Microsoft's GitHub, Mozilla, and Cloudflare have urged India to be transparent about the amendments it is making to an upcoming law that could affect swathes of companies and the way more than half a billion people access information online. From a report: In December 2018, the Indian government proposed changes to its intermediary rules that would require any service that facilitates communication between two or more users and had more than 5 million users in India to set up a local office and have a senior executive in the nation who could be held responsible for any legal issues. The proposal also suggested that any of these services must be able to take down questionable content in within 24 hours and share the user data in within 72 hours of request. Technology giants such as Facebook, Google have so far enjoyed what is known as "safe harbor" laws. The laws, currently applicable in the U.S. under the Communications Decency Act and India through its 2000 Information Technology Act, say that tech platforms won't be held liable for the things their users share on the platform.

Several organizations have shared feedback and expressed concerned about the suggested changes in India's intermediary rules. In an open letter addressed to India's IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Tuesday, GitHub, Mozilla, and Cloudflare requested the Indian government to be more transparent about the final amendments it has drafted for the upcoming law. The Indian government has said previously that it would submit the final draft of the proposal to the nation's apex Supreme Court by January 15. But one of the concerning issues with the proposal is that nobody -- except for the government officials -- knows what is in the final draft.

Mozilla today launched Firefox 72 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Firefox 72 includes fingerprinting scripts blocked by default, less annoying notifications, and Picture-in-Picture video on macOS and Linux. There isn't too much else here, as Mozilla has now transitioned Firefox releases to a four-week cadence (from six to eight weeks).

Mozilla has announced that it's rolling out changes under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) to all Firefox users worldwide. ZDNet reports: The CCPA, known as America's toughest privacy legislation, came into effect on January 1, 2020, offering Californian users data-protection rules better suited to today's world of data collection. Much like Europe's GDPR, the CCPA gives consumers the right to know what personal information is collected about them and to be able to access it. While the law technically only applies to data processed about residents in California, Microsoft has already announced that it will roll out CCPA rights to all its U.S. users so they can control their data.

The Californian proposal wasn't popular among Silicon Valley tech giants, but Mozilla notes it was one of the few companies to endorse CCPA from the outset. Mozilla has now outlined the key change it's made to Firefox, which will ensure CCPA regulations benefit all its users worldwide. The move would seem to make business sense too, saving Mozilla from having to ship a California-only version of Firefox and another version for the rest of the world. The main change it's introducing is allowing users to request that Mozilla deletes Firefox telemetry data stored on its servers. That data doesn't include web history, which Mozilla doesn't collect anyway, but it does include data about how many tabs were opened and browser session lengths. The new control will ship in the next version of Firefox due out on January 7, which will include a feature to request desktop telemetry data be deleted directly from the browser.

Long-time Slashdot reader twocows writes: Hyperbola GNU/Linux, a FSF-approved distribution of GNU/Linux, has declared their intent to fork OpenBSD and become HyperbolaBSD..."
The news came earlier this week in a roadmap announcement promising "a completely new OS derived from several BSD implementations" (though Hyperbola was originally based on Arch snapshots and Debian development).

"This was not an easy decision to make, but we wish to use our time and resources to create a viable alternative to the current operating system trends which are actively seeking to undermine user choice and freedom." In 2017 Hyperbola dropped its support for systemd -- but its concerns go far beyond that: This will not be a "distro", but a hard fork of the OpenBSD kernel and userspace including new code written under GPLv3 and LGPLv3 to replace GPL-incompatible parts and non-free ones.

Reasons for this include:

- Linux kernel forcing adaption of DRM, including HDCP.

- Linux kernel proposed usage of Rust (which contains freedom flaws and a centralized code repository that is more prone to cyber attack and generally requires internet access to use.)

- Linux kernel being written without security and in mind. (KSPP is basically a dead project and Grsec is no longer free software)

- Many GNU userspace and core utils are all forcing adaption of features without build time options to disable them. E.g. (PulseAudio / SystemD / Rust / Java as forced dependencies....)

HyperbolaBSD is intended to be modular and minimalist so other projects will be able to re-use the code under free license.

Long-time Slashdot reader UnderAttack writes: DNS over HTTPS has been hailed as part of a "poor mans VPN". Its use of HTTPS to send DNS queries makes it much more difficult to detect and block the use of the protocol.

But there are some kinks in the armor. Current clients, and most current DoH services, do not implement the optional passing option, which is necessary to obscure the length of the requested hostname. The length of the hostname can also be used to restrict which site a user may have access [to].

