Emojis from the world is an attempt to archive and analyze the most frequently used emojis in human communication. You can help the process by submitting your selection, don't be afraid, it's easy, it's fun and it's private, we only request non-sensitive data, which includes emojis (😅) your age and a nickname. We simply use your current IP address to gain a rough idea of your location, but we do not save it.

*Russia's incremental moves to eliminate online privacy regularly target VPNs. To 'free' itself from Google and Apple, in 2022 Russia launched its very own app store, which ironically offers dozens of VPNs. After the government recently announced the mandatory pre-installation of RuStore on tech gadgets, a draft law will outlaw censorship-circumventing VPNs on RuStore. *

Russia has been tightening the noose on VPN services for years. Many non-compliant foreign companies exited Russia when faced with a choice; compromise your customers’ privacy, or else.

Any that remained were required to submit to state regulation, cooperate fully with the authorities, while ensuring that a massive list of domains and URLs censored by the state could not be accessed.

How that has played out on the ground in practical terms isn’t clear, but everything now points to a worsening situation that will almost certainly lead to even more censorship.

Google Play and Apple’s App Store ‘Replaced’ By RuStore

As Russia’s three-day ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine enters its 588th day, everything is going in accordance with the Kremlin’s plan. Indeed, even small inconveniences linked to sanctions and other minor irritants are being transformed into new opportunities for the Russian people.

Limited access to Google Play and Apple’s App Store, for example, prompted the launch of an all-new, independent Russian app store in May 2022.

As the image above shows, ‘guaranteed secure access to applications’ is delivered under the watchful eye of the Ministry of Digital Development. So whether people are influencing on Rossgram, meeting like-minded people on Topface, or doing their thing on InTokRUS, government support shouldn’t be too far behind.

read more: https://torrentfreak.com/russia-prepares-rustore-vpn-ban-after-declaring-rustore-installation-mandatory-231004/

archive: https://archive.ph/tEBfx

The flagship Acela fleet may have to cut service because Amtrak is running out of spare parts and using unsupported software on critical components while the new fleet is nowhere close to entering service.

---

A scathing new report paints a bleak picture of Amtrak’s highly profitable Acela route: trains are running out of spare parts, the new fleet is years delayed and not even close to entering service, and the current fleet is being maintained by harvesting the corpses of old trains and running unsupported software on old circuit boards made by companies that no longer exist.

The report, released this week by the Amtrak Office of Inspector General, indicates that Amtrak may have to run less service on the Acela route from Washington D.C. to Boston via New York.. It calls into question the agency's ability to buy new trains while keeping to a schedule, even as it is in the midst of its most expensive train orders in history to replace a huge swath of the existing fleet thanks to an injection of funds from the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Act.

In 2016, Amtrak bought 28 new train sets from Alstom to replace the current Acela fleet, which is now 25 years old. The train order, which cost $2.5 billion in total (including upgraded rail yards and maintenance facilities) and have a larger capacity than the current fleet and can go 10 mph faster, were supposed to enter service starting in 2021. That never happened.

According to the Amtrak OIG report, Alsom has made 12 of the train sets as well as 22 of the 28 café cars, but they all have defects, including windows that shatter “spontaneously.” But the report notes it is common for new train sets to have defects.

Alstom spokesperson Clifford Cole said in a statement, “We are surprised with the so-called ‘defects’ that the OIG report identifies” and added that the “modifications” Amtrak has requested “are in no way in the critical path of completion of this project.”

The bigger problem that is causing the years of delay has to do with the way new trains are tested before entering service. The new Acela fleet uses a tilt-technology familiar to anyone who has ridden high-speed rail in Europe or Asia that allows the trains to round bends at more extreme angles. Because this is the first fleet to use that technology in the U.S., the Federal Railroad Administration has stringent testing requirements to ensure it is safe. This includes the use of advanced computer modeling before running the trains on the tracks.

