kristoff

joined 1 year ago
[–] kristoff@infosec.pub 1 points 2 months ago

interesting advice. Thanks!

[–] kristoff@infosec.pub 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I do not see that as phone-usage, I'm doing an experiment to see how easy / difficult it is to revert the "i need to know the time, so I grab my phone" reflex back to "I need to know the time, so I look at my wrist".

I'm currently reading some books on how easy it is to manipulate peoples behaviour using 'nudging', this to better understand the social engineering tricks used by hackers.

An chapter in one of these books in how social media use tricks to manupale our behaviour that resemble the tricks used by the gambling industry.

One of the things I find intriging is the size of a smartphones today. If you look at it objectively, they are actually so large that most people would consider it to be annoyting: you have to carry it in a bag, in a pocket of your pants -but you have to take your phone out when you want sit-, or ..you carry it in your hands. Have you noticed how many people have their smartphone in their hand when they walk around? But, of course, if you have something in your hand, it is very easy to open it quickly check your notifications; which reinforces the addiction.

So, that's the thing. People do not find it annoying.

So .. as an experiment, I am trying out how easy / difficult it is to break the habbit.

A small sidenote when (or if) I manage to get my garmin vivosmart HR charges, it does rapport activity per week, number of steps and number of floors I went up on foot per day, even without a smartphone app. So that's at least something :-)

[–] kristoff@infosec.pub 1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

One of the reasons I am looking for a new sportswatch is because I try to reduce my smartphone use and I noticed that I actually took out my smartphone just to check the time.

I have an old garmin vivosmart HR but I do have a problem with the charging cable. Plus I am not able to download the healthstats with my linux 'daily driver' laptop.

Perhaps I should just get a cheap regular watch somewhere? 🤔

[–] kristoff@infosec.pub 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I don't. I thought the emoji would have made that clear.

I have been doing cybersecurity awareness lately. We are starting to get over the furst hurdle: make people see the signatures of phishing message. But now we are starting with the 2nd hurdle: make people understand that when they write a genuine post, they should avoid these signatures of phishing, in this case, the "time pressure" argument.

The problem is that the more genuine messages have phising signatures, to more difficult it becomes for people to distinguish a genuine posts from phishing. There is also the risk that you genuine posts will get noted as fake (although that is clearly not the case here :-) )

[–] kristoff@infosec.pub 1 points 2 months ago

ah .. currently not available :-/

[–] kristoff@infosec.pub 7 points 2 months ago (2 children)

ah. That looks very interesting. And they have a show here in the EU, and it seems to work with gadgetbridge (thx Lambda RX :-))

Thanks!

[–] kristoff@infosec.pub 1 points 2 months ago

my daily driver is a ubuntu laptop so I was first thinking about that, but now that you mention a mobile app, ..yes. that would be nice too.

thanks for the food for thought :-)

[–] kristoff@infosec.pub 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

A URL 'Free up to some-end-date'. ???

Phishing link? 🤔

49
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by kristoff@infosec.pub to c/linux@lemmy.ml
 

Hi all,

Simple question. Does anybody know a (not to expensive) sportswatch that is supported by Linux / FOSS software?

(Yes, I know 'FOSS software' is two times the word software) 😀

1
apps .. repo or not (m.krbonne.net)
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by kristoff@infosec.pub to c/cybersecurity@infosec.pub
 

Hi all,

Interesting problem. An open-source project gets their app removed from google play, so they post a message on mastodon that -for the time being- you can download the app via direct download.

I post a reply saying that directing people to a direct link is not a good idea, as hackers could start doing the same to spread malwhere, better use an official repo (like f-droid, where they are already on).

A typical problem of somebody who writes a genuine post, but without realising it himself writes something that is very close to what a phishing message would look like.

However, this got me thinking. What you want to avoid is that people get used to the idea that it is OK to download and install apps from a random URL. But if you point people to f-droid, they need to also download the apk for that, and configure the security on your phone that apk's downloaded via may be installed.

I guess, the later should surely be avoided as most people will then leave that option enabled. (I had to search deep into the security setting to find the option to switch it off again).

What are your opinions on this? What would be the best way to do this and not teach people bad security habbits?

Direct download or f-droid? Other ideas? Is there a good sollution for this?

Kr.

[–] kristoff@infosec.pub 1 points 2 months ago

One of the basic elements of a democracy are three branches. In fact, democracy is an inherent instable system where these three branches must keep eachother in check. A natural concequence thereof is that every one of these three branches has the right to conduct and lead investigations.

