BitFolk Users December 2016

users@mailman.bitfolk.com

29 participants
13 discussions

Dear Entropy service users, what software uses /dev/random?

by Andy Smith

Hi, If you do not use BitFolk's Entropy service and have no interest in doing so then this email will be of little interest to you can be safely ignored. If you haven't heard about the Entropy service before, please see: https://tools.bitfolk.com/wiki/Entropy If you *do* use the Entropy service though, I'm interested to know what software you have that actually uses /dev/random (and not /dev/urandom). Some background to this question: To provide the Entropy service we use hardware entropy generators, currently exclusively a pair of EntropyKeys manufactured by a UK company called Simtec Electronics Ltd. Despite the fact that these were extremely popular little devices (compared to other fairly niche little gadgets), Simtec always had a supply problem and then Simtec imploded as a company, so as far as I know these are now impossible to obtain, the IP is lost forever etc. Although I have one spare EntropyKey ready to put in service should one of the two in service ever die (I've not experienced that yet), that left me slightly worried as to what I'd do if I needed to get more. Then I saw the OneRNG kickstarter, and decided to pledge. So now I have 5 of (the internal USB version of) these: http://onerng.info/ I've not yet gone any further than verifying that they keep the entropy pool full on the machine they're plugged into, but that's good enough for now. Could be a decade before one of my existing EntropyKeys dies. I have since heard that this device proved far more popular than its manufacturer expected (sense a theme?) and they're now extremely difficult to get hold of because they need to get a new batch made in China. I've had multiple people contacting me on the basis of a tweet I did about getting these, asking me to sell them mine (which I would, but they didn't want internal USB). The point I'm trying to make here is that the world of hardware random number generators is not one with reliable supply lines, unless you want to spend a fortune on some black box. So when I came across: http://www.2uo.de/myths-about-urandom/ I was sad that the nerdery that is the Entropy service may be misguided, but also happy with the possibility that I might never have to source a hardware RNG again. Let's just take the argument posited by the article, that all (Linux) software should just learn to love /dev/urandom¹, as true. If you don't agree with this claim, you are disagreeing with some pretty big names in crypto. The Hacker News commentary on the article may also prove of interest: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10149019 At the very least, I feel the Entropy article on the BitFolk Wiki needs an update in light of this. To justify the service's existence, if nothing else. Going further, the question becomes, well, what software is there in existence that forces use of /dev/random with no configuration that would allow otherwise? Because even if we agree that all software *should* be using urandom, if some popular software *refuses* to without recompile, then we're still going to have to provide an Entropy service, because doing so is easier than running non-packaged software. So Entropy service users, what have you got that uses /dev/random? Cheers, Andy ¹ A more correct summary of it is probably, "urandom is fine all the time except for on initial boot when a small amount of entropy from outside the CSPRNG is desirable." On shutdown all fairly modern Linuxes save the current entropy pool to the filesystem and load it up from there on boot, so it's only essential on first boot. -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