According to the Amtrak OIG report, the computer model is the source of the hold-up. Alstom built most of the trains before the model was ready and the FRA still has not approved it. The most recent model submitted to the FRA in July, the 14th attempt, was in some ways worse than previous models, according to the report. Until the FRA validates the model, the trains cannot move forward with real-world testing, much less be put into service.

The report is critical of Amtrak and Alstom for allowing the trains to be built before the model was complete, as well as for not allowing Department of Transportation officials to view the model’s source code to help Alstom get it into shape. Alstom has declined to do so citing trade secrets, according to the report.

Cole, the Alstom spokesperson, said the company is “the world leader in high-speed trains” with 2,300 such trains in service with Alstom parts and technology. Cole said the company is working closely with Amtrak to get them into service. Cole disputed that it is unusual to build trains before the validation of the testing model.

The Amtrak OIG paints a dim picture of Acela service in the coming years. Amtrak’s latest announcement said the new trains would enter service in 2024, but the report implies that is unlikely (the subtitle of the report includes the phrase “Additional Delays and Cost Increases are Likely”). In an addendum to the report, Amtrak management said it agreed with the report’s findings and recommendations.

Moreover, the current Acela fleet is being maintained with spare parts harvested from old trains. Some of the companies that made parts that go into the current fleet no longer exist. The software used to run the train control system on the current Acela fleet is from the mid-1990s and the circuit board that runs the software was made by a company that no longer exists. Delays and trip unreliability are likely to increase as these fleets are duct-taped together while the new, untested fleet sits in the Philadelphia station rail yard.

link: https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7zpgv/a-computer-model-is-causing-years-of-delays-for-amtraks-new-high-speed-trains-scathing-audit-finds

This article describes how to setup keyboard shortcuts in QubesOS so that you can temporarily disarm (pause) the BusKill laptop kill cord.

This allows the user to, for example, go to the bathroom without causing their computer to shutdown or self-destruct.

This is a guide that builds on part one: A Laptop Kill Cord for QubesOS (1/2). Before reading this, you should already be familiar with how to setup udev rules for BusKill on QubesOS.

1. A Laptop Kill Cord for QubesOS (1/2)
2. Disarm BusKill in QubesOS (2/2)

ⓘ Note: This post is adapted from its original article on Tom Hocker's blog.

What is BusKill?

What if someone literally steals your laptop while you're working with classified information inside a Whonix DispVM? They'd also be able to recover data from previous DispVMs--as Disposable VM's rootfs virtual files are not securely shredded after your DispVM is destroyed.

Are you a security researcher, journalist, or intelligence operative that works in QubesOS--exploiting Qubes' brilliant security-through-compartimentalization to keep your data safe? Do you make use of Whonix Disposable VMs for your work? Great! This post is for you.

I'm sure your QubesOS laptop has Full Disk Encryption and you're using a strong passphrase. But what if someone literally steals your laptop while you're working with classified information inside a Whonix DispVM? Not only will they get access to all of your AppVM's private data and the currently-running Whonix DispVM's data, but there's a high chance they'd be able to recover data from previous DispVMs--as Disposable VM's rootfs virtual files (volatile.img) are not securely shredded after your DispVM is destroyed by Qubes!

Let's say you're a journalist, activist, whistleblower, or a human rights worker in an oppressive regime. Or an intelligence operative behind enemy lines doing research or preparing a top-secret document behind a locked door. What do you do to protect your data, sources, or assets when the secret police suddenly batter down your door? How quickly can you actually act to shutdown your laptop and shred your RAM and/or FDE encryption keys?

Watch the BusKill Explainer Video for more info youtube.com/v/qPwyoD_cQR4

BusKill utilizes a magnetic trip-wire that tethers your body to your laptop. If you suddenly jump to your feet or fall off your chair (in response to the battering ram crashing through your door) or your laptop is ripped off your table by a group of armed thugs, the data bus' magnetic connection will be severed. This event causes a configurable trigger to execute.

