haven’t shown that they suffer negative consequences in the current situation.

They have alternatives, such as regular Blu-ray discs, while allowing AACS2 circumvention could severely impact the Ultra HD ecosystem, they argue.

“No one has released a universal hack to all Ultra HD films protected by AACS2. The integrity of the AACS2 and Ultra HD technology is an especially important component of the ecosystem that is resulting in the increased availability of motion pictures.

“The Register and the Librarian should not undermine this integrity by authorizing widespread hacking, which could negatively impact ‘the market for or value of’ some of the industry’s most exciting products,” the Joint Creators add.

The Copyright Office will take all arguments into consideration before it makes a final decision later this year.

—

A copy of the Joint Creators reply is available here.

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Our Readers Respond on the Best Solution for Managing Digital Photos and Videos

Post Syndicated from Roderick Bauer original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/digital-media-management/

tripod photo setup at the beach

This post summarizes the responses we received to our November 28 post asking our readers how they handle the challenge of digital asset management (DAM). You can read the previous posts in this series below:

  1. What’s the Best Solution for Managing Digital Photos and Videos?
  2. An Introduction to Managing Digital Photos and Videos

Use the Join button above to receive notification of future posts on this topic.

This past November, we published a blog post entitled What’s the Best Solution for Managing Digital Photos and Videos? We asked our readers to tell us how they’re currently backing up their digital media assets and what their ideal system might be. We posed these questions:

  1. How are you currently backing up your digital photos, video files, and/or file libraries/catalogs? Do you have a backup system that uses attached drives, a local network, the cloud, or offline storage media? Does it work well for you?
  2. Imagine your ideal digital asset backup setup. What would it look like? Don’t be constrained by current products, technologies, brands, or solutions. Invent a technology or product if you wish. Describe an ideal system that would work the way you want it to.

We were thrilled to receive a large number of responses from readers. What was clear from the responses is that there is no consensus on solutions for either amateur or professional, and that users had many ideas for how digital media management could be improved to meet their needs.

We asked our readers to contribute to this dialog for a number of reasons. As a cloud backup and cloud storage service provider, we want to understand how our users are working with digital media so we know how to improve our services. Also, we want to participate in the digital media community, and hope that sharing the challenges our readers are facing and the solutions they are using will make a contribution to that community.

The State of Managing Digital Media

While a few readers told us they had settled on a system that worked for them, most said that they were still looking for a better solution. Many expressed frustration with dealing with the growing amount of data for digital photos and videos that is only getting larger with the increasing resolution of still and video cameras. Amateurs are making do with a number of consumer services, while professionals employ a wide range of commercial, open source, or jury rigged solutions for managing data and maintaining its integrity.

I’ve summarized the responses we received in three sections on, 1) what readers are doing today, 2) common wishes they have for improvements, and 3) concerns that were expressed by a number of respondents.

The Digital Media Workflow

Protecting Media From Camera to Cloud

We heard from a wide range of smartphone users, DSLR and other format photographers, and digital video creators. Speed of operation, the ability to share files with collaborators and clients, and product feature sets were frequently cited as reasons for selecting their particular solution. Also of great importance was protecting the integrity of media through the entire capture, transfer, editing, and backup workflow.

