[Bug 1867424] Re: motd-news transmitting private hardware data without consent or knowledge in background

[Guy Baconniere]

https://news.softpedia.com/news/canonical-under-fire-for-putting-ads-in-the-ubuntu-motd-530372.shtml

Article like "Canonical Under Fire for Putting Ads in the Ubuntu MOTD"
miss the point that motd-news is not only displaying Advertising in the login prompt but it a Privacy Nightmare because it has an hidden Telemetry feature which is enabled by default Without Consent and leak IP Address, System critical informations (Kernel Version, Uptime, CPU Vendor, CPU Model, Idle Time, Uptime) every 12 hours via User-Agent from curl on all Ubuntu Desktop and Ubuntu Server including the current version of Ubuntu. 

On top of that, motd-news is also a security nightmare as it runs curl
as root which can be exploited to gain root on any servers, laptops etc.

I recommend that all Ubuntu users open a Terminal and execute the
following

sudo sed -i -r 's/(ENABLED)=.+/\1=0/' /etc/default/motd-news
sudo apt-get -qq -y purge curl

N.B. curl is not installed if you explicitly select Ubuntu Minimal
during the installation of Ubuntu Desktