Plus we celebrate WireGuard's inclusion in the Linux 5.6 kernel, and fight some exFAT FUD.

Links:

• WireGuard VPN makes it to 1.0.0—and into the next Linux kernel — It's a good day for WireGuard users—DKMS builds will soon be behind us.
• Linux 5.6 Is The Most Exciting Kernel In Years With So Many New Features
• fs: New zonefs file system — zonefs is a very simple file system exposing each zone of a zoned block device as a file. This is intended to simplify implementation of application zoned block device raw access support by allowing switching to the well known POSIX file API rather than relying on direct block device file ioctls and read/write.
• Ama-ZNS! Zonefs File-System Will Land with Linux® 5.6
• What is Zoned Storage and the Zoned Storage Initiative? — Zoned Storage is a new paradigm in storage motivated by the incredible explosion of data. Our data-driven society is increasingly dependent on data for every-day life and extreme scale data management is becoming a necessity.
• Linux Kernel Support - ZonedStorage.io
• dm-zoned — The dm-zoned device mapper target exposes a zoned block device as a regular block device.
• Device Mapper - ZonedStorage.io
• What are PMR and SMR hard disk drives?
• Beware of SMR drives in PMR clothing — WD and Seagate are both submarining Drive-managed SMR (DM-SMR) drives into channels, disguised as "normal" drives.
• Beware of SMR drives in PMR clothing [Reddit]
• The exFAT filesystem is coming to Linux—Paragon software’s not happy about it — When software and operating system giant Microsoft announced its support for inclusion of the exFAT filesystem directly into the Linux kernel back in August, it didn't get a ton of press coverage. But filesystem vendor Paragon Software clearly noticed this month's merge of the Microsoft-approved, largely Samsung-authored version of exFAT into the VFS for-next repository, which will in turn merge into Linux 5.7—and Paragon doesn't seem happy about it.
• The New Microsoft exFAT File-System Driver Is Set To Land With Linux 5.7
• Speeding up Linux disk encryption - The Cloudflare Blog — Encrypting data at rest is vital for Cloudflare with more than 200 data centres across the world. In this post, we will investigate the performance of disk encryption on Linux and explain how we made it at least two times faster for ourselves and our customers.
• Add inline dm-crypt patch and xtsproxy Crypto API patch

Plus Mozilla's rollout of DNS over HTTPS has begun, a big milestone for Let's Encrypt, and more.

Links:

• Firefox continues push to bring DNS over HTTPS by default for US users - The Mozilla Blog
• The Facts: Mozilla’s DNS over HTTPs (DoH)
• Security/DOH-resolver-policy - MozillaWiki
• HTTPS for all: Let’s Encrypt reaches one billion certificates issued | Ars Technica
• Let’s Encrypt Has Issued a Billion Certificates - Let’s Encrypt - Free SSL/TLS Certificates
• Let’s Encrypt: A History - The Morning Paper
• Apple drops a bomb on long-life HTTPS certificates: Safari to snub new security certs valid for more than 13 months • The Register
• Ballot SC22: Reduce Certificate Lifetimes
• Google Chrome’s fear of Microsoft Edge is revealing its bad side
• Microsoft shares a roadmap for the new Microsoft Edge
• Microsoft Edge: Top Feedback Summary for March 4
• Download Microsoft Edge Insider Channels
• Flaw in billions of Wi-Fi devices left communications open to eavesdropping | Ars Technica
• kr00k: A serious vulnerability deep inside Wi-Fi encryption
• Kr00k Paper
• Technical Details of Why Cloudflare Chose AMD EPYC for Gen X Servers
• An EPYC trip to Rome: AMD is Cloudflare’s 10th-generation Edge server CPU
• Cloudflare’s Gen X: Servers for an Accelerated Future
• Impact of Cache Locality
• Gen X Performance Tuning
• Securing Memory at EPYC Scale
• Intel promises Full Memory Encryption in upcoming CPUs | Ars Technica

Plus Jim's journeys with Clear Linux, and why Ubuntu 18.04.4 is a maintenance release worth talking about.