The BusKill trigger can be anything from:

1. locking your screen or
2. shutting down the computer or
3. initiating a self-destruct sequence

While our last post described how to setup such a system in QubesOS with BusKill, this post will describe how to add keyboard shortcuts to arm & disarm the dead man switch (eg so you can go to the bathroom).

Disclaimer

This guide contains experimental files, commands, and software. The information contained in this article may or may not lead to corruption or total permanent deletion of some or all of your data. We've done our best to carefully guide the user so they know the risks of each BusKill trigger, but we cannot be responsible for any data loss that has occurred as a result of following this guide.

The contents of this guide is provided openly and is licensed under the CC-BY-SA license. The software included in this guide is licensed under the GNU GPLv3 license. All content here is consistent with the limitations of liabilities outlined in its respective licenses.

We highly recommend that any experiments with the scripts included in this article are used exclusively on a disposable machine containing no valuable data.

If data loss is a concern for you, then leave now and do not proceed with following this guide. You have been warned.

Release Note

Also be aware that, due to the risks outlined above, BusKill will not be released with this "self-destruct" trigger.

If you purchase a BusKill cable, it will only ship with non-destructive triggers that lock the screen or shutdown the computer. Advanced users can follow guides to add additional destructive triggers, such as the one described in this post, but they should do so at their own risk--taking carefully into consideration all of the warnings outlined above and throughout this article.

Again, if you buy a BusKill cable, the worst that can happen is your computer will abruptly shutdown.

Assumptions

This guide necessarily makes several assumptions outlined below.

sys-usb

In this guide, we assume that your QubesOS install has a USB-Qube named 'sys-usb' for handling USB events on behalf of dom0.

If you decided to combine your USB and networking Qubes at install time, then replace all references in this guide for 'sys-usb' to 'sys-net'.

If you decided to run your 'sys-usb' VM as a DispoableVM at install time, then replace all references in this guide for 'sys-usb' its Disposable TemplateVM (eg 'fedora-36-dvm').

..And if you chose not to isolate your USB devices, then may god help you.

Udev Device Matching

BusKill in Linux uses udev to detect when the USB's cable is severed. The exact udev rule that you use in the files below will depend on the drive you choose to use in your BusKill cable.

In this guide, we identify our BusKill-specific drive with the 'ENV{ID_MODEL}=="Micromax_A74"' udev property. You should replace this property with one that matches your BusKill-specific drive.

To determine how to query your USB drive for device-specific identifiers, see Introducing BusKill: A Kill Cord for your Laptop. Note that the `udevadm monitor --environment --udev` command should be run in the 'sys-usb' Qube.

ⓘ Note: If you'd prefer to buy a BusKill cable than make your own, you can buy one fully assembled here.

QubesOS Version

This guide was written for QubesOS v4.1.

[user@dom0 ~]$ cat /etc/redhat-release Qubes release 4.1.2 (R4.1)
[user@dom0 ~]$

BusKill Files

This section will describe what files should be created and where.

Due to the design of QubesOS, it takes a bit of mental gymnastics to understand what we're doing and why. It's important to keep in mind that, in QubesOS

1. The keyboard and UI are configured in 'dom0'
2. USB devices (like the BusKill device) are routed to the 'sys-usb' VM
3. dom0 has the privilege to execute scripts inside other VMs (eg 'sys-usb')
4. By design, VMs should *not* be able to send arbitrary commands to be executed in dom0
5. ...but via the qubes-rpc, we can permit some VMs (eg 'sys-usb') to execute a script in dom0 (though for security reasons, ideally such that no data/input is sent from the less-trusted VM to dom0 -- other than the name of the script)

Due to the constraints listed above:

1. We'll be configuring the disarm button as keyboard shortcut in dom0
2. We'll be saving and executing the 'buskill-disarm.sh' script in 'sys-usb' (because these scripts manipulate our udev rules)
3. The keyboard shortcut in dom0 will actually be executing the above script in 'sys-usb'

sys-usb

If you followed our previous guide to setting-up BusKill in QubesOS, then you should already have a file in 'sys-usb' at '/rw/config/buskill.rules'. You may even have modified it to trigger a LUKS Self-Destruct on removal of your BusKill device.

