Spotify Hacked – Rolls Out New Android App

Richard Leave a comment Anonymity News
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So it looks like Spotify was hacked, or at least suffered some kind of breach – they claim user data for only one user was accessed and no payment details or password information was leaked. So it doesn’t seem to serious, but Spotify are reacting responsibly (which is good to see), disclosing the breach and [...]

The post Spotify…

Read the full post at darknet.org.uk

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 Steam Skin Manager, A Tool To Change Steam For Linux Appearance, Available In PPA (Ubuntu 14.04, 13.10)

Richard Leave a comment Linux News
Steam Skin Manager is a tool developed by +Martin Kozub for changing the Steam for Linux appearance. The app comes with 4 skins by default: Ambiance, Radiance, Light and Blue and it also lets you easily add more themes.

 Here’s the Ambiance skin for Steam, a skin bundled with Steam Skin Manager:
Steam using Ambiance skin

As you can see, using this skin, Steam for Linux uses the same colors as the default Ubuntu theme, similar scrollbars, icons, etc.

Furthermore, with Steam Skin Manager, you can even get Steam to use native window borders:

Using Steam Skin Manager is pretty easy: close Steam and then simply launch the Steam Skin Manager, select one of the built-in themes and click Apply. Using custom themes requires a bit more work and I won’t post instructions on how to do that here - instead, see the Steam Skin Manager homepage (look under “Developers”) for that.

Steam using Light skin

If you want to use Steam with native window borders, firstly launch Steam Skin Manager, select the theme you want to use, then enable “Use native window decorations” and click the Apply button. You’ll then have to launch Steam from the Steam Skin Manager quicklist, by selecting “Steam with decorations”:

Alternatively, you can also create your own custom launcher (.desktop file) in which you can use the following command to launch Steam with native window decorations:

steam-skin-manager --run-with-decorations --no-gui

Install Steam Skin Manager in Ubuntu / Linux Mint

Ubuntu / Linux Mint users can install Steam Skin Manager by using the main WebUpd8 PPA (there are Steam Skin Manager packages only for available for Ubuntu 14.04 and 13.10 / Linux Mint 17 and 16!). Add the PPA and install Steam Skin Manager Manager using the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install steam-skin-manager

If you don’t use Ubuntu / Linux Mint, you can download Steam Skin Manager from HERE (binaries and source available).

Report any bugs you may find @ GitHub.

Originally published at WebUpd8: Daily Ubuntu / Linux news and application reviews.

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 Stem Release 1.2

Richard Leave a comment Anonymity News

Hi all. After months of work I’m please to announce the release of Stem 1.2.0!

For those who aren’t familiar with it, Stem is a Python library for interacting with Tor. With it you can script against your relay, descriptor data, or even write applications similar to arm and Vidalia.

https://stem.torproject.org/

So what’s new in this release?

Interactive Tor Interpreter

The control interpreter is a new method for interacting with Tor’s control interface that combines an interactive python interpreter with raw access similar to telnet. This adds several usability features, such as…

  • Irc-style commands like ‘/help’.
  • Tab completion for Tor’s controller commands.
  • History scrollback by pressing up/down.
  • Transparently handles Tor authentication at startup.
  • Colorized output for improved readability.

For a tutorial to get you started see…

Down the Rabbit Hole

New connect() Function

This release of Stem provides a new, even easier method for establishing controllers. Connecting to Tor can now be as easy as… 

import sys
from stem.connection import connect
if __name__ == '__main__':
  controller = connect()
  if not controller:
    sys.exit(1)  # unable to get a connection
  print 'Tor is running version %s' % controller.get_version()
  controller.close()

For a rundown on the myriad of improvements and fixes in this release see…

https://stem.torproject.org/change_log.html#version-1-2

Cheers! -Damian

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 Stockholm May 2014 Trip Report

Richard Leave a comment Anonymity News

I was invited to speak on a panel at Sida about security, tools, and how they can be used in the world. The panel was generally for Sida staff to let them learn, ask questions, and interact with us in an informal way. A big thanks to Sida for providing the space and infrastructure support to allow us to all congeal for a day. My presentation from the panel is available[8].

Despite not being invited last year, I was invited to the Stockholm Internet Forum[1] (SIF14) this year to help talk about Tor, privacy, a cyber-panopticon[2] panel, empowering women and tech, and generally meeting with various organizations about funding partnerships. I spent most of my time split between talking to various orgs about partnerships and hanging out with the cool dfri[3] people. I met Hillevi Engström[7] and introduced her and her attending staff to Tor. The cyper-panopticon panel was held during the unconference sessions on the first day. We generally raised topics of surveillance, chilling effects, encryption, and the nature of abusive relationships between some governments and their populaces. Some pictures and videos are available[4]-if anyone has more pictures or video, let me know via email. The panel wasn’t officially recorded by SIF14.

The better parts of the panels were the hallway/mingle sessions where everyone got to talk about real topics. I talked at length about the situation in Burkina Faso[5], the Uganda and LGBT situation, and spoke to a few women from Jordan, Egypt, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Algiers, Morocco, Uganda, and Kenya about the state of women’s access to and education in technology, especially in writing code to gain employment. Everyone wants to help equalize the situation for women in both economic and rights in these countries. A huge debt of gratitude to Sarah Cortes[6], a volunteer, researcher, and strong feminist for paying her own way to Sweden to represent Tor at Sida and at SIF14, explaining the details to most of the women at the conference, and for introducing Tor to a huge number of organizations in a very positive way. It’s unfortunate the conference was dominated by discussions about a few white men and surveillance. Learning more about surveillance, Snowden, and women whistle-blowers would have been interesting. However, more time given to the topics of gender equality such as the “crime of being a woman online” and what we can do to empower all women with access, opportunity, education, and increased technical skills would have been more interesting at a conference composed of 50% women. What have you done to fight the patriarchy today?

I met and spoke with a few senior officials of the Middle East-North Africa region from the Foreign Ministry of Sweden about Tor, privacy, and supporting women in the region.

I spent the rest of the week meeting with some people from potential partners, dfri, and other activists from around the world. The general feedback from potential funding organizations is that we have a lot of work to do and the rest of the world is quickly catching up and surpassing our capabilities. At the same time, there is a lot of interest in partnering with us to accomplish many goals in improving privacy, censorship circumvention research, and improving the situation of women online.

All in all, a successful trip and great time in Sweden.

1. http://www.stockholminternetforum.se/
2. https://cyberpanopticonsif.wordpress.com/
3. https://www.dfri.se/
4. http://andrewlewman.smugmug.com/SIF14-Panopticon-Panel/
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burkina_Faso
6. http://sarahcortes.is/
7. http://www.government.se/sb/d/13510
8. https://svn.torproject.org/svn/projects/presentations/2014-05-26-Sida-Pr…

Originally sent to the Tor-reports mailing list.

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