The Internet Storm Center is offering some data to show how this can be done.
Their article is by Johannes B. Ullrich, Ph.D. and Dean of Research at the SANS Technology Institute.

It notes that Firefox "seems to be the most solid DoH implementation. Firefox DoH queries look like any other Firefox HTTP2 connection except for the packet size I observed." And an open Firefox bug already notes that "With the availability of encrypted DNS transports in Firefox traffic analysis mitigations like padding are becoming relevant."

Because some internet websites unfairly block browsers from accessing their services, starting with Vivaldi 2.10, released today, the Vivaldi browser plans to disguise itself as Chrome to allow users to access websites that unfairly block them. From a report: Vivaldi will do this by modifying its default user-agent (UA) string to the UA string used by Chrome. A UA string is a piece of text that browsers send to websites when they initiate a connection. The UA String contains data about the browser type, rendering engine, and operating system. For example, a UA string for Firefox on Windows looks like this: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:71.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/71.0. UA strings have been in use since the 90s. For decades, websites have used UA agent strings to fine-tune performance and features or block outdated browsers. However, many website owners these days use UA strings to block users from accessing their sites. Some do it because they're not willing to deal with browser-specific bugs, some do it because of pettiness, while big tech companies like Google and Microsoft have done it (and continue to do it) to sabotage competitors on the browser market.

Mozilla has announced that NextDNS would be joining Cloudflare as the second DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) provider inside Firefox. From a report: The browser maker says NextDNS passed the conditions imposed by its Trusted Recursive Resolver (TRR) program, and can now be added as a second option for DoH inside Firefox. These conditions include (1) limiting the data NextDNS collects from the DoH server used by Firefox users; (2) being transparent about the data they collect; and (3) promising not to censor, filter, or block DNS traffic unless specifically requested by law enforcement.

DNS-over-HTTPS, or DoH, is a new feature that was added to Firefox last year. When enabled, it encrypts DNS traffic coming in and out of the browser. DNS traffic is not only encrypted but also moved from port 53 (for DNS traffic) to port 443 (for HTTPS traffic), effectively hiding DNS queries and replies inside the browser's normal stream of HTTPS content. This encrypted DNS traffic reaches a so-called DoH resolver. Here, the DoH traffic is decrypted and the DoH resolver makes the DNS query on the user's behalf, receives the result, encrypts it, and sends it back to the user's browser -- also disguised inside encrypted HTTPS content.

An anonymous reader quotes Mike Melanson's "This Week in Programming" column: WebAssembly is a binary instruction format for a stack-based virtual machine and this week, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) dubbed it an official web standard and the fourth language for the Web that allows code to run in the browser, joining HTML, CSS and JavaScript... With this week's news, WebAssembly has officially reached version 1.0 and is supported in the browser engines for Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer, and the Bytecode Alliance launched last month to help ensure "a WebAssembly ecosystem that is secure by default" and for bringing WebAssembly to outside-the-browser use.

Of course, not everything is 100% rosy. As pointed out by an article in The Register, WebAssembly also brings with it an increased level of obfuscation of what exactly is going on, giving it an increased ability to perform some surreptitious actions. For example, they cite one study that "found 'over 50 percent of all sites using WebAssembly apply it for malicious deeds, such as [crypto] mining and obfuscation.'" Nonetheless, with WebAssembly gaining this designation by W3C, it is, indeed, time to pay closer attention to the newly nominated Web language standard.

Mozilla announced this week that all developers of Firefox add-ons must enable a two-factor authentication (2FA) solution for their account. From a report: "Starting in early 2020, extension developers will be required to have 2FA enabled on AMO [the Mozilla Add-Ons portal]," said Caitlin Neiman, Add-ons Community Manager at Mozilla. "This is intended to help prevent malicious actors from taking control of legitimate add-ons and their users," Neiman added. When this happens, hackers can use the developers' compromised accounts to ship tainted add-on updates to Firefox users. Since Firefox add-ons have a pretty privileged position inside the browser, an attacker can use a compromised add-on to steal passwords, authentication/session cookies, spy on a user's browsing habits, or redirect users to phishing pages or malware download sites. These types of incidents are usually referred to as supply-chain attacks.