That the courts can act proactive or reactive is more a cultural element then a core element of democracy. There are quite some countries where judges are part of the investigative process and can unilateral.

As Brazil, as a number of other countries in Latin America, has been in the situation in the past that both the gouvernement and the parlement are controlled by people with a .. euh .. not so good reputation on their democratic values, a judicial branch that acts in a more proactive manner should not be that IMHO unexptected.

[–] kristoff@infosec.pub 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Here there are two issues: free speech and the judicial system in Brasil. I'll reply to the later in a different mail.

The freedom of speech is the result of democracy. No democracy, no freedom of speech. It is also inherent part of the democractic process.

On the other hand, it is not the only element of a democracy. and it can also be used against these other elements?

My question to you: can you use a fundamental freedom, granted to you by the fact you line in a democracy, to attack democracy?

[–] kristoff@infosec.pub 4 points 2 months ago

Big international companies have no problem to create pseudo "national" versions of services if they can make more money with it.

So there should not be a problem for the social media companies to create versions that meets local legislation.

If you create a product and want to sell it in a certain market, you must also adhere to the laws of that country/region.

[–] kristoff@infosec.pub 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

Protection of citizens against unjust ruling by a court is a protection-principle of democrary.

Why would you grant such a protection to an organisation aimed to destroy democracy (X/twitter)?

 

Hi all,

Perhaps a stupid question. Some time ago, I received a rpi zeroW as a gift, but as I did not have any use for ii I passed it to somebody else in our electronics-group. Now, that person has had a +30 year carreer as self-taught programmer -starting out with BASIC on DOS machines- so he showed of some of his old BASIC applications in dosbox on the pi.

So far so good, but he had an interesting question: Years ago, I wrote a library in BASIC for screen / window applications in DOS. (you know, pop-up text-windows and so on). How do I do that on linux (in C)?

As I myself only do 'backend' coding (so no UI), I have to admit I did not have any answer to that.

So, question, For somebody who has mostly coded in BASIC (first DOS and later Visual Basic) and now switched to C and python, what is the best / most easy tool to write a basic UI application with window-function on linux/unix. I know there exist things like QT and ncurses, but I never used these, so I have no idea.

Any advice?

Kr.

 

Hi all,

Well, my question is in the title of of post. :-)

Does somebody know if there exists an easy sollution to share files to users (e.g. members of an organisation), based on the fact that the user is known in a SSO (authentik) ?

I know nextcloud would be an option, but that would create a nextcloud account for all the users, .. which is quite overkill for what is needed here.

I know we can probably build something based on apache, PHP or so, .. but if there would be a ready-to-use service for this, that would be nice. (and probably a lot more secure then what I would build myself :-) ).

Kr.

 

Hi all,

As self-hosting is not just "home-hosting" I guess this post should also be on-topic here.

Beginning of the year, bleeping-computers published an interesting post on the biggest cybersecurity stories of 2023.

Item 13 is an interesing one. (see URL of this post). Summary in short A Danish cloud-provider gets hit by a ransomware attack, encrypting not only the clients data, but also the backups.

For a user, this means that a senario where, not only your VM becomes unusable (virtual disk-storage is encrypted), but also the daily backups you made to the cloud-provider S3-storage is useless, might be not as far-fetches then what your think.

So .. conclussion ??? If you have VMs at a cloud-provider and do daily backups, it might be usefull to actually get your storage for these backups from a different provider then the one where your house your VMs.

Anybody any ideas or remarks on this?

(*) https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/the-biggest-cybersecurity-and-cyberattack-stories-of-2023/

25
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by kristoff@infosec.pub to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
 

Hi all,

Short question. Does somebody here run authentik as single sign-on provider? (dockerised?)

I'm looking for information on how to best backup a authentik server? Just do a backup of the postgres database and the docker-compose file? Something else? How crucial is the dump.rdb file of the redis container?

Kr.

 

H all, Somebody here selfhosting jitsi meet?

I am working on a jitsi-meet setup for an organisation, now looking at the options for redundancy.

I have noticed you can configure multiple XMPP servers on the jitsiivideobridge. What is the exact goal of this?

Can you connect a jvb to multiple jitsj servers (domains)? or is this only for making the jitsii backend redundant?

Kr.

 

With jitsi meet now requireing registration (something I do understand, .. but I just happen not to have a google, MS or meta account), I am looking at selfhosting a jitsi meet for personal use.

Has somebody already done this? What are your experience? What are the hardware requirements? Docker or native? Linux or other OS? (FreeBSD)?

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