Windscribe VPN Leaking DNS in Linux

This post pertains to the Windscribe GUI app on Linux as encountered here on Debian and Ubuntu based Linux Mint with the latest version 2.6.14 as well as the previous version. To be fair the GUI app is still marked as in beta.

If you go to the download page it funny enough first attempted to serve me the older and more reliable CLI program, supposedly tried and tested, and only at the second attempt offered the GUI program for download. I'ld have to check if this problem is also present in the CLI version (it wasn´t previously when used around three years ago as I ran frequent tests) but for now with the move to a more comfortable graphical interface I've only got the new app installed.

Most sites like whatismyip.com will tell you that everything is fine. It seems like they're only running one test. Also, when tested on AirVPN's ipleak.net everything appears fine at first glance. However, they're running more tests and eventually after around 20-30 seconds suddenly a second DNS is detected and pops up as visible in the screenshot below. This is the DNS of the ISP.

Dr.Web Light: Free Anti-Virus for Android

Over the last couple of months I have checked out several of the lighter, anti-virus only apps for Android that are available free of charge. Among the best in terms of functionality, speed and footprint - in other words truly light applications - were BitDefender and Dr. Web Light. These will be good enough for something like an Android TV box, where one doesn't need features like anti-theft, spam call or MMS protection, and arguably other devices too. Unfortunately, BitDefender does all it's malware signature checking in the cloud so in the end did not qualify for my purposes as this requires a stable connection every time running a scan. YMMV.

Block This: An Ad-Blocker for Android Without Requiring Root

Recently I discovered Block This in my long search for an ad-blocker for Android worth the name. There are of course several products around, first and foremost perhaps the venerable AdblockPlus, but they all have the problem that they require root access, i.e. the phone to be rooted. I have no intention of doing this as I simply can't be bothered enough to mess around with a smart phone and security-wise it's a much better idea to keep it locked down. If you don't know what I'm talking about don't worry, you don't need to.

Slackware Current and Stable Upgrade to gnutls-3.0.31

I'm not planning to provide a running mirror of all updates to the Slackware changelog, but this one is pretty important. GnuTLS is a secure communications library implementing the SSL, TLS and DTLS protocols and technologies around them. It provides a programming interface to access secure protocols as well as APIs to parse and write X.509, PKCS #12, OpenPGP (are you encrypting your emails yet?) and other required structures. In other words, it's crucial for communicating privately and securely.

Here's the announcement from the changelog:

This update prevents a side-channel attack which may allow remote attackers to conduct distinguishing attacks and plaintext recovery attacks using statistical analysis of timing data for crafted packets. For more information, see: http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2013-1619 (* Security fix *)