Avast, the multibillion-dollar Czech security company, doesn't just make money from protecting its 400 million users' information. It also profits in part because of sales of users' Web browsing habits and has been doing so since at least 2013. From a report: That's led to some labelling its tools "spyware," the very thing Avast is supposed to be protecting users from. Both Mozilla and Opera were concerned enough to remove some Avast tools from their add-on stores earlier this month, though the anti-virus provider says it's working with Mozilla to get its products back online. But recently appointed chief executive Ondrej Vlcek tells Forbes there's no privacy scandal here. All that user information that it sells cannot be traced back to individual users, he asserts. Here's how it works, according to Vlcek: Avast users have their Web activity harvested by the company's browser extensions. But before it lands on Avast servers, the data is stripped of anything that might expose an individual's identity, such as a name in the URL, as when a Facebook user is logged in. All that data is analysed by Jumpshot, a company that's 65%-owned by Avast, before being sold on as "insights" to customers. Those customers might be investors or brand managers.

What do those customers get? Vlcek says Jumpshot, which was initially acquired in 2013, provides "insights on how cohorts of users on the internet use the web." For instance, it could show a percentage of visitors who went from one website to another. That could be useful to anyone monitoring an advertising campaign. "Typical customers would be, for example, investors, who would be interested in how online companies are doing in terms of their new campaigns," the new Avast chief explains. Say Amazon launches a new product -- Jumpshot could determine how much interest it's getting online.

Mozilla today removed four Firefox extensions made by Avast and its subsidiary AVG after receiving credible reports that the extensions were harvesting user data and browsing histories. From a report: The four extensions are Avast Online Security, AVG Online Security, Avast SafePrice, and AVG SafePrice. The first two are extensions that show warnings when navigating to known malicious or suspicious sites, while the last two are extensions for online shoppers, showing price comparisons, deals, and available coupons. Mozilla removed the four extensions from its add-ons portal after receiving a report from Wladimir Palant, the creator of the AdBlock Plus ad-blocking extension. Palant analyzed the Avast Online Security and AVG Online Security extensions in late October and found that the two were collecting much more data than they needed to work -- including detailed user browsing history, a practice prohibited by both Mozilla and Google.

Mozilla today released Firefox 71 for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS. Firefox 71 includes Lockwise password manager improvements, Enhanced Tracking Protection tweaks, and Picture-in-Picture video on Windows.

Under Project Verona, Microsoft is working to make Windows 10 more secure by integrating Mozilla-developed Rust for low-level Windows components. "'Memory safety' is the term for coding frameworks that help protect memory space from being abused by malware," reports ZDNet. "Project Verona at Microsoft is meant to progress the company's work here to close off this attack vector." From the report: Microsoft's Project Verona could turn out to be just an experiment that leads nowhere, but the company has progressed far enough to have detailed some of its ideas through the UK-based non-profit Knowledge Transfer Network. Matthew Parkinson, a Microsoft researcher from the Cambridge Computer Lab in the UK who's dedicated to "investigating memory management for managed programming languages," gave a talk last week focusing on what the company is doing to address these memory issues.

In the talk, Parkinson discussed the work Microsoft has done with MemGC, which is short for Memory Garbage Collector, for Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge. MemGC addressed vulnerabilities in the standard browser feature known as a Document Object Model (DOM), a representation of the data used by browsers to interpret web pages. Google's elite Project Zero hackers were impressed with Microsoft's MemGC after canvassing major browsers. [...] The other class of bugs Microsoft is working on to address relates to uninitialized memory in a way that also doesn't kill performance. [...] Parkinson said Microsoft is rewriting some "targeted" components in Rust. His talk focused on language design and compartmentalization. "If we want compartments, and to carve up the legacy bits of our code so [attackers'] exploit code can't get out, what do we need in the language design that can help with that?" This is Project Verona and Parkinson said it was the first time he'd discussed the project, which will be made open source "soon". It is a new language for what Microsoft is calling "safe infrastructure programming." "The challenge for Microsoft is dealing with the 'application spectrum,' which spans from C# for desktop apps through to C and C# for Exchange, ASP.NET, Azure, and device drivers, to deep Windows components like memory management and boot loaders and the Windows kernel hardware abstraction layer (HAL)," the report says.

"The ownership model in Verona is based on groups of objects, not like in Rust where it's based on a single object," said Parkinson. "In C++ you get pointers and it's based on objects and it's pretty much per object. But that isn't how I think about data and grammar. I think about a data structure as a collection of objects. And that collection of objects as a lifetime. So by taking ownership at the level of ownership of objects, then we get much closer to the level of abstraction that people are using and it gives us the ability to build data structures without going outside of safety."

