Windows, Microsoft, SMTP Smuggling, Gocryptfs, CryFS, SimpleX

1. Interesting & annoying stuff. During Christmas several dozens Windows 2016 Server systems just crashed. Older or newer systems didn't crash. It seems that some updates and potentially corrupted WinSxS folder were causing this, but the problems are still being investigated.

2. At least Windows Update (WinSxS) folder contains corrupted files. It was fun to download image, then mount .iso, then mount .wim file inside that iso to local path and finally run dism using it as a source for files. After that worked, I created a file share from that mounted directory, so it was possible to allow other systems to use it over network as centralized source for fixing rest of the systems. Without going through all this trickery when updating the other systems. And or stupidly downloading that whole .iso file to every server on the network, which would have been quite pointless and inefficient. XPRESS, LZX, LZMS compression with WIM files checked as well. - Windows update sucks so much, extremely bad UX, bad process and very slow one. So very annoying!

3. Again, caught people doing stuff in silly way. They downloaded 6 gigabyte packet to all systems from Microsoft, then extracted in on the system, and then took a few files from it... Wtf? Why you don't just download it to one system, only extract necessary files, and then share those on LAN. But this is one of the samples where you can clearly see, that people do not think about anything at all. And it can lead to enormous inefficiencies.

4. Did we talk about units. WTF Microsoft. Who uses small g for gigabyte. It's great that we've got such incompetent n00bs working in such crap'o'ware house. Yeah, robocopy uses small g for gigabyte (GB). Thank you for that!. As we know, units are hard, but it's still totally ridiculous to be expert and still fail like random "I've never used computer guy" on the net. Maybe it's just because incompetent Americanos don't know that g is for gram? From this point of, I'm using hb's, because that's just awesome, and it messes up people whom can't do basic math. What you don't know what hectobit is.

5. 37c3 - SMTP Smuggling - Spoofing E-Mails Worldwide (@ media.ccc.de). Well, as said, nothing really surprising, bad code, and bad practices leads to problems. Unfortunately this is extremely normal with email, as I've stated several times earlier. And many other similarly totally messed up protocols.

6. Gocryptfs forward mode crypto (@ nuetzlich.net) for those whom are curious. Based on quick lookup, looks good. With the limitations mentioned earlier. Also with ssd devices there's block misalignment for 4 kb data blocks, which likely impacts performance negatively and adds to write amplification, but that's just what it is.

7. Gocryptfs (@ nuetzlich.net) - Yet another overlay encrypting file system for those whom are curious. Based on quick lookup, looks good. Also with ssd devices there's block misalignment for 4 kb data blocks, which likely impacts performance negatively and adds to write amplification, but that's just what it is.

8. I were really curious about the file format it's using, and it's very nicely explained here. Not bad at all. gocryptfs file format. Yet it of course still reveals file sizes and counts by using efficient storage. That could be called metadata leak. Depending on threat model, that could be deadly or totally meaningless.

9. CryFS (@ cryfs.org) at least remedies the problem with file sizes and counts. Which makes it generally much better option, in situations where the metadata needs to be protected. 

10. SimpleX Chat (@ simplex.chat) v5.4.2 finally pushes slow disk I/O and message sending to background thread, without forcing user to wait for insanely slow database ops using so many fsync calls that it really hurts!

11. Finally a Duplicati v.2.0.7.100 (@ github.com) backup software version that shouldn't corrupt backups when deleting old backups is interrupted!

12. Interestingly Google sites is again formatting the post headers differently than in previous posts. Lovely! Consistently inconsistent?

2024-10-27