Genann VS OpenSSL

> I am very much a beginner in the space of machine learning

While the (precious and useful) advice around seem to cover mostly the bigger infrastructures, please note that

you can effectively do an important slice of machine learning work (study, personal research) with just a battery-efficiency-level CPU (not GPU), in the order of minutes, on a battery. That comes before going to "Big Data".

And there are lightweight tools: I am current enamoured with Genann («minimal, well-tested open-source library implementing feedfordward artificial neural networks (ANN) in C»), a single C file of 400 lines compiling to a 40kb object, yet well sufficient to solve a number of the problems you may meet.

https://codeplea.com/genann // https://github.com/codeplea/genann

After all, is it a good idea to have tools that automate process optimization while you are learning the deal? Only partially. You should build - in general and even metaphorically - the legitimacy of your Python ops on a good C ground.

And: note that you can also build ANNs in R (and other math or stats environments). If needed or comfortable...

Also note - reminder - that the MIT lessons of Prof. Patrick Winston for the Artificial Intelligence course (classical AI with a few lessons on ANNs) are freely available. That covers the grounds relative to climb into the newer techniques.

Genann - Simple ANN in C89, without additional dependencies. Zlib

ENV OPENSSL_PREFIX=/opt/openssl ENV SSL_CERT_FILE=/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt WORKDIR /tmp RUN git clone --branch OpenSSL_1_0_2n https://github.com/openssl/openssl.git RUN cd openssl RUN ./config shared --prefix=$OPENSSL_PREFIX --openssldir=$OPENSSL_PREFIX/ssl RUN make RUN make install RUN rvm install 2.6.0 -C --with-openssl-dir=$OPENSSL_PREFIX ENV PATH /usr/local/rvm/bin:$PATH RUN rvm --default use ruby-2.6.0 ENV PATH /usr/local/rvm/bin:/usr/local/rvm/rubies/ruby-2.6.0/bin:$PATH ENV GEM_HOME /usr/local/rvm/rubies/ruby-2.6.0/lib/ruby/gems/2.6.0

Today, April 7th, 2024, marks the 10-year anniversary since CVE-2014-0160 was published. This security vulnerability known as "Heartbleed" was a flaw in the OpenSSL cryptography software, the most popular option to implement Transport Layer Security (TLS). In more layman's terms, if you type https:// in your browser address bar, chances are high that you are interacting with OpenSSL.

At this point I pretty much understand the entire process on how the xz backdoor came to be: its execution stages, extraction from binary "test" files etc. But one thing puzzles me: how can the ifunc mechanism be used to replace something like RSA_public_decrypt? Granted this probably stems from my lack of understanding of ifunc, but I was under the impression that in order for the ifunc mechanism to work in your code, you have to explicitly mark specific function with multiple implementations with __attribute__ ((ifunc ("the_resolver_function"))). Looking at the source code of the RSA function in question, ifunc attribute isn't present:

https://github.com/openssl/openssl/blob/master/crypto/rsa/rsa_crpt.c#L51

So how does the backdoor actually replace the call? Does this means that the ifunc mechanism can be used to override pretty much anything on the system?

OpenSSL and Go crypt/tls has no support yet, so none of the webservers that depend on them support it. Apache, Nginx, and Caddy, they all need upstream ECH support first.

- https://github.com/openssl/openssl/issues/7482

- https://github.com/openssl/openssl/pull/22938

- https://github.com/golang/go/issues/63369

If I'm understanding the draft correctly, I think the webserver you're hosting your sites on would need it implemented as it requires private keys and ECH configuration. In the example of nginx since it uses openssl, openssl would need to implement it. I found an issue on their Github but it's still open: https://github.com/openssl/openssl/issues/7482

I confirmed that the systm was on 1.1.1f with openssl version command. Hmm...... I check the openssl version in the repo with apt list... LOL package names wernt helpful. finally went to the repo pages and found that its still on 1.1.1f, https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openssl. Meenwhile I looked up the version history on https://www.openssl.org/ and saw that 1.1.1v was released at the beginning of this month... ok. I can understand it it was out less then 30 days. I looked up when f came out, end of MARCH 2020. NEARLY 3-1/2 YEARS