codeblog code is freedom — patching my itch

January 24, 2010

Google is wardriving

Filed under: Blogging,Debian,General,Networking,Security,Ubuntu,Web — kees @ 8:28 pm

So, a while back, Google started providing location services. This seemed pretty cool, but I kind of ignored it until recently when I was playing with my Android’s location API. With the GPS off, and no cell towers visible (my basement gets terrible cell service), my phone knew within about 500 feet of where it actually was. All I was connected to was my wifi.

Bottom line: it seems that Google, among other methods, is likely wardriving while photographing for Street View. They are now able to pinpoint wifi access points if they happened to see it while driving through your city.

I’m really rather astonished that no one is freaking out about this; I’m a bit unnerved. I implemented the location-of-your-wifi API quickly, so I could terrify myself further. You can do lookups via my location website too, if you want.

UPDATE: yeah, it would seem to be crowd-sourced wifi and cell tower triangulation data. I should say “Google is WarCrowding”.

© 2010, Kees Cook. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.
CC BY-SA 4.0

January 19, 2010

Using huludesktop on MythTV

Filed under: Blogging,Security,Ubuntu — kees @ 11:29 am

Based on a friend’s recommendation, I decided I would install Hulu Desktop for my MythTV system.

The MythTV wiki instructions were very good. However, I didn’t like that it was a closed-source binary doing network traffic. (While “system” doesn’t show up in “readelf -r” output, that doesn’t mean it isn’t doing direct syscalls, or manually finding the “system” offset in the libc library, or is vulnerable to overflows, and on and on.) So, to put my mind at ease, I decided to confine it in an AppArmor profile:

#include <tunables/global>

/usr/bin/huludesktop {
#include <abstractions/gnome>
#include <abstractions/audio>
#include <abstractions/nameservice>

/etc/huludesktop/** r,
@{HOME}/.huludesktop rwkl,
@{HOME}/.local/share/.huludesktop.data rwkl,
@{HOME}/.macromedia/Flash_Player/macromedia.com/support/flashplayer/sys/*.hulu.com/** r,
@{HOME}/.macromedia/Flash_Player/#SharedObjects/ r,
@{HOME}/.macromedia/Flash_Player/#SharedObjects/*/*.hulu.com/ rw,
@{HOME}/.macromedia/Flash_Player/#SharedObjects/*/*.hulu.com/** rwkl,

# MythTV is already managing the screensaver
deny /usr/bin/xdg-screensaver x,
}

Additionally, I disabled its executable stack, which seems to serve no purpose:
$ sudo execstack -c /usr/bin/huludesktop

© 2010, Kees Cook. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.
CC BY-SA 4.0

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