I suppose I would avoid connecting to untrusted networks, or avoid opening print dialogs while on them, or uninstall CUPS until a fix is available.

That refers to the fact that printer advertisements can contain lies: When you see a familiar printer name appear on a network, it could always be an impostor secretly pointing to the address of a malicious device.

So my first advice stands: Avoid interaction with untrusted or potentially compromised print servers.

To be clear, when I say “interaction”, I don’t just mean printing to them. I mean any interaction at all. Even just browsing a network for printers could potentially mean your system contacts the devices at the advertised addresses, and receives data from them. This Qualys report doesn’t make clear whether this kind of interaction is safe, so I have to assume for now that it is not.

Exploitation involves sending a malicious UDP packet to port 631 on the target, directing it to an attacker-controlled IPP server.

Okay, so at least until this is patched, it would be a good idea to shut down any CUPS-related process that’s listening on port 631, and avoid interaction with untrusted or potentially compromised print servers.

Either of these commands will list such processes:

$ sudo lsof -i :631

$ sudo fuser -v 631/tcp 631/udp

I don’t want to diminish the urgency of this vulnerability, but it is worth noting that “affecting all GNU/Linux systems” does not mean that every affected system is actually running the vulnerable code. Some installations don’t run print services and don’t ever communicate with printers.

Also, I suspect that the author’s use of “GNU” in that warning is misleading, potentially giving a false sense of security. (Sadly, a certain unfortunate meme has led many people to think that all Linux systems are GNU systems, and the author appears to be among them.) I don’t see any reason to think musl builds of CUPS are immune, for example, so I don’t assume my Alpine systems are safe just because they are not GNU/Linux.

Good question. Please see my follow-up comment.

Not putting your WiFi password in would absolutely be reliable.

No, it would not.

I’d love to hear your ideas on how they’d remotely break into your WiFi Network

They wouldn’t, of course.

However, your network is not the only network in the world, and WiFi is not the only transport in the world. Neighbors exist. Open guest networks exist. Drive-by and fly-by networks exist. Mesh networks exist. Bluetooth, LoRa, cellular, etc. etc. etc. Maybe you live on an isolated mountain top where these things are unlikely to reach you (at least until satellite network links become smaller and cheaper), but even that is not absolute, and most of us don’t.

Unless you disassemble your TV and examine all the components within, and know what they do, it could have any of these capabilities.

Also, given how prevalent multi-network support is becoming in electronics integration, it is not unusual at all for hardware functionality to be dormant at first but available for activation later.

I’d love for you not to be adversarial.

Friendly reminder that gaming console monitors, computer monitors, projectors, dumb TVs, and commercial displays exist.

Yes, I could hack a smart TV to disable its networking capabilities. (Merely withholding my wifi password is not reliable.) But that would still be showing the manufacturers that I find spyware TVs acceptable, and supporting the production of those models.

Also, this would be a good time to pressure our legislators into criminalizing this nonsense.

It’s disappointing to see that a dozen or so people decided to hit your post with drive-by downvotes, rather than using their words to express themselves in a way that actually contributes to this community.

Your question is a legitimate one, especially at a time when Windows is increasingly bloated and invasive, spyware is out of control, and Linux is increasingly a viable alternative even in certain tough areas like games. I just wish you had elaborated on why you singled out Ubuntu when several other widely-supported Linux distributions exist.

If those were my only two options, I would pick Ubuntu over Windows, no contest. I would replace its default desktop with KDE Plasma (or just choose the Kubuntu variant in the first place), rip out as much of Snap as I could, update the kernel, and migrate to a distro that I like better whenever I was able.

For what it’s worth, Debian Stable with a few hand-picked backports and flatpacks suits me well, mainly for gaming and software development. (I’m a bit of an outlier, though: having my system be low-maintenance is more important to me than always having the latest features in every app, and I’ve been known to make my own debian packages and flatpaks when something I want isn’t ready-made.) Linux Mint, Pop_OS, and Arch Linux are also popular. There are many more.

All desktop environments are fancy compared to a simple window manager.

threat actors backed by Beijing broke into a “handful” of U.S. internet service providers

Which ISPs?

Also, it would Be(e) better to link the original article (archived here), rather than this secondary reporting based on it.

Our capitulation to the virus is a combination of a population where most are now many months or years from their last vaccine dose, and that vaccine dose was in any case poorly cross-protective for the very distinct current variants.

I think most people don’t realize just how important that first part is. Many seem to believe a dose will keep them safe (and no longer dangerous to others) for at least a year, but that’s a mistake. Even our best Covid vaccines don’t protect for years or decades like the vaccines we’re accustomed to from childhood.

Immunity from these new shots wanes rapidly, reaching less than 20% effectiveness after just 6 months.

Which KDE Neon download contains the current 6.2 beta?

(I ask because last time I tried to test a beta, none of them did.)

No, it does not. The closest it comes is allowing a PC to take control of a mobile client on the same local network. That might be a convenient way to type with a full-sized keyboard if you have both devices in the same place, but it is not what people mean when talking about multi-device support.

https://archive.ph/HcVVC

I didn’t know that; thanks for sharing.

(BTW, I think you meant wreaking havoc.)

I don’t care how they estimate their cost in dollars. I think the cost to all of us in environmental impact would be more interesting.

Not to be confused with Khaaan!

SimpleX also loses messages if you don’t pick them up in time. Going on vacation for a few weeks could be problematic, for example.

Just keep in mind that any service that asks for a phone number can also disclose it.

I hope what leaves the Signal client is a hash of your phone number, rather than the number itself. They might even be using salts and expensive-to-execute key derivation functions, to mitigate brute force searches (which are otherwise easy given the relatively small search space of phone numbers). But if compelled, it would be trivial for Signal to change that behavior.

The unfortunately paradoxical thing about opt-out services is that using them requires giving out your details, and hoping that they aren’t (deliberately or accidentally) leaked.

CoreLogic defended its practices as legal, saying it’s too difficult to verify consent or anonymise personal data.

And this is what needs changing. It should not be legal for them to have it, nor for anyone to give it to them, in the first place.