Links:

• Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS: here's what's new — It's not as shiny and exciting as entirely new versions, of course, but it does pack in some worthwhile security and bugfix upgrades, as well as support for more and newer hardware.
• 18.04.4 - Ubuntu Wiki
• MobaXterm — Enhanced terminal for Windows with X11 server, tabbed SSH client, network tools and much more.
• Linux distro review: Intel’s own Clear Linux OS — There's not much question that Clear Linux is your best bet if you want to turn in the best possible benchmark numbers. The question not addressed here is, what's it like to run Clear Linux as a daily driver? We were curious, so we took it for a spin.
• Clear Linux* Project — Clear Linux OS is an open source, rolling release Linux distribution optimized for performance and security, from the Cloud to the Edge, designed for customization, and manageability.
• swupd — Documentation for Clear Linux* project
• clr-boot-manager: Kernel & Boot Loader Management
• Cannot compile zfs for 5.5-rc2 · Issue #9745 · zfsonlinux/zfs
• Persistent L2ARC might be coming to ZFS on Linux — The primary ARC is kept in system RAM, but an L2ARC device can be created from one or more fast disks. In a ZFS pool with one or more L2ARC devices, when blocks are evicted from the primary ARC in RAM, they are moved down to L2ARC rather than being thrown away entirely. In the past, this feature has been of limited value, both because indexing a large L2ARC occupies system RAM which could have been better used for primary ARC and because L2ARC was not persistent across reboots.
• Persistent L2ARC by gamanakis · Pull Request #9582 · zfsonlinux/zfs — This feature implements a light-weight persistent L2ARC metadata structure that allows L2ARC contents to be recovered after a reboot. This significantly eases the impact a reboot has on read performance on systems with large caches.
• LINUX Unplugged 303: Stateless and Dateless — We visit Intel to figure out what Clear Linux is all about and explain a few tricks that make it unique.
• LINUX Unplugged Blog: Clear Linux OS 2019
• HAMR don’t hurt ’em: laser-assisted hard drives are coming in 2020 — Although the 2012 "just around the corner" HAMR drives seem to have been mostly vapor, the technology is a reality now. Seagate has been trialing 16TB HAMR drives with select customers for more than a year and claims that the trials have proved that its HAMR drives are "plug and play replacements" for traditional CMR drives, requiring no special care and having no particular poor use cases compared to the drives we're all used to.
• HAMR Milestone: Seagate Achieves 16TB Capacity on Internal HAMR Test Units
• Western Digital debuts 18TB and 20TB near-MAMR disk drives
• Previously on TechSNAP 341: HAMR Time — We've got bad news for Wifi-lovers as the KRACK hack takes the world by storm; We have the details & some places to watch to make sure you stay patched. Plus, some distressing revelations about third party access to your personal information through some US mobile carriers. Then we cover the ongoing debate over HAMR, MAMR, and the future of hard drive technology & take a mini deep dive into the world of elliptic curve cryptography.

Plus the latest Intel speculative execution vulnerability, and Microsoft's troubled history with certificate renewal.

Links:

• Oregon company makes top bid for Microsoft check - CNET
• Microsoft’s failures to renew: Teams, Hotmail, and Hotmail.co.uk | Ars Technica
• Microsoft Teams goes down after Microsoft forgot to renew a certificate - The Verge
• Browser review: Microsoft’s new “Edgium” Chromium-based Edge | Ars Technica
• Linus Torvalds pulled WireGuard VPN into the 5.6 kernel source tree | Ars Technica
• Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Adds WireGuard Support - Phoronix
• Multipath TCP Support Is Working Its Upstream - First Bits Landing With Linux 5.6 - Phoronix
• MultiPath TCP - Linux Kernel implementation
• Upstreaming multipath TCP
• LPC2019 - Multipath TCP Upstreaming - YouTube
• LPC2019 - Multipath TCP Upstreaming - Slides
• LPC2019 - Multipath TCP Upstreaming - Paper
• Using MultiPath TCP to enhance home networks
• Linux 5.6 Crypto Getting AVX/AVX2/AVX-512 Optimized Poly1305
• Poly1305
• CacheOut
• CacheOut Paper
• Intel Responds to ZombieLoad and CacheOut Attacks | Tom's Hardware
• New CacheOut Attack Targets Intel CPUs, Leaks Data From VMs And Secure Enclave

Plus a look back at Apollo-era audio that's still relevant today with the surprising story of the Quindar tones.

