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Re: Browser malware, warning from Wikimedia Foundation

Robin Sheat — 2012-05-25T23:31:40

Kathinka schreef op vr 25-05-2012 om 23:58 [+1200]:

As I understand it, it's the same thing. It syncs to mozilla servers,
and then when you connect another device/firefox instance, it pulls it
down.

Robin.
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Re: Browser malware, warning from Wikimedia Foundation

Kathinka — 2012-05-25T11:58:49

I filled in the Sync stuff but it says how  to sync it to another
device, not how to "save to the cloud" ... oh I just had a thought, by
"device" would that include a removable storage thingy not just
another computer/tablet/phone?  If storage, they are passive aren't
they?  I mean, you can't interact by setting up passwords and so on,
you either put stuff in them or use it / download it from them, yes?

Kathinka.

Re: Kiosk distribution.

Philip Charles — 2012-05-25T11:11:47

There are many strange and wonderful distros out there.

Phil.

Re: Browser malware, warning from Wikimedia Foundation

Blair McBride — 2012-05-25T05:48:12

You don't *have* to lose all that if you don't want to. You can use Sync 
to save your data to the cloud (encrypted), then sync it back to a new 
profile. So you keep your data, with the benefits of a fresh profile - 
which really makes a difference if you've kept the same profile since 
the days of Netscape 4.

Or you can just wait til Firefox 13, which has a button in about:support 
to automagically fix your profile.

- Blair

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Re: Browser malware, warning from Wikimedia Foundation

Robin Sheat — 2012-05-25T02:47:42

Kathinka schreef op vr 25-05-2012 om 13:40 [+1200]:

If you make a new firefox profile, it will erase all your bookmarks,
history, saved passwords, etc. I don't use these much (and I don't do
this very often) so it's not a big deal for me, but your usage may vary.

It's also worth seeing really what is making is slow. Perhaps run 'top'
in a terminal and see if something is using more CPU than it should be a
lot of the time. Also, is it things other than firefox, or is it perhaps
your internet connection and so it just looks like your computer?

Robin.
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Re: Browser malware, warning from Wikimedia Foundation

Kathinka — 2012-05-25T02:27:26

Yes, that's why I hadn't thought of them till now, and why I don't
normally try "amazing" downloads from odd sites.  But something sent
this machine into sloth-on-valium mode.  It's possibly a case of "Call
the IT specialist gerontologist".

Kathinka.

On 25 May 2012 14:00, Blair McBride <blair< at >theunfocused.net> wrote:

Re: Browser malware, warning from Wikimedia Foundation

Blair McBride — 2012-05-25T02:00:57

Should be. We (Mozilla) have a "no surprises" policy that's enforced, 
and addons on addons.mozilla.org go through a policy and code review 
process. If an addon does something questionable, report it [1].

- Blair


[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/developers/docs/policies/contact

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Re: Browser malware, warning from Wikimedia Foundation

Robin Sheat — 2012-05-25T01:34:01

Kathinka schreef op vr 25-05-2012 om 09:41 [+1200]:

It seems unlikely, I would expect the addons you get through the
official mechanisms to be reasonably clean.

That said, I do find it useful sometimes to create a fresh profile just
to remove stuff I forgot I had.

Robin.
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Re: Kiosk distribution.

Hayden — 2012-05-24T22:28:12

Hi Phil, that was me.

Thanks this looks very promising!

Regards
Hayden

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Re: Browser malware, warning from Wikimedia Foundation

Kathinka — 2012-05-24T21:41:55

Couldn't agree more Gene regarding  Adblock. I don't see other
people's computers all that often so I tend to forget what a great job
it does, how much crap isn't cluttering up my screen.  Downside: my
computer  running terribly slowly and I wonder if I got this malware
when I was trying out some other Firefox extensions to see if they
were as useful (they weren't).

Kathinka.

On 25 May 2012 09:08, Gene <gene730< at >gmail.com> wrote:

Re: Browser malware, warning from Wikimedia Foundation

Gene — 2012-05-24T21:08:47

To offer a different perspective on what I think is Microsoft Security
Essentials (MSE) - I've found it to be really lightweight, nag free,
and effective against "real" malware (and can't beat the price!). I've
suggested it to numerous people, and there's been nothing but praise
(well, up till now? :D). For a paid alternative, I hear good things
about Kapersky, although I have not used it, and it's expensive-ish -
so not sure if the value added is worth the extra cost.

I'm not too concerned that MSE does not trigger on shady browser
toolbars - as we all know, some people get really irate that their
mouse cursor is no longer accompanied by a bouncing dog, or that their
browser no longer has a "handy" search field in a browserbar. There
should be some (small) individual penalty for ignorance (and
correspondingly, some reward for vigilance!)

As an aside to malware, but related to the original topic, I'm
perpetually surprised that the Adblock extensions aren't used more.
Yes, you can enable ads on sites you li

Re: Browser malware, warning from Wikimedia Foundation

Blair McBride — 2012-05-24T06:10:56

*sigh* Yes. And that's not the only major issue that Skype's add-on has 
caused. At one stage, it was also responsible for making Firefox run 300 
times slower (that's not a typo).

- Blair

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Re: Browser malware, warning from Wikimedia Foundation

Reece Arnott — 2012-05-24T05:53:32

In short... yes.