Avid Media Composer screenshot

Avid Media Composer

  • Many readers said they backed up their camera memory cards as soon as possible to a computer or external drive and erased cards only when they had more than one backup of the media. Some said that they used dual memory cards that are written to simultaneously by the camera for peace-of-mind.
  • While some cameras now come equipped with Wi-Fi, no one other than smartphone users said they were using Wi-Fi as part of their workflow. Also, we didn’t receive feedback from any photographers who regularly shoot tethered.
  • Some readers said they still use CDs and DVDs for storing media. One user admitted to previously using VHS tape.
  • NAS (Network Attached Storage) is in wide use. Synology, Drobo, FreeNAS, and other RAID and non-RAID storage devices were frequently mentioned.
  • A number were backing up their NAS to the cloud for archiving. Others said they had duplicate external drives that were stored onsite or offsite, including in a physical safe, other business locations, a bank lock box, and even “mom’s house.”
  • Many said they had regular backup practices, including nightly backups, weekly and other regularly scheduled backups, often in non-work hours.
  • One reader said that a monthly data scrub was performed on the NAS to ensure data integrity.
  • Hardware used for backups included Synology, QNAP, Drobo, and FreeNAS systems.
  • Services used by our readers for backing up included Backblaze Backup, Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage, CrashPlan, SmugMug, Amazon Glacier, Google Photos, Amazon Prime Photos, Adobe Creative Cloud, Apple Photos, Lima, DropBox, and Tarsnap. Some readers made a distinction between how they used sync (such as DropBox), backup (such as Backblaze Backup), and storage (such as Backblaze B2), but others did not. (See Sync vs. Backup vs. Storage on our blog for an explanation of the differences.)
  • Software used for backups and maintaining file integrity included Arq, Carbon Copy Cloner, ChronoSync, SoftRAID, FreeNAS, corz checksum, rclone, rsync, Apple Time Machine, Capture One, Btrfs, BorgBackup, SuperDuper, restic, Acronis True Image, custom Python scripts, and smartphone apps PhotoTransfer and PhotoSync.
  • Cloud torrent services mentioned were Offcloud, Bitport, and Seedr.
  • A common practice mentioned is to use SSD (Solid State Drives) in the working computer or attached drives (or both) to improve speed and reliability. Protection from magnetic fields was another reason given to use SSDs.
  • Many users copy their media to multiple attached or network drives for redundancy.
  • Users of Lightroom reported keeping their Lightroom catalog on a local drive and their photo files on an attached drive. They frequently had different backup schemes for the catalog and the media. Many readers are careful to have multiple backups of their Lightroom catalog. Some expressed the desire to back up both their original raw files and their edited (working) raw files, but limitations in bandwidth and backup media caused some to give priority to good backups of their raw files, since the edited files could be recreated if necessary.
  • A number of smartphone users reported using Apple or Google Photos to store their photos and share them.

Digital Editing and Enhancement

Adobe still rules for many users for photo editing. Some expressed interest in alternatives from Phase One, Skylum (formerly Macphun), ON1, and DxO.

Adobe Lightroom screenshot

Adobe Lightroom

  • While Adobe Lightroom (and Adobe Photoshop for some) are the foundation of many users’ photo media workflow, others are still looking for something that might better suit their needs. A number of comments were made regarding Adobe’s switch to a subscription model.
  • Software used for image and video editing and enhancement included Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Photoshop, Luminar, Affinity Photo, Phase One, DxO, ON1, GoPro Quik, Apple Aperture (discontinued), Avid Media Composer, Adobe Premiere, and Apple Final Cut Studio (discontinued) or Final Cut Pro.
Luminar 2018 DAM screenshot

Luminar 2018 DAM preview

Managing, Archiving, Adding Metadata, Searching for Media Files

While some of our respondents are casual or serious amateur digital media users, others make a living from digital photography and videography. A number of our readers report having hundreds of thousands of files and many terabytes of data — even approaching one petabyte of data for one professional who responded. Whether amateur or professional, all shared the desire to preserve their digital media assets for the future. Consequently, they want to be able to attach metadata quickly and easily, and search for and retrieve files from wherever they are stored when necessary.

  • It’s not surprising that metadata was of great interest to our readers. Tagging, categorizing, and maintaining searchable records is important to anyone dealing with digital media.
  • While Lightroom was frequently used to manage catalogs, metadata, and files, others used spreadsheets to record archive location and grep for searching records.
  • Some liked the idea of Adobe’s Creative Cloud but weren’t excited about its cost and lack of choice in cloud providers.
  • Others reported using Photo Mechanic, DxO, digiKam, Google Photos, Daminion, Photo Supreme, Phraseanet, Phase One Media Pro, Google Picasa (discontinued), Adobe Bridge, Synology Photo Station, FotoStation, PhotoShelter, Flickr, and SmugMug.
Photo Mechanic screenshot

Photo Mechanic 5

Common Wishes For Managing Digital Media in the Future

Our readers came through with numerous suggestions for how digital media management could be improved. There were a number of common themes centered around bigger and better storage, faster broadband or other ways to get data into the cloud, managing metadata, and ensuring integrity of their data.

  • Many wished for faster internet speeds that would make transferring and backing up files more efficient. This desire was expressed multiple times. Many said that the sheer volume of digital data they worked with made cloud services and storage impractical.
  • A number of readers would like the option to be able to ship files on a physical device to a cloud provider so that the initial large transfer would not take as long. Some wished to be able to send monthly physical transfers with incremental transfers send over the internet. (Note that Backblaze supports adding data via a hardware drive to B2 Cloud Storage with our Fireball service.)
  • Reasonable service cost, not surprisingly, was a desire expressed by just about everyone.
  • Many wished for not just backup, but long-term archiving of data. One suggestion was to be able to specify the length-of-term for archiving and pay by that metric for specific sets of files.
  • An easy-to-use Windows, Macintosh, or Linux client was a feature that many appreciated. Some were comfortable with using third-party apps for cloud storage and others wanted a vendor-supplied client.
  • A number of users like the combination of NAS and cloud. Many backed up their NAS devices to the cloud. Some suggested that the NAS should be the local gateway to unlimited virtual storage in the cloud. (They should read our recent blog post on Morro Data’s CloudNAS solution.)
  • Some just wanted the storage problem solved. They would like the computer system to manage storage intelligently so they don’t have to. One reader said that storage should be managed and optimized by the system, as RAM is, and not by the user.

Common Concerns Expressed by our Readers

Over and over again our readers expressed similar concerns about the state of digital asset management.

  • Dealing with large volumes of data was a common challenge. As digital media files increase in size, readers struggle to manage the amount of data they have to deal with. As one reader wrote, “Why don’t I have an online backup of my entire library? Because it’s too much damn data!”
  • Many said they would back up more often, or back up even more files if they had the bandwidth or storage media to do so.
  • The cloud is attractive to many, but some said that they didn’t have the bandwidth to get their data into the cloud in an efficient manner, the cloud is too expensive, or they have other concerns about trusting the cloud with their data.
  • Most of our respondents are using Apple computer systems, some Windows, and a few Linux. A lot of the Mac users are using Time Machine. Some liked the concept of Time Machine but said they had experienced corrupted data when using it.
  • Visibility into the backup process was mentioned many times. Users want to know what’s happening to their data. A number said they wanted automatic integrity checks of their data and reports sent to them if anything changes.
  • A number of readers said they didn’t want to be locked into one vendor’s proprietary solution. They prefer open standards to prevent loss if a vendor leaves the market, changes the product, or makes a turn in strategy that they don’t wish to follow.
  • A number of users talked about how their practices differed depending on whether they were working in the field or working in a studio or at home. Access to the internet and data transfer speed was an issue for many.
  • It’s clear that people working in high resolution photography and videography are pushing the envelope for moving data between storage devices and the cloud.
  • Some readers expressed concern about the integrity of their stored data. They were concerned that over time, files would degrade. Some asked for tools to verify data integrity manually, or that data integrity should be monitored and reported by the storage vendor on a regular basis. The OpenZFS and Btrfs file systems were mentioned by some.
  • A few readers mentioned that they preferred redundant data centers for cloud storage.
  • Metadata is an important element for many, and making sure that metadata is easily and permanently associated with their files is essential.
  • The ability to share working files with collaborators or finished media with clients, friends, and family also is a common requirement.

Thank You for Your Comments and Suggestions

As a cloud backup and storage provider, your contributions were of great interest to us. A number of readers made suggestions for how we can improve or augment our services to increase the options for digital media management. We listened and are considering your comments. They will be included in our discussions and planning for possible future services and offerings from Backblaze. We thank everyone for your contributions.

digtal media management screenshot

Digital media management

Let’s Keep the Conversation Going!

Were you surprised by any of the responses? Do you have something further to contribute? This is by no means the end of our exploration of how to better serve media professionals, so let’s keep the lines of communication open.

Bring it on in the comments!

The post Our Readers Respond on the Best Solution for Managing Digital Photos and Videos appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

When You Have A Blockchain, Everything Looks Like a Nail

Post Syndicated from Bozho original https://techblog.bozho.net/blockchain-everything-looks-like-nail/

Blockchain, AI, big data, NoSQL, microservices, single page applications, cloud, SOA. What do these have in common? They have been or are hyped. At some point they were “the big thing” du jour. Everyone was investigating the possibility of using them, everyone was talking about them, there were meetups, conferences, articles on Hacker news and reddit. There are more examples, of course (which is the javascript framework this month?) but I’ll focus my examples on those above.

Another thing they have in common is that they are useful. All of them have some pretty good applications that are definitely worth the time and investment.

Yet another thing they have in common is that they are far from universally applicable. I’ve argued that monoliths are often still the better approach and that microservices introduce too much complexity for the average project. Big Data is something very few organizations actually have; AI/machine learning can help a wide variety of problems, but it is just a tool in a toolbox, not the solution to all problems. Single page applications are great for, yeah, applications, but most websites are still websites, not feature-rich frontends – you don’t need an SPA for every type of website. NoSQL has solved niche issues, and issues of scale that few companies have had, but nothing beats a good old relational database for the typical project out there. “The cloud” is not always where you want your software to be; and SOA just means everything (ESBs, direct integrations, even microservices, according to some). And the blockchain – it seems to be having limited success beyond cryptocurrencies.

And finally, another trait many of them share is that the hype has settled down. Only yesterday I read an article about the “death of the microservices madness”. I don’t see nearly as many new NoSQL databases as a few years ago, some of the projects that have been popular have faded. SOA and “the cloud” are already “boring”, and we’ve realized we don’t actually have big data if it fits in an Excel spreadsheet. SPAs and AI are still high in popularity, but we are getting a good understanding as a community why and when they are useful.

But it seems that nuanced reality has never stopped us from hyping a particular technology or approach. And maybe that’s okay in order to get a promising, though niche, technology, the spotlight and let it shine in the particular usecases where it fits.

But countless projects have and will suffer from our collective inability to filter through these hypes. I’d bet millions of developer hours have been wasted in trying to use the above technologies where they just didn’t fit. It’s like that scene from Idiocracy where a guy tries to fit a rectangular figure into a circular hole.

And the new one is not “the blockchain”. I won’t repeat my rant, but in summary – it doesn’t solve many of the problems companies are trying to solve with it right now just because it’s cool. Or at least it doesn’t solve them better than existing solutions. Many pilots will be carried out, many hours will be wasted in figuring out why that thing doesn’t work. A few of those projects will be a good fit and will actually bring value.

Do you need to reach multi-party consensus for the data you store? Can all stakeholder support the infrastructure to run their node(s)? Do they have the staff to administer the node(s)? Do you need to execute distributed application code on the data? Won’t it be easier to just deploy RESTful APIs and integrate the parties through that? Do you need to store all the data, or just parts of it, to guarantee data integrity?

“If you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” as the famous saying goes. In the software industry we repeatedly find new and cool hammers and then try to hit as many nails as we can. But only few of them are actual nails. The rest remain ugly, hard to support, “who was the idiot that wrote this” and “I wasn’t here when the decisions were made” types of projects.

I don’t have the illusion that we will calm down and skip the next hypes. Especially if adding the hyped word to your company raises your stock price. But if there’s one thing I’d like people to ask themselves when choosing a technology stack, it is “do we really need that to solve our problems?”.

If the answer is really “yes”, then great, go ahead and deploy the multi-organization permissioned blockchain, or fork Ethereum, or whatever. If not, you can still do a project a home that you can safely abandon. And if you need some pilot project to figure out whether the new piece of technology would be beneficial – go ahead and try it. But have a baseline – the fact that it somehow worked doesn’t mean it’s better than old, tested models of doing the same thing.

The post When You Have A Blockchain, Everything Looks Like a Nail appeared first on Bozho's tech blog.

Epic Games Sues Cheater Over ‘Stealing’ Fortnite V-Bucks

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/epic-games-sues-cheater-over-stealing-fortnite-v-bucks-180112/

Last fall, Epic Games released Fortnite’s free-to-play “Battle Royale” game mode for the PC and other platforms, generating massive interest among gamers.

This also included thousands of cheaters, many of whom were subsequently banned. Epic Games then went a step further by taking several cheaters to court for copyright infringement.

While the initial targets were people who coded, used or promoted cheats to gain a clear competitive advantage, this week Epic sued a different type of cheater. In a complaint filed at a California Federal court, the game publisher accuses a New Zealander of creating an exploit that allows users to get free V-bucks.

V-bucks are the game’s currency and can be bought through an online store, starting at $9.99. The virtual coins allow players to purchase skins for their characteras well as other game tools.

According to Epic, people who create and use these kinds of free-money exploits are stealing from the game publisher.

“Players who search for and promote exploits ruin the game experience for others and undermine the integrity of Fortnite. Players who use exploits to avoid paying for items in Fortnite are stealing from Epic,” the complaint reads.

V-bucks

The alleged perpetrator is identified as Yash Gosai, who’s a resident of Auckland, New Zealand. Epic believes that Gosai developed the exploit which was then promoted through YouTube.

“On information and belief, Gosai developed an exploit for Fortnite’s Battle Royale mode that enables players to obtain V-bucks without paying for them. Gosai created and posted a video on YouTube to advertise, promote and demonstrate the exploit,” the complaint reads.

While the game company managed to get the video taken down, they’re not done with the New Zealander. They accuse Gosai of copyright infringement, breach of contract, as well as conversion.

“Defendant’s videos demonstrating the exploit infringe Epic’s copyrights in Fortnite by copying, reproducing, preparing derivative works from, and/or displaying Fortnite
publicly without Epic’s permission, the company writes.

Epic asks the court for damages and wants the defendant to destroy all Fortnite copies and any related works.

As mentioned before, this is not the first lawsuit Epic has filed against a cheater. Thus far, it has reached at least three settlements behind closed doors. Minnesota resident Charles Vraspir signed an agreement early December. Philip Josefsson from Sweden and Artem Yakovenko from Russia followed soon after.

—

A copy of the complaint against Gosai is available here (pdf).

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The Top 10 Most Downloaded AWS Security and Compliance Documents in 2017

Post Syndicated from Sara Duffer original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/the-top-10-most-downloaded-aws-security-and-compliance-documents-in-2017/

AWS download logo

The following list includes the ten most downloaded AWS security and compliance documents in 2017. Using this list, you can learn about what other AWS customers found most interesting about security and compliance last year.

  1. AWS Security Best Practices – This guide is intended for customers who are designing the security infrastructure and configuration for applications running on AWS. The guide provides security best practices that will help you define your Information Security Management System (ISMS) and build a set of security policies and processes for your organization so that you can protect your data and assets in the AWS Cloud.
  2. AWS: Overview of Security Processes – This whitepaper describes the physical and operational security processes for the AWS managed network and infrastructure, and helps answer questions such as, “How does AWS help me protect my data?”
  3. Architecting for HIPAA Security and Compliance on AWS – This whitepaper describes how to leverage AWS to develop applications that meet HIPAA and HITECH compliance requirements.
  4. Service Organization Controls (SOC) 3 Report – This publicly available report describes internal AWS security controls, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy.
  5. Introduction to AWS Security –This document provides an introduction to AWS’s approach to security, including the controls in the AWS environment, and some of the products and features that AWS makes available to customers to meet your security objectives.
  6. AWS Best Practices for DDoS Resiliency – This whitepaper covers techniques to mitigate distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
  7. AWS: Risk and Compliance – This whitepaper provides information to help customers integrate AWS into their existing control framework, including a basic approach for evaluating AWS controls and a description of AWS certifications, programs, reports, and third-party attestations.
  8. Use AWS WAF to Mitigate OWASP’s Top 10 Web Application Vulnerabilities – AWS WAF is a web application firewall that helps you protect your websites and web applications against various attack vectors at the HTTP protocol level. This whitepaper outlines how you can use AWS WAF to mitigate the application vulnerabilities that are defined in the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) Top 10 list of most common categories of application security flaws.
  9. Introduction to Auditing the Use of AWS – This whitepaper provides information, tools, and approaches for auditors to use when auditing the security of the AWS managed network and infrastructure.
  10. AWS Security and Compliance: Quick Reference Guide – By using AWS, you inherit the many security controls that we operate, thus reducing the number of security controls that you need to maintain. Your own compliance and certification programs are strengthened while at the same time lowering your cost to maintain and run your specific security assurance requirements. Learn more in this quick reference guide.