Links:

• Critical Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows Operating Systems
• Win10 Crypto Vulnerability: Cheating in Elliptic Curve Billiards 2
• NSA discovers a serious flaw in Windows 10
• Exploiting CVE-2020-0601
• CVE-2020-0601 POC
• NSA Cybersecurity Advisory on CryptoAPI Flaw
• Why can’t I get to the internet on my new OPNsense install?! - Jim's Blog
• OPNsense: a true open source security platform and more
• There's An Actual Name And Reason For Those Beeps You Hear In Recordings Of Astronauts In Space
• Quindar Tones
• Cap'n Crunch Whistle and the Secrets of the Little Blue Box

Links:

• Sure, we made your Wi-Fi routers phone home with telemetry, says Ubiquiti. What of it? — Ubiquiti Networks is fending off customer complaints after emitting a firmware update that caused its UniFi wireless routers to quietly phone HQ with telemetry.
• UI official: urgent, please answer | Ubiquiti Community
• Update: UniFi Phone Home/Performance Data Collection | Ubiquiti Community
• Possible example data
• Latest firmware with changes
• Microsoft’s Project Silica offers robust thousand-year storage | Ars Technica — Silica aims to replace both tape and optical archival discs as the media of choice for large-scale, (very) long duration cold storage.
• Project Silica
• The Future of Data Storage
• Microsoft Ignite 2019
• Microsoft Edge is coming to Linux. But will anybody use it? | Ars Technica — At Microsoft Ignite a slide announced that Microsoft's project to rebase its perennially unloved Edge browser on Google's open source project Chromium is well underway. Sharper-eyed attendees also noticed a promise for future Linux support.
• Has Microsoft Changed?
• This isn’t your father’s Microsoft

Plus we turn our eye to hardware and get excited about the latest Ryzen line from AMD.

Links:

• Third parties confirm AMD’s outstanding Ryzen 3000 numbers | Ars Technica — AMD debuted its new Ryzen 3000 desktop CPU line a few weeks ago at E3, and it looked fantastic. For the first time in 20 years, it looked like AMD could go head to head with Intel's desktop CPU line-up across the board. The question: would independent, third-party testing back up AMD's assertions?
• The Internet broke today: Facebook, Verizon, and more see major outages | Ars Technica — Last week, Verizon caused a major BGP misroute that took large chunks of the Internet, including CDN company Cloudflare, partially down for a day. This week, the rest of the Internet has apparently asked Verizon to hold its beer.
• It was a really bad month for the internet | TechCrunch — In the past month there were several major internet outages affecting millions of users across the world. Sites buckled, services broke, images wouldn’t load, direct messages ground to a halt and calendars and email were unavailable for hours at a time.
• Cloudflare outage caused by bad software deploy (updated) — For about 30 minutes today, visitors to Cloudflare sites received 502 errors caused by a massive spike in CPU utilization on our network. This CPU spike was caused by a bad software deploy that was rolled back.
• How Verizon and a BGP Optimizer Knocked Large Parts of the Internet Offline Today — Today at 10:30UTC, the Internet had a small heart attack. A small company in Northern Pennsylvania became a preferred path of many Internet routes through Verizon (AS701), a major Internet transit provider.
• Getting started | Prometheus — This guide is a "Hello World"-style tutorial which shows how to install, configure, and use Prometheus in a simple example setup.
• prometheus/node_exporter — Prometheus exporter for hardware and OS metrics exposed by *NIX kernels, written in Go with pluggable metric collectors.
• Using netdata with Prometheus — Prometheus is a distributed monitoring system which offers a very simple setup along with a robust data model. Recently netdata added support for Prometheus.
• prometheus/nagios_plugins — Nagios plugin for alerting on prometheus query results.
• RobustPerception/nrpe_exporter — The NRPE exporter exposes metrics on commands sent to a running NRPE daemon.
• m-lab/prometheus-nagios-exporter — The Prometheus Nagios exporter reads status and performance data from nagios plugins via the MK Livestatus Nagios plugin and publishes this in a form that can be scrapped by Prometheus.
• Comparison to alternatives | Prometheus — Prometheus is a full monitoring and trending system that includes built-in and active scraping, storing, querying, graphing, and alerting based on time series data.
• Quality server monitoring solution using NetData/Prometheus/Grafana — I’m going to quickly show you how to install both netdata and Prometheus on the client and server. We can then use grafana pointed at Prometheus to obtain long-term metrics netdata offers.
• Monitoring stack by using Grafana + Prometheus + Netdata — This monitoring stack you can monitoring in real-time by Netdata and see the history by using Grafana.
• Monitoring Agent · NCPA — New to NCPA? See some of the awesome features present in the Web GUI and API, available on any operating system.
• Nagios 101: Understanding the Fundamentals - Nagios
• Nagios Documentation

Plus the importance of automatic updates, and Jim's new backup box.

