Let's Encrypt goes TITSUP

Let’s Encrypt suffered from a major service disruption today leaving users unable to access various services. The cause of the problem seems to have been an update to Boulder (ACME CA) which has since been reversed.

Important security research from the RWTH Aachen University

I regularly spend time investigating my server logs and occasionally come across a few special snowflakes. My onion (Tor) server hosted with a popular cloud provider was recently visited by a research scanner. The scanner initially greeted the server with a few standard GET requests:

DocumentRoot and Private Keys

In the last few days I’ve noticed a few unusual GET requests for supposedly exposed SSH private keys. All requests are following the same pattern:

HPKP has been deployed

It’s live, prepare to self-destruct in 3..2..1.. HTTP Public Key Pinning (HPKP) A new HTTP header that allows web host operators to instruct user agents to remember (“pin”) the hosts’ cryptographic identities over a period of time. During that time, user agents (UAs) will require that the host presents a certificate chain including at least one Subject Public Key Info structure whose fingerprint matches one of the pinned fingerprints for that host.

Gentoo makes Perl upgrades easy

Perl upgrades on Gentoo Linux have been laborious for me in the past, but with Perl 5.24 that was no longer the case. I’ve previously managed Perl upgrades by using the oneshot option and manually resolving any remaining conflicts afterwards. With this upgrade though, it looked to be close enough so I decided to try with the backtrack option as suggested from the following output. Portage reporting a slot conflict with the Perl upgrade (no hard blocks).

Windows 10 Creators Update - Error 0xc1900200

My plan to install the latest Windows 10 Creators Update fell short during the weekend due to an error identified as 0xc1900200. I was using the “Windows 10 Update Assistant” to perform the upgrade, and the assistant did initially confirm that my system was ready for the upgrade.

The anonymizeme.pro scam

Referrers from a domain called anonymizeme.pro have been filling up my logs lately. I initially believed it was visitors using an anonymizing service, but alas, it’s yet another referrer scam.

Jorgee goes on a rampage

In a time-frame of just 10 seconds I got 1200 requests from the Jorgee vulnerability scanner, originating from 15 unique IP addresses. As usual it was just a blind attack probing a /24 subnet.

Gentoo Linux review - Romancing the penguin

When you’ve been running GNU/Linux distributions for an adequate number of years, I do believe you’ll eventually find yourself walking the path to Mount Gentoo in hope of joining the ancient Greybeards. Many have met their demise on the road ahead, but armed with the Gentoo handbook we’re confident that it’s within our reach.