6 years, 10 months

How to handle unresponsive customers with issues that cannot be ignored

by Andy Smith

Hi, As you may be aware there are a few things that we (or third party services on our behalf) scan for on our own network. A non-exhaustive list of these things are: - Open SNMP servers - Open DNS resolvers - Open portmapper services - Open MongoDB / Memcached / Elasticsearch / Redis - Open Remote Desktop - Open multicast DNS (Avahi) - Open TFTP server - SSLv3/Poodle vulnerable services …and so on. Where these can only negatively affect the operator of the service (e.g. SSLv3/Poodle or an open MongoDB), we are content to just email you forever. However, many of these problems are worth scanning for because they are easily and frequently used to attack other hosts. For example, any "chatty" UDP protocol like portmapper or DNS can receive spoofed requests which will amplify, making for a DDoS on a third party. So, when we email customers about these it's because we need them fixed. Unfortunately some customers are either not receiving these emails or are happy to ignore them, for months at a time, basically until we open a support ticket with them and ask why they aren't dealing with it. This is taking up too much human time. "We did not receive the email" is now no longer a valid excuse because there is provision in our web panel for an emergency/alternate contact: https://panel.bitfolk.com/account/contacts/#toc-address-book If we've been emailing a customer for weeks about this then we will have also sent a copy to the emergency/alternate contact at some point. So, I would like your opinions on how you think we should deal with this. Two proposals I can think of are: a) After at least 21 days of sending email alerts to the main contact and the emergency contact and receiving no response, a firewall rule will be added to block the problematic service and an invoice will be raised for a managed firewall service, which will be a monthly recurring charge. This will be quite expensive. Or: b) After at least 21 days of sending email alerts to the main contact and the emergency contact and receiving no response, the VPS's networking will be suspended. Networking will be re-enabled when contact is re-established and a plan for securing the problem service is agreed by both BitFolk and the customer. I have already broached this question on IRC and basically no one was in favour of (a) because they did not feel that surprise invoices would go down well. If you have other suggestions for how it should be handled I would be happy to read and consider them. Ideas that involve either not dealing with the problematic services or that aren't suitable for automation are not likely to be acceptable though. Cheers, Andy -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

7 years, 11 months

What should I back up?

by Paul Dart

Hi, I have signed up for the Bitfolk backup service and have to admit I didn't spend too much time thinking what I should back up. I'm interested in a survey of what people choose. Personally I've got: /home/ - because it obviously has files I want there /etc/ - because there are config files in there I don't want to have to recreate /root/ - similar to /home, although I could probably move that /srv/ - this is from when I migrated from a previous provider and I haven't moved it elsewhere. /var/ - I think this is probably the cause of the problem. I initially thought /var/log would be useful and things like that. Do I need all of /var? Probably not. Is there anything obvious I've missed? Do many people just do /? Thanks, Paul

7 years, 11 months

Xmas greetings

by john lewis

Just want to say thank you to Andy for taking care of our interest throughout the year and to say hello to all the former HantsLUG guys and gals who are still around, quite a few using bitfolk. -- John Lewis Debian & the GeneWeb genealogical data server

7 years, 11 months

Backups documentation updated and moved to wiki

by Andy Smith

Hello, The documentation for BitFolk's backups service was really in need of an update so I rewrote it and moved it to the wiki here: https://tools.bitfolk.com/wiki/Backups If you use other services to backup your VPS then please feel free to add them to the section at the end: https://tools.bitfolk.com/wiki/Backups#Alternative_backup_strategies If you do something more than "just use Foo service" to backup your VPS and feel like writing up a separate article then linking to it from there would also be welcome. Cheers, Andy -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting _______________________________________________ announce mailing list announce(a)lists.bitfolk.com https://lists.bitfolk.com/mailman/listinfo/announce

7 years, 11 months

Erroneous alerts regarding backup3.bitfolk.com

by Andy Smith

Hi, A bunch of alerts were just sent out regarding backup3.bitfolk.com. I am doing some work on this host and forgot to disable alerts. There is no need for concern. Apologies for the confusion. Cheers, Andy -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting _______________________________________________ announce mailing list announce(a)lists.bitfolk.com https://lists.bitfolk.com/mailman/listinfo/announce

7 years, 12 months

Re: [bitfolk] How to handle unresponsive customers with issues that cannot be ignored

by C. Scott Ananian

I think just turning the dropdowns into radio buttons (so all are visible immediately) would solve the immediate UX problem. --scott On Dec 19, 2016 9:32 AM, "Richard Dignall" <richard(a)dignall.co.uk> wrote: On Mon, Dec 19, 2016, at 02:30 PM, Roger Light wrote: > It makes sense to me now that you've said that. I think it's confusing > as it is. For those people with only a single person on the account I > imagine there is a tendency to ignore the "add another contact" option > because I'm already the contact and so there should be no need. This. At some point I probably clicked to add a new contact, saw that there were no obvious fields that linked to anything different that wasn't in the main contact, and clicked Cancel. _______________________________________________ users mailing list users(a)lists.bitfolk.com https://lists.bitfolk.com/mailman/listinfo/users

