Headline: 4-April-2016, Amazon attacks MR add-ins!

[NiLuJe]

@knc1: If USBNet is setup to be enabled at boot (i.e., touch /mnt/us/usbnet/auto if KUAL is down), and the device is unplugged during boot, then it'll switch to USBNet ASAP during boot (leaving it plugged would just stall the boot process for 15s and fail to bring up the usb0 network interface properly).

Yeah, eips doesn't care about what's already in the framebufer, it always overlays .

[knc1]

Sorry.
I just am not thinking tonight.

I did not set that option, so of course it will 'go away'.

[root@kindle root]# shutdown -r now

Broadcast message from root (pts/0) (Mon Apr  4 19:06:27 2016):

The system is going down for reboot NOW!
[root@kindle root]# 
Broadcast message from root (console) (Mon Apr  4 19:06:31 2016):

We're switching back to USB MS, so if you're wondering why your terminal is frozen, go read the docs!

That took care of that, now mass storage is visible again.

Put the MKK package on the device, did UYK - just fine.
Put today's USBnet in /mrpackages - MrPi installer worked just fine.
Tried out both ssh and telnet, they are now **both** working.

Once again - this is a B003-fw2.5.2 - it will be a rare device that is older than that combination. (we never intended to support the K1 - too little ram)

[Conan46]

Originally Posted by batpuppy

Just last week, I got frustrated with the kindle cloud collections and decided to take my kindle offline and start using calibre collections and librarian sync only. I am glad I did and guess my kindle will stay offline.

I've taken my Basic 4 Kindle and Paperwhite offline for good as well. Yet I have concerns the day may come when Amazon could remove the download/sideload option.

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by Conan46

I've taken my Basic 4 Kindle and Paperwhite offline for good as well. Yet I have concerns the day may come when Amazon could remove the download/sideload option.

Not while it is offline. How could they?

[knc1]

Originally Posted by Conan46

I've taken my Basic 4 Kindle and Paperwhite offline for good as well. Yet I have concerns the day may come when Amazon could remove the download/sideload option.

Not likely -
They sell to other devices than Kindles.

And software exists (on other sites) that will take care of making those books readable by your Kindle.

This 'wipe out the unknown developer keys' setup must have just gotten lose early when the few of us hit it today.
Because it has been hours since anyone had their developer keys wiped (I.E: that 'server feature' must be down again now.)

Well it gave us time to start thinking of how to deal with it, when it does 'go live' for real (rather than by accident).

Bet Amazon never thought that there would be people sitting at the keyboard, ready to deal with it as soon as they tested it.

[Conan46]

Originally Posted by geekmaster

Not while it is offline. How could they?

I meant Amazon could one day remove the option to download ebooks from their web site and side load the ebooks to devices. I'm not saying it could happen tomorrow, but one day they could make the argument that wifi is so ubiquitous that downloading/sideloading ebooks is no longer necessary.

[Conan46]

Originally Posted by knc1

Not likely -
They sell to other devices than Kindles.

And software exists (on other sites) that will take care of making those books readable by your Kindle.

This 'wipe out the unknown developer keys' setup must have just gotten lose early when the few of us hit it today.
Because it has been hours since anyone had their developer keys wiped (I.E: that 'server feature' must be down again now.)

Well it gave us time to start thinking of how to deal with it, when it does 'go live' for real (rather than by accident).

Bet Amazon never thought that there would be people sitting at the keyboard, ready to deal with it as soon as they tested it.

I think we are getting to the place where software updates offer little to the user but give more control to the one controlling the updates.

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by knc1

... This 'wipe out the unknown developer keys' setup must have just gotten lose early when the few of us hit it today. ...

I hit it several days ago, so they must be running multple tests, and perhaps it was disabled when I disabled airplane mode to see if the backdoor lock was still working. I would have to leave one on for days apparently (until they run their test again), to know for sure if backdoor lock insures us from this new amazon attack.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by Conan46

I meant Amazon could one day remove the option to download ebooks from their web site and side load the ebooks to devices. I'm not saying it could happen tomorrow, but one day they could make the argument that wifi is so ubiquitous that downloading/sideloading ebooks is no longer necessary.

