How To Check If Your Mac or Linux Machine Is Vulnerable to Shellshock

How To Check If Your Mac or Linux Machine Is Vulnerable to Shellshock

Shellshock, the newly discovered vulnerability that allows attackers to inject code into your machine, puts your Mac or Linux at a serious risk for malicious attacks. Here’s how to test if your machine is vulnerable.

Shellshock uses a bash script to access your computer. From there, they can launch programs, enable features, and access files. The script only affects UNIX-based systems, so Linux and Mac are the only ones vulnerable.

You can test your system by running this test command from Terminal:

env x='() { :;}; echo vulnerable' bash -c 'echo hello'

If you’re not vulnerable, you’ll get this result:

bash: warning: x: ignoring function definition attempt
bash: error importing function definition for `x'
hello

If you are vulnerable, you’ll get:

vulnerable hello

You can also check the version of bash you’re running by entering:

bash --version

If you get version 3.2.51(1)-release as a result, you’ll need to update. Many Linux distributions already have patches available, so you can follow these instructions to update your system. Mac users are still waiting for a patch, but you can update bash manually using this guide.

via Gizmodo
How To Check If Your Mac or Linux Machine Is Vulnerable to Shellshock

Obama Presses China On Global Warming

HughPickens.com writes: The NY Times reports that President Obama spoke at the United Nations Climate Change Summit and challenged China to make the same effort to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions and join a worldwide campaign to curb global warming. Obama’s words were directly focused on putting the onus on China, an essential partner of the U.S. if a global climate treaty is to be negotiated by 2015. The U.S. and China bear a "special responsibility to lead," said Obama. "That’s what big nations have to do." The U.S., Obama said, would meet a pledge to reduce its carbon emissions by 17 percent, from 2005 levels, by 2020 — a goal that is in large part expected to be met through proposed EPA regulation. There were indications that China might be ready with its own plan, although many experts say they will be skeptical until Chinese officials reveal the details. A senior Chinese official said his country would try to reach a peak level of carbon emissions "as early as possible." This suggests the Chinese government, struggling with air pollution so extreme that it has threatened economic growth, regularly kept millions of children indoors and ignited street protests, was determined to show faster progress in curbing emissions. In recent years, the Chinese government has sent other signals about addressing carbon pollution, some of them encouraging to environmental experts. "Five years ago, it was almost unimaginable to discuss China putting a cap on carbon, but now that is happening," said Lo Sze Ping, chief executive officer of the World Wildlife Fund’s office in Beijing. "Chinese leaders have seen that it is imperative to move toward a low-carbon economy."

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via Slashdot
Obama Presses China On Global Warming

MySQL Workbench 6.2.3 GA has been released

The MySQL developer tools team announces 6.2.3 as our GA release for MySQL Workbench 6.2.MySQL Workbench 6.2 is the new version for the official MySQLgraphical development tool .MySQL Workbench 6.2 focuses on support for innovations released in MySQL5.6 and MySQL 5.7 DMR (Development Release) as well as MySQL Fabric 1.5,with features such as: A new spatial data viewer, allowing graphical views of result sets containing GEOMETRY data and taking advantage of the new GIS capabilities in MySQL 5.7. Support for new MySQL 5.7.4 SQL syntax and configuration options. Metadata Locks View shows the locks connections are blocked or waiting on. MySQL Fabric cluster connectivity – Browsing, view status, and connect to any MySQL instance in a Fabric Cluster. MS Access migration Wizard – easily move to MySQL Databases. Other significant usability improvements were made, aiming to raiseproductivity for advanced and new users: Direct shortcut buttons to commonly used features in the schema tree. Improved results handling. Columns have better auto-sizing and their widths are saved. Fonts can also be customized. Results "pinned" to persist viewing data. A convenient Run SQL Script command to directly execute SQL scripts, without loading them first. Database Modeling has been updated to allow changes to the formatting of note objects and attached SQL scripts can now be included in forward  engineering and synchronization scripts. Integrated Visual Explain within the result set panel. Visual Explain drill down for large to very large explain plans. Shared SQL snippets in the SQL Editor, allowing multiple users to share SQL code by storing it within a MySQL instance. And much more. The list of provided binaries was updated and MySQL Workbench binariesnow available for: Windows 7 32 and 64bits Mac OS X Lion or newer Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and Ubuntu 14.04 64bits Fedora 20 64bits Oracle Linux 6.5 64bits Oracle Linux 7 64bits Sources for building in other Linux distributions. Pre-compiled binaries are no longer provided for 32bit Linux distributions, although users may still download and build from sources. Note: Workbench for Windows requires Visual C++ Redistributable forVisual Studio 2013, which can be downloaded from:http://ift.tt/XYqswJ the full list of changes in this revision, visithttp://dev.mysql.com/doc/relnotes/workbench/en/changes-6-2.htmlFor discussion, join the MySQL Workbench Forums:http://ift.tt/1xb39zc MySQL Workbench 6.2.3 now, for Windows, Mac OS X 10.7+, OracleLinux 6 and 7, Fedora 20, Ubuntu 12.04 and Ubuntu 14.04 or sources,from:http://ift.tt/KHX9aU
via Planet MySQL
MySQL Workbench 6.2.3 GA has been released

How Much Better Is Each New iPhone’s Camera? Here’s An Excellent Comparison

side by side It’s easy to say that the iPhone’s camera has gotten better over time — that’s pretty much a given. But how much better? Lisa Bettany, co-founder of Camera+, decided to put it to the test. Eight generations of iPhone, lined up in a row… all taking the same photo. The results are pretty damn neat. The differences start to get a bit less massive as you reach the… Read More


via TechCrunch
How Much Better Is Each New iPhone’s Camera? Here’s An Excellent Comparison

TrackingPoint Re-Enacts the Alamo…

TrackingPoint Re-Enacts the AlamoTrackingPoint has done a pretty good re-enactment video of how the fight at the Alamo went down. Except, you know, with the addition of their Precision Guided Firearms. It is a pretty funny vignette if you have about 4 minutes to spare. And, really, don’t we all fantasize of how historic battles would go down […]

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The post TrackingPoint Re-Enacts the Alamo… appeared first on The Firearm Blog.


via The Firearm Blog
TrackingPoint Re-Enacts the Alamo…

End of Shirking: 20 Free WordPress Themes Fresh from September 2014


  

In between summer and fall, one can easily get surprised while wearing a t-shirt outside. I chuckled quite a few times already. It is then when I like my office most. Sitting in front of the computer with its warm glow, working on WordPress projects harder than ever – well, at least harder than ever since the middle of spring. WordPress is just that kind of a convenient CMS that can get you up and running in no time. Probably that way I can catch up with all the work I have been negligent of. Wait, would I not be quicker if I took a ready-made theme to accelerate things? Lucky me, as Noupe continues with their monthly series of the freshest WordPress themes for self-hosted sites.
via noupe
End of Shirking: 20 Free WordPress Themes Fresh from September 2014