Links:

• Errata Security: Almost One Million Vulnerable to BlueKeep Vuln (CVE-2019-0708) — Microsoft announced a vulnerability in it's "Remote Desktop" product that can lead to robust, wormable exploits. I scanned the Internet to assess the danger. I find nearly 1-million devices on the public Internet that are vulnerable to the bug.
• Even the NSA is urging Windows users to patch BlueKeep (CVE-2019-0708) | ZDNet — "[The] NSA is concerned that malicious cyber actors will use the vulnerability in ransomware and exploit kits containing other known exploits, increasing capabilities against other unpatched systems.
• Prevent a worm by updating Remote Desktop Services (CVE-2019-0708) – MSRC — This vulnerability is pre-authentication and requires no user interaction. In other words, the vulnerability is ‘wormable’, meaning that any future malware that exploits this vulnerability could propagate from vulnerable computer to vulnerable computer in a similar way as the WannaCry malware spread across the globe in 2017
• BlueKeep - everyone agrees, you should patch PCs running legacy versions of Windows — I have this horrible feeling that the only way we’re going to wake the world up to the need to patch their ageing versions of Windows against the BlueKeep vulnerability is to wait until a malicious worm begins to spread around the world.
• CVE-2019-0708 | Remote Desktop Services Remote Code Execution Vulnerability — A remote code execution vulnerability exists in Remote Desktop Services – formerly known as Terminal Services – when an unauthenticated attacker connects to the target system using RDP and sends specially crafted requests. This vulnerability is pre-authentication and requires no user interaction. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could execute arbitrary code on the target system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights.
• Customer guidance for CVE-2019-0708 | Remote Desktop Services Remote Code Execution Vulnerability — Microsoft is aware that some customers are running versions of Windows that no longer receive mainstream support. That means those customers will not have received any security updates to protect their systems from CVE-2019-0708, which is a critical remote code execution vulnerability.
• Forget BlueKeep: Beware the GoldBrute | Threatpost — In the past few days, GoldBrute (named after the Java class it uses) has attempted to brute-force Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) connections for 1.5 million Windows systems and counting, according to Morphus Labs chief research officer Renato Marinho. The botnet is actively scanning the internet for machines with RDP exposed, and trying out weak or reused passwords to see if it can gain access to the systems.
• The GoldBrute botnet — The latest round of bad news emerged last week when Morphus Labs’ researcher Renato Marinho announced the discovery of an aggressive brute force campaign against 1.5 million RDP servers by a botnet called ‘GoldBrute’.
• Ubuntu Automatic Updates — The unattended-upgrades package can be used to automatically install updated packages, and can be configured to update all packages or just install security updates.
• AutoUpdates - Fedora Project Wiki — You must decide whether to use automatic DNF or YUM updates on each of your machines.
• It's time to block Windows Automatic Updating | Computerworld — Those of you who feel it’s important to install Windows and Office patches the moment they come out – I salute you. The Windows world needs more cannon fodder.
• Windows 10's Ugly Updates Just Got Uglier. Here's How To Stay Safe by Disabling Automatic Updates — Stay safe by disabling automatic updates? How is that possible? As a general rule of thumb, I’d never recommend disabling updates because security patches are essential. But the situation with Windows 10 has become intolerable. Microsoft continues to fail and continues to release update after update that they know, or should know, has serious problems.
• Jim's New Rig — I build, sell, and manage much bigger and meaner systems than this all the time. But this one's MINE! 12 hot swap bays, Ryzen 7 2700 w/ ECC RAM, quiet enough to share an office with, and the trays can take either HDD or SSD with no adapter needed.

Special Guest: Chad M. Crowell.

Links:

• Under the sea, Microsoft tests a datacenter that’s quick to deploy, could provide internet connectivity for years
• An Azure Infrastructure Year in Review
• Azure File Sync now generally available
• Microsoft's Newest OS is Based on Linux
• Azure Sphere
• What is Azure Stack?
• Azure Outage Proves the Hard Way Availability Zones are a Good Idea
• Microsoft Azure Infrastructure and Deployment on Linux Academy — In this course, we will cover an introduction to the Azure portal, followed by how to build infrastructure and deploy that infrastructure in real world scenarios.
• Chad Crowell on Twitter