Perhaps.
But they might not want to lose that revenue to other stores.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Conan46

I meant Amazon could one day remove the option to download ebooks from their web site and side load the ebooks to devices. I'm not saying it could happen tomorrow, but one day they could make the argument that wifi is so ubiquitous that downloading/sideloading ebooks is no longer necessary.

No wifi is not ubiquitous. I don't think Amazon wants to lose half their customers.
Wifi is only ubiquitous in Million+ cities.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by geekmaster

I hit it several days ago, so they must be running multple tests, and perhaps it was disabled when I disabled airplane mode to see if the backdoor lock was still working. I would have to leave one on for days apparently (until they run their test again), to know for sure if backdoor lock insures us from this new amazon attack.

Tomorrow, I will try something a bit different -

I will replace the 'mount' utility with a script of the same name that will give me notification (somehow) that something is trying to change system files.

Not even Amazon can change things on a filesystem mounted ro.

Possibly I can learn something useful about what is happening.

[knc1]

And it is possible to 'snoop' (or wire-tap) dbus:
https://www.piware.de/2013/09/how-to...-method-calls/

On a K2, the config files can be found in: /etc/dbus-1

And guess what?
dbus-monitor is provided by Amazon/Lab126 - -

Sort of like both providing the rope and tying the knot for your own hanging.

[knc1]

This morning's plan to find out what is going on - -

The Kindles use a lipc-daemon for inter-process communications:

[root@kindle root]# ps aux | grep 'lipc'
root      7378  0.0  0.7  18968   984 ?        Ssl  00:25   0:00 /usr/bin/lipc-daemon -p /etc/lipc-daemon-props.conf -e /etc/lipc-daemon-events.conf
root      8392  0.0  0.4   2652   536 pts/0    RN+  15:06   0:00 grep lipc

But the only entity that has access to the address space of all processes is the kernel.
The Linux kernel supports at least a half dozen such services.
One of which is dbus:

[root@kindle root]# ps aux | grep 'dbus'
92        6775  0.0  0.6   2236   788 ?        Ss   00:24   0:00 /usr/bin/dbus-daemon --system
root      8390  0.0  0.4   2656   548 pts/0    RN+  15:06   0:00 grep dbus

But not even Lab126 is ambitious enough to write a 7th ipc system for the kernel internals.

k2 $ readelf -d lipc-daemon

Dynamic section at offset 0x3254 contains 29 entries:
  Tag        Type                         Name/Value
 0x00000001 (NEEDED)                     Shared library: [liblipc.so.0]
 0x00000001 (NEEDED)                     Shared library: [libpthread.so.0]
 0x00000001 (NEEDED)                     Shared library: [libglib-2.0.so.0]
 0x00000001 (NEEDED)                     Shared library: [libgthread-2.0.so.0]
 0x00000001 (NEEDED)                     Shared library: [libdbus-1.so.3]
 0x00000001 (NEEDED)                     Shared library: [libc.so.6]

Translation: lipc is using dbus as its inter-process transport.
Note: This is not 'news' it has been posted here in the past - I just could not recall if it was done this way in the v-2.x firmware.
I.E: It was and still is being done that way.

So, snooping dbus traffic is one way of monitoring all lipc traffic.
(On the K2 there are 51 processes - all 'talking' to each other.)

The link a few posts above gives the details of a configuration file change that lets 'root' snoop all traffic (normally prohibited).

I get that set-up and working, then I'll re-enable 3G on this K2 and see just what it is that Amazon is doing.

[knc1]

Whoot!
A new way to brick a Kindle!

I think I will go do some yard-work.

[Cinisajoy]

Just out of curiosity,
Did this happen around 2 pm central time yesterday?
My internet kicked off three times in under 15 minutes at that time.
I wonder if they were related?