8 years

Vulnerability scanning and timescales for action

by Andy Smith

Hi, There was a consultation earlier regarding what to do about customers who do not react to the alerts we send about serious security issues we have found during regular scans of our IP space: http://lists.bitfolk.com/lurker/message/20161215.152008.2ee18732.en.html Dealing with that was becoming quite a time sink and I was also getting concerned about potentially inconsistent handling of these issues when not working to any kind of documented process. The consensus seemed to prefer the idea of network suspension after 21 days, so this has now been documented along with a bit more information about the things we (or partners) scan for: https://tools.bitfolk.com/wiki/Vulnerability_scanning This will now allow for some more automation. I've also updated the Terms and Conditions page: https://bitfolk.com/policy/terms.html with a new paragraph that points to that page: BitFolk and its partners regularly scan BitFolk's IP space for well-known vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, some of which are serious enough that BitFolk will insist that The Customer fixes them within a reasonable timescale. Although the paragraph above that one is the usual blanket "reserve the right to suspend service", so perhaps technically not necessary to list particular things, it does however seem like useful info to have there. Normally we try to have changes to T's&C's not take effect for 30 days but I don't see this as a change, since we have always used the "reserve the right to suspend service" clause if necessary with things like this. So if it is unfortunately necessary to suspend someone's network we won't be waiting until 30+21 days to do it. And happily there currently isn't anyone who's been receiving alerts for anything like that long. If you have any questions or feel the article (or process) could be improved please let us know. Cheers, Andy -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting "The electric guitar - like making love - is much improved by a little feedback, completely ruined by too much." — The League Against Tedium _______________________________________________ announce mailing list announce(a)lists.bitfolk.com https://lists.bitfolk.com/mailman/listinfo/announce

8 years

Backups will now be disabled when you go over quota

by Andy Smith

Hi, If you don't use BitFolk's backup service then you can ignore the rest of this email. For a very long time we have allowed customer backups to go past the quota and still continue working, arranging at a later time to fix that situation (by the customer asking for some backed up data to be deleted or else ordering more storage for backups). This is now changing so that backups will stop happening once the quota is exceeded. Nagios alerts have always been sent out as WARNING at 95% of quota and CRITICAL at 99% of quota. There is also a Nagios check for age of backups and that will start to fire when there has been no successful backup for a certain amount of time¹. Those whose backups get suspended for being over quota will start to receive that one. So, if you are currently receiving these alerts you do need to do something about it. Customers who are already over their backup quota at the moment have already been contacted via support ticket, but in future we may leave it down to you to get in touch. Cheers, Andy ¹ The time scales for those alerts depend on the backup schedule in use. For those having a backup run every 4 hours (the default) it's a WARNING after 10 hours and CRITICAL after 24 hours. -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting _______________________________________________ announce mailing list announce(a)lists.bitfolk.com https://lists.bitfolk.com/mailman/listinfo/announce

8 years

Upcoming reboots for security fixes prior to 13 December

by Andy Smith

Hi, Rather disappointingly there's been another round of security advisories for Xen, some of which affect the configuration in use at BitFolk: http://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/ So unfortunately that means another round of "patch and reboot everything" for us. We will send out direct emails informing you of a two hour window in which the work affecting your VPS is going to take place, but that won't be sent for a week or so as testing of the patches will be necessary first. I am going to try to get a checkbox added to the panel website so that those of you who are brave enough to try it can indicate that you'd prefer for your VPS to be suspended and restored rather than shutdown and booted. Cheers, Andy -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting _______________________________________________ announce mailing list announce(a)lists.bitfolk.com https://lists.bitfolk.com/mailman/listinfo/announce

8 years

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BitFolk Users December 2016