The Significance of the Vizio Judgment for Open-Source Compliance Programs

In a recent ruling, the superior court of california has made a crucial decision that strenghtens the rights of consumers regarding products that contain Open Source Software (OSS). In the case of Software Freedom Conservancy Inc. (SFC) v. Vizio Inc., the court allowed a smart TV buyer to further pursue a breach of contract lawsuit against a product provider using open-source software in its source code, irrespective of copyright claims. SFC, a nonprofit organization had purchased smart TVs from Vizio that contain software under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). To redistribute code Read more…

By lukaspanni, ago

Placing ARGs in Dockerfiles

In general, Docker’s build caching significantly speeds up image builds. This is especially true for repeated builds of the same image with small changes. It is pretty well known, that every line in a Dockerfile introduces a new Layer that can be cached and reused in a following build if the line in the Dockerfile did not change. I was just building a image recently where every build took forever, even though I only added new Layers at the end of the Dockerfile. The Dockerfile looked something like this: The weird thing was that the apt install command was executed Read more…

By lukaspanni, ago

Breaking Boundaries: Elevating Home Assistant with Cloudflare Zero Trust Tunnels

In the realm of smart homes, Home Assistant stands as a beacon of versatility and control. By default, Home Assistant operates within the confines of the local network, offering users huge flexibility in orchestrating all connected devices in their homes. However, many users also seek remote access to their devices, to allow for different automations or to quickly check the status of things at home. While various options exist, from VPNs over the official Nabu Casa cloud access to port forwarding combined with dynamic DNS, today I’ll present an easy to configure but also quite secure option: Cloudflare Zero Trust Read more…

By lukaspanni, ago

Demystifying Apple’s BLE Magic: A Journey into FindMy, Continuity, and AirDrop – Part 3

Welcome back to our ongoing journey into the fascinating realm of Apple’s BLE-powered services! In our previous posts, we’ve explored the foundational concepts of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and delved into the intricacies of Apple’s innovative FindMy service. Today, we’re going to take a closer look at the darker side of FindMy: the potential for abuse by malicious actors. There are three distinct categories of abuse, we’ll look at today. Direct Tracking Imagine a scenario where a small tracker discreetly attaches to a person or object – think someone placing an AirTag in your backpack. With Apple devices nearby creating Read more…

By lukaspanni, ago

Looking Back on 2023

Hello, dear readers! It’s that time of the year again, when we reflect on what we have done and what we have learned in the past 12 months. 2023 was full of challenges, surprises, and achievements for me. Let me share some of the highlights with you. My Academic Year This year, I completed my second and last semester of my master’s degree in computer science. I learned a lot about advanced topics such as Internet of Things (IoT), Programming Paradigms or Project Management. Writing a 30 page project paper and a seminar paper of the same length prepared me Read more…

By lukaspanni, ago

Demystifying Apple’s BLE Magic: A Journey into FindMy, Continuity, and AirDrop – Part 2

FindMy: BLE-Powered Location Tracking We already touched on the very basics of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) in the last post. In this post we’ll look deeper into Apple’s FindMy – a service which you very likely get into contact every single day without even realizing. Ever wondered how the FindMy App can show you where your other devices or even AirTags are? Get ready to learn how Apple uses hundreds of devices to help track and find lost devices. A Quick Recap: BLE Advertising Before we dive into the captivating world of Find My, let’s revisit a crucial BLE concept: Read more…

By lukaspanni, ago

Demystifying Apple’s BLE Magic: A Journey into FindMy, Continuity, and AirDrop – Part 1

The Basics Hey there, fellow techies! Get ready to savor the first installment of our deep dive into Apple’s Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocols. If you ever wondered how the famous services FindMy, Continuity and AirDrop actually work, this series is the best starting point to understand Apple’s wireless magic. We’ll also delve into the myriad ways in which a mischievous actor could exploit these protocols to gain access to private information or render devices inoperable. But first we have to take a closer look at BLE. What’s the Deal with Bluetooth Low Energy? Alright, let’s start with the basics. Read more…

By lukaspanni, ago

A Fresh Start: Learnings from a Server Crash

As promised in the last post, I’m back with more details about the server crash that took down this blog and several other web-projects of mine. The hosting provider where I used to host my stuff had a catastrophic meltdown that resulted in my server being unavailable for a few days. I noticed that the server was not accessible on May 29th after which I tried fixing the problem in their managment portal. As most management portals are absolutely unusable, I was able to fix exactly nothing at all. Tried to use their diagnostics: unexpected errorTried to restart my server: Read more…

By lukaspanni, ago

Back again

Let’s try again with a new hosting provider I’m thrilled to be back in action after a brief setback. My server experienced an unfortunate crash and my previous hosting provider lost all backups. I’m not here to name and shame, mistakes happen. But I still switched hosting providers after the atrocious handling of this situation by the not-to-be-named company. In the spirit of transparency, I will soon share a detailed post about the server outage and provide details on how I set up the new server. I actually did learn from my mistakes and added a new backup-solution which does Read more…

By lukaspanni, ago