– Sara

AWS Updated Its ISO Certifications and Now Has 67 Services Under ISO Compliance

Post Syndicated from Chad Woolf original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/aws-updated-its-iso-certifications-and-now-has-67-services-under-iso-compliance/

ISO logo

AWS has updated its certifications against ISO 9001, ISO 27001, ISO 27017, and ISO 27018 standards, bringing the total to 67 services now under ISO compliance. We added the following 29 services this cycle:

• Amazon Aurora • Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration • AWS [email protected]
• Amazon Cloud Directory • Amazon SageMaker • AWS Managed Services
• Amazon CloudWatch Logs • Amazon Simple Notification Service • AWS OpsWorks Stacks
• Amazon Cognito • Auto Scaling • AWS Shield
• Amazon Connect • AWS Batch • AWS Snowball Edge
• Amazon Elastic Container Registry • AWS CodeBuild • AWS Snowmobile
• Amazon Inspector • AWS CodeCommit • AWS Step Functions
• Amazon Kinesis Data Streams • AWS CodeDeploy • AWS Systems Manager (formerly Amazon EC2 Systems Manager)
• Amazon Macie • AWS CodePipeline • AWS X-Ray
• Amazon QuickSight • AWS IoT Core

For the complete list of services under ISO compliance, see AWS Services in Scope by Compliance Program.

AWS maintains certifications through extensive audits of its controls to ensure that information security risks that affect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of company and customer information are appropriately managed.

You can download copies of the AWS ISO certificates that contain AWS’s in-scope services and Regions, and use these certificates to jump-start your own certification efforts:

AWS does not increase service costs in any AWS Region as a result of updating its certifications.

To learn more about compliance in the AWS Cloud, see AWS Cloud Compliance.

– Chad

Protecting code integrity with PGP

Post Syndicated from jake original https://lwn.net/Articles/741454/rss

Linux Foundation Director of IT infrastructure security, Konstantin Ryabitsev, has put together a lengthy guide to using Git and PGP to protect the integrity of source code. In a Google+ post, he called it “beta quality” and asked for help with corrections and fixes. “PGP incorporates a trust delegation mechanism known as the ‘Web of Trust.’ At its core, this is an attempt to replace the need for centralized Certification Authorities of the HTTPS/TLS world. Instead of various software makers dictating who should be your trusted certifying entity, PGP leaves this responsibility to each user.

Unfortunately, very few people understand how the Web of Trust works, and even fewer bother to keep it going. It remains an important aspect of the OpenPGP specification, but recent versions of GnuPG (2.2 and above) have implemented an alternative mechanism called ‘Trust on First Use’ (TOFU).

You can think of TOFU as ‘the SSH-like approach to trust.’ With SSH, the first time you connect to a remote system, its key fingerprint is recorded and remembered. If the key changes in the future, the SSH client will alert you and refuse to connect, forcing you to make a decision on whether you choose to trust the changed key or not.

Similarly, the first time you import someone’s PGP key, it is assumed to be trusted. If at any point in the future GnuPG comes across another key with the same identity, both the previously imported key and the new key will be marked as invalid and you will need to manually figure out which one to keep.

In this guide, we will be using the TOFU trust model.”