I cleared off a friends computer (Windows 7) last week who had 3 such 
browser plugins (firefox): browser companion, televisionfanatic, and 
babylon search. Not sure if they bought up ads on wikipedia but they did 
bring up additional ads. Babylon search highjacked google searches and 
showed its own ads rather than googles as well. That one is sometimes 
installed on purpose as it advertises itself as doing automatic 
translation as well. In fact all of these have a 'trojan' part to them 
as they all say they are useful in some way. They had their own entries 
in Windows add/remove programs so probably didn't install through the 
normal firefox plugin route.

The other funny thing was that firefox had a skype plugin, automatically 
installed at the by the main skype setup, that left a zombie firefox 
process hanging around when you tried to close firefox - 
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2011/01/mozilla-blocks-skype-add-on-caused-33k-firefox-crashes-in-a-week.ars 
talks about an o

Re: Browser malware, warning from Wikimedia Foundation

Adam Cadogan — 2012-05-24T04:58:46

Haven't come across it myself yet, but I tend not to install browser extensions as most of the time they are a pain anyway :)

-Adam

________________________________
 From: Kathinka <kathinka.dunediensis< at >gmail.com>
To: DunLUG <dunlug< at >lists.ethernal.org> 
Sent: Thursday, 24 May 2012 12:43 PM
Subject: [dunlug] Browser malware, warning from Wikimedia Foundation

Anyone struck this?

"Readers who are seeing ads on Wikipedia articles are likely to be
using a web browser that is infected with malware, the Wikimedia
Foundation has warned.
The warning points to an apparent resurgence in adware and spyware
delivered via cleverly disguised browser extensions designed to run
across multiple web browsers and operating systems.....'
http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/6976976/Wikipedia-ads-point-to-infection-says-Foundation

Kathinka.

Browser malware, warning from Wikimedia Foundation

Kathinka — 2012-05-24T00:43:07

Anyone struck this?

"Readers who are seeing ads on Wikipedia articles are likely to be
using a web browser that is infected with malware, the Wikimedia
Foundation has warned.
The warning points to an apparent resurgence in adware and spyware
delivered via cleverly disguised browser extensions designed to run
across multiple web browsers and operating systems.....'
http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/6976976/Wikipedia-ads-point-to-infection-says-Foundation

Kathinka.

Kiosk distribution.

Philip Charles — 2012-05-23T23:40:32

Hi,
           I was talking with someone last night at the LUG meeting 
about a kiosk distribution.  I have a reference to one.
http://webconverger.com/
and it is Debian based.

Phil.

Re: Meeting Wednesday night at the Duke of Wellington

Bob Brown — 2012-05-22T03:55:52

Tomorrow night was mooted for a venue change but since I didn't pull finger
and sort it out firmly (especially as the aim of it was to advertise and
pull in non-regulars) indeed the meeting with be at the Duke as per usual.

I'll be late - I have a new regular thing on Wednesday nights that sees me
back in Dunedin at about 8:30.

Cheers,

- Bob -

On Tue, May 22, 2012 at 12:25 PM, Reece Arnott <reece.arnott< at >gmail.com>wrote:

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Meeting Wednesday night at the Duke of Wellington

Reece Arnott — 2012-05-22T00:25:14

I was just going to update the wiki with the new location of the Duke of 
Wellington (as was discussed at the last meeting) but someone beat me to it!

(Also, according to the calendar this meeting hasn't been confirmed yet)

I won't be there this week so you can talk about me behind my back if 
you feel the need :-)

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Sysadmin job at the medical school for someone with pythonskills

Alex King — 2012-05-21T02:42:59


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Job ad for Dunlug?
Date: Sun, 20 May 2012 22:43:08 +0000
From: Nick Phillips <nick.phillips< at >otago.ac.nz>
To: alex< at >king.net.nz <alex< at >king.net.nz>



I seem to have dropped off the dunlug list as my old email addresses
have gradually died off - I wonder if you could possibly forward this on
if you think it's likely anyone would be interested :-)

We have a job ad out for a combined sysadmin/developer role. New
development is predominantly python/django, but there's a variety of
other stuff to support that uses PHP/Perl/Ruby, some of which (mostly
Moodle I guess) also needs some development done.

The job description gives a bit more detail (although I'd rather anyone
interested contact me for more information), and should be findable from
the ad - which is at
https://otago.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobdetail.ftl?lang=en&job=1200493


Cheers,


Nick

Re: Making deb packages

Alex King — 2012-05-14T21:23:18


On 15/05/12 07:36, Thomi Richards wrote:
It does depend on your intended distribution of your deb package.

Usually people package stuff in debs to distribute them (eg, in Debian 
or Ubuntu), but you can also package into a deb just to use locally (on 
you own system), so that the package manager can keep track of the files 
and install/uninstall cleanly.  If you're just doing that you don't need 
to worry about FHS or debian policy so much.

Cheers,
Alex
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Re: Making deb packages

Thomi Richards — 2012-05-14T19:36:38

Hi,

On 14 May 2012 23:17, Monica Barkman <monica.barkman< at >gmail.com> wrote:

No, that seems reasonable.

You do need to be careful that what you're trying to deploy follows the
debian package policy and the FHS - for example, one of the projects I work
on put files in /srv/<projectname> which is not allowed, so I had to change
things.

Probably the best thing to do is have something that you want to package,
and then we can make it happen.