"Be Smart. Shop Safe," warns Mozilla's annual buyer's guide for secure connected products. Based on their conversations with developers and dozens of privacy experts, they've awarded smiley faces with different expressions to rate products from "Not Creepy" up to "Super Creepy".

"While the variety of smart devices on offer is rapidly increasing, so are the number of products that pay no heed to even basic security measures..." notes the editor of Mozilla's Internet Health Report. "Now that more and more companies collect personal data about you, including audio and video of your family, and sensitive biometric and health information, like your heart rate and sleeping habits, it's worrying that more are not upfront about the privacy and security of their products."

Or, as The Next Web writes, "god bless Mozilla for having our lazy backs." And, well, if you're a user of any Ring cameras⦠we're sorry. Basically, there are five things that every product must do:

- Have automatic security updates, so they're protected against the newest threats

- Use encryption, meaning bad actors can't just snoop on your data

- Include a vulnerability management pathway, which makes reporting bugs easy and, well, possible

- Require users to change the default password (if applicable), because that makes devices far harder to access

- Privacy policies -- ones that relate to the product specifically, and aren't just generic

Doesn't seem too much to ask right...? Well, of the 76 devices Mozilla selected, 60 of them passed this test... And what devices didn't meet the criteria?

There were nine of them overall (including the Artie 3000 Coding Robot and the Wemo Wifi Smart Dimmer), but the real loser in this test is the Amazon-owned Ring. Three of the company's products (which is effectively all of their major devices) didn't meet Mozilla's criteria. Yes, that's right, the Ring Video Doorbell, Ring Indoor Cam, and Ring Security Cam all didn't meet minimum standards for security.... The main reasons for not meeting this criteria is due Ring's history with poor encryption policies, and vulnerability management.
To be fair, Nest Cam's Indoor and Outdoor Security Cameras and Google Home also fell into the "Very Creepy" category -- and so did Amazon's Echo smart speakers. (The Amazon Echo Show even made it into Mozilla's highest "Super Creepy" category, where the only other product was Facebook Portal.) But at least the Nest Hello Video doorbell only appears in Mozilla's "Somewhat Creepy" category.

"Just because something on your wishlist this year connects to the internet, doesn't mean you have to compromise on privacy and security..." warns the editor of Mozilla's Internet Health Report. And in addition, "Fitness trackers designed for kids as young as 4 years old, raise questions about what we are teaching our children about how much digital surveillance in their lives is normal." Going forward, they suggest that we push for better privacy regulations -- and that whenever we rate products on performance and price, we should also rate them on their privacy and security.

But in the meantime, as Mozilla explained on Twitter, "Friends don't let friends buy creepy gifts."

"Mozilla is no longer fighting for market share of its browser: it is fighting for the future of the web," writes the Guardian, citing Mozilla Project co-founder Mitchell Baker: Baker's pitch is that only Mozilla is motivated, first and foremost, to make using the web a pleasurable experience. Google's main priority is to funnel user data into the enormous advertising engine that accounts for most of its revenue. Apple's motivation is to ensure that customers continue to buy a new iPhone every couple of years and don't switch to Android...."

Firefox now runs sites such as Facebook in "containers", effectively hiving the social network off into its own little sandboxed world, where it can't see what's happening on other sites. Baker says: "It reduces Facebook's ability to follow you around the web and track you when you're not on Facebook and just living your life...." Mozilla has launched Monitor, a data-breach reporting service; Lockwise, a password manager; and Send, a privacy-focused alternative to services such as WeSendit. It's also beta-testing a VPN (virtual private network) service, which it hopes to market to privacy-conscious users...

Apple's iOS (mobile operating system) is an acknowledged disaster for Mozilla. Safari is the default and, while users can install other browsers, they come doubly hindered: they can never be set as the default, meaning any link clicked in other applications will open in Safari; and they must use Safari's "rendering engine", a technical limitation that means that even the browsers that Firefox does have on the platform are technically just fancy wrappers for Apple's own browser, rather than full versions of the service that Mozilla has built over the decades... "Even if you do download a replacement, iOS drops you back into the default. I don't know why that's acceptable. Every link you open on a phone is the choice of the phone maker, even if you, as a user, want something else."
Summarizing Baker's concerns, the Guardian writes that "It is perfectly possible to build a browser that prevents advertising companies from aggregating user data. But it is unlikely that any browser made by an advertising company would offer such a feature..."