Because you're now experimenting with a new setup, let's go ahead and wipe out that old file with a new one that just executes a soft-shutdown. You might need some days to get used to the new disarm procedure, and you probably don't want to suddenly loose all your data due to an accidental false-positive!

Execute the following on your 'sys-usb' Qube:

mv /rw/config/buskill.rules /rw/config/buskill.rules.bak.`date "+%Y%m%d_%H%M%S"`
cat << EOF | sudo tee /rw/config/buskill.rules
################################################################################
# File:    sys-usb:/etc/udev/rules.d/buskill.rules -> /rw/config/buskill.rules
# Purpose: Add buskill rules. For more info, see: https://buskill.in/qubes-os/
# Authors: Michael Altfield 
# Created: 2020-01-02
# License: GNU GPLv3
################################################################################
ACTION=="remove", SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{ID_MODEL}=="Micromax_A74", RUN+="/usr/bin/qrexec-client-vm dom0 buskill.softShutdown"
EOF
sudo ln -s /rw/config/buskill.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/
sudo udevadm control --reload

Now, let's add a new udev '.rules' file. This one will always just lock your screen, and it's what will be put in-place when BusKill is "disarmed".

Execute the following on your 'sys-usb' Qube:

cat << EOF | sudo tee /rw/config/buskill.lock.rules
################################################################################
# File:    sys-usb:/etc/udev/rules.d/buskill.rules -> /rw/config/buskill.lock.rules
# Purpose: Just lock the screen. For more info, see: https://buskill.in/qubes-os/
# Authors: Michael Altfield 
# Created: 2023-05-10
# License: GNU GPLv3
################################################################################
ACTION=="remove", SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{ID_MODEL}=="Micromax_A74", RUN+="/usr/bin/qrexec-client-vm dom0 buskill.lock"
EOF

The careful reader will see that we're not actually disarming BusKill in the same sense as our BusKill GUI app. Indeed, what we're actually going to do is swap these two files for 30 seconds.

This way, if BusKill is armed and you remove the cable, your computer shuts-down.

But if you want to disarm, the procedure becomes:

1. Hit the "Disarm BusKill" keyboard shortcut (see below)
2. Wait for the toast popup message indicating that BusKill is now disarmed
3. Remove the cable within 30 seconds
4. Your screen locks (instead of shutting down)

Personally, I can't think of a QubesOS user that would want to leave their machine unlocked when they go to the bathroom, so I figured this approach would work better than an actual disarm.

Bonus: when you return from your break, just plug-in the BusKill cable in, and it'll already be armed (reducing the risk of user error due to forgetting to arm BusKill).

Now, let's add the actual 'buskill-disarm.sh' script to disarm BusKill:

Execute the following on your 'sys-usb' Qube:

cat << EOF | sudo tee /usr/local/bin/buskill-disarm.sh
#!/bin/bash
 
################################################################################
# File:    sys-usb:/usr/local/bin/buskill-disarm.sh
# Purpose: Temp disarm BusKill. For more info, see: https://buskill.in/qubes-os/
# Authors: Tom 
# Co-Auth: Michael Altfield 
# Created: 2023-05-10
# License: GNU GPLv3
################################################################################
 
# replace the 'shutdown' trigger with the 'lock' trigger
sudo rm /etc/udev/rules.d/buskill.rules
sudo ln -s /rw/config/buskill.lock.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/buskill.rules
sudo udevadm control --reload
 
# let the user know that BusKill is now temporarily disarmed
notify-send -t 21000 "BusKill" "Disarmed for 30 seconds" -i changes-allow
 
# wait 30 seconds
sleep 30
 
# replace the 'lock' trigger with the 'shutdown' trigger
sudo rm /etc/udev/rules.d/buskill.rules
sudo ln -s /rw/config/buskill.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/buskill.rules
sudo udevadm control --reload
notify-send -t 5000 "BusKill" "BusKill is Armed" -i changes-prevent
EOF
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/buskill-disarm.sh

dom0

If you followed our previous guide to setting-up BusKill in QubesOS, then you shouldn't need to add any files to dom0. What you do need to do is setup some keyboard shortcuts.

In the QubesOS GUI, click on the big Q "Start Menu" in the top-left of your XFCE panel to open the Applications menu. Navigate to 'System Tools' and click Keyboard

Click the “Q” to open the QubesOS Application Menu	Click System Tools -> Keyboard

Click the 'Application Shortcuts' Tab and then click the '+ Add' button on the bottom-left of the window.

Click the “Application Shortcuts” tab to add a Keyboard Shortcut in Qubes	Click the “Add” Button to add a new Keyboard Shortcut in Qubes

In the 'Command' input field, type the following

qvm-run sys-usb buskill-disarm.sh

The above command will execute a command in 'dom0' that will execute a command in 'sys-usb' that will execute the 'buskill-disarm.sh' script that we created above.

After typing the command to be executed when the keyboard shortcut is pressed, click the "OK" button

Now click "OK" and, when prompted, type Ctrl+Shift+D (or whatever keyboard shortcut you want to bind to "Disarming BusKill").

Type "Ctrl+Shift+D" or whatever keyboard shortcut you want to trigger BusKill to be disarmed for 30 seconds

You should now have a keyboard shortcut binding for disarming BusKill!

Test It!

At this point, you can test your new (temporary) BusKill Disarm functionality by:

1. Plugging-in your BusKill cable
2. Typing Ctrl+Shift+D
3. Waiting for the toast popup message to appear indicating that BusKill is disarmed for 30 seconds
4. Unplugging your BusKill cable

Your machine should lock, not shutdown.

After hitting the keyboard shortcut to disarm BusKill, you have 30 seconds to remove the cable

After 30 seconds, return to your computer and test the normal "arm" functionality:

1. Plug-in your BusKill cable
2. Unlock your screen
3. Unplug your BusKill cable

Your computer should shutdown, not lock.

30 seconds after hitting the keyboard shortcut, BusKill will arm itself

Troubleshooting

Is unplugging your USB device doing nothing? Having other issues?

See the Troubleshooting section in our original guide to using BusKill on QubesOS.

Limitations/Improvements

Security is porous. All software has bugs. Nothing is 100% secure. For more limitations to using BusKill on QubesOS, see the Limitations section in our original guide to using BusKill on QubesOS.

Buy a BusKill Cable

We look forward to continuing to improve the BusKill software and making BusKill more accessible this year. If you want to help, please consider purchasing a BusKill cable for yourself or a loved one. It helps us fund further development, and you get your own BusKill cable to keep you or your loved ones safe.

You can also buy a BusKill cable with bitcoin, monero, and other altcoins from our BusKill Store's .onion site.

Stay safe,
The BusKill Team
https://www.buskill.in/
http://www.buskillvampfih2iucxhit3qp36i2zzql3u6pmkeafvlxs3tlmot5yad.onion

New Gmail rules enforced starting in February should reduce spam, make it easier to unsubscribe from bulk senders, and close email security loopholes exploited by cybercriminals.

Four Tesla drivers who sued the company over its allegedly deceptive "self-driving" claims will have to go to arbitration instead of pursuing a class action, a judge ruled.

Tokyo-based start-up Tsubame Industries has developed a 4.5-metre-tall (14.8-feet), four-wheeled robot that looks like "Mobile Suit Gundam" from the wildly popular Japanese animation series, and it can be yours for $3 million.

Apple has acknowledged user complaints that iPhone 15 and 15 Pro phones are overheating, reports Forbes, but said that contrary to speculation, it has nothing to do with the phone’s hardware design. Forbes noted an update to Instagram has already rolled out with version 302, released September 27th, to address some of the issues.

Scientists are learning more about “sesquiterpenes" vapors made from trees.