And an activist for the Small Technology Foundation tells them that Google "wants the web to go through Google. It already mostly does: with eyes on 70% to 80% of the web."

slack_justyb writes: Mozilla has been heavily invested in WebAssembly with Firefox, and today, the organization teamed up with a few others to form the new Bytecode Alliance, which aims to create "new software foundations, building on standards such as WebAssembly and WebAssembly System Interface (WASI)." Mozilla has teamed up with Intel, Red Hat, and Fastly to found the alliance, but more members are likely to join over time. The goal of the Bytecode Alliance is to create a new runtime environment and language toolchains which are secure, efficient, and modular, while also being available on as many platforms and devices as possible. The technologies being developed by the Bytecode Alliance are based on WebAssembly and WASI, which have been seen as a potential replacement for JavaScript due to more efficient code compiling, and the expanded capabilities of being able to port C and C++ code to the web. To kick things off, the founding members have already contributed a number of open-source technologies to the Bytecode Alliance, including Wasmtime, a lightweight WebAssembly runtime; Lucet, an ahead-of-time compiler; WebAssembly Micro Runtime; and Cranelift.

"The hit programming language Python has climbed over once-dominant Java to become the second most popular language on Microsoft-owned open-source code-sharing site GitHub," reports ZDNet: Python now outranks Java based on the number of repository contributors, and by that metric Python is now second only to JavaScript, which has been in top spot since 2014, according to GitHub's 'State of the Octoverse' report for 2019...

Another interesting aspect of GitHub's report is its ranking of fastest-growing languages. Google's Dart programming language and Flutter, for building UIs for iOS and Android apps, are getting major traction with developers on GitHub. Dart was the fastest-growing language between 2018 and 2019, with usage up a massive 532%. It was followed by the Mozilla-developed Rust, which grew a respectable 235%. Microsoft is experimenting with Rust in its Windows code base because it was designed to address memory-related security bugs -- the dominant flaw-type in Microsoft software over the past decade.

Last year Kotlin, the Google-endorsed programming language for Android app development, was the fastest-growing language on GitHub. It's not a top-10 language yet, but it still grew 182% over the year. Microsoft-backed TypeScript, its superset of JavaScript, is also growing fast, up 161% over the past year as more developers use it to grapple with large-scale JavaScript apps.

Other languages making up the top 10 fastest-growing category are HCL, PowerShell, Apex, Python, Assembly, and Go.

Long-time Slashdot reader slack_justyb shares this story from Ars Technica: Scammers are actively exploiting a bug in Firefox that causes the browser to lock up after displaying a message warning the computer is running a pirated version of Windows that has been hacked... The message then advises the person to call a toll-free number in the next five minutes or face having the computer disabled...

Jérôme Segura, head of threat intelligence at security provider Malwarebytes, said the Firefox bug is being exploited by several sites... On Monday, Segura reported the bug to the Bugzilla forum. He said he has since received word Mozilla is actively working on a fix. In a statement sent seven hours after this post went live, a Mozilla representative wrote: "We are working on a fix to the authentication prompt bug that we expect to land in the next couple of releases (either in Firefox 71 or 72)."

Mozilla is calling on Google and Facebook to stop "microtargeting" political ads. "Political speech is critical to democratic discourse, but against the very real circumstances of organized disinformation and organic misinformation today, microtargeting keeps ideas from being debated in the open, and fiction parades as fact," Ashley Boyd, Mozilla's advocacy vice president, said in a statement. "Online platforms can take the important step toward quelling the manipulation by limiting political ads to a scale where they facilitate a public discourse." The Hill reports: Microtargeting, a method which uses consumer data and demographics to narrowly segment audiences, is used by political campaigns to specialize ads for different voting groups. The practice's critics include Federal Election Commission Chairwoman Ellen Weintraub, who wrote in a Washington Post op-ed that microtargeting makes it "easy to single out susceptible groups and direct political misinformation to them with little accountability, because the public at large never sees the ad." Mozilla's call follows reports that Facebook has considered restricting politicians' access to microtargeting.

harrymcc writes: On November 9 2004, a new version of Mozilla's browser called Firefox shipped. It was taking on one of the most daunting monopolies in tech: Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which had more than 90 percent market share. But Firefox was really good, and it became an instant hit, ending Microsoft's dominance of the web. Over at Fast Company, Sean Captain took a look at the browser's original rise, the challenges it faced after Google's Chrome arrived on the scene, and the moves it's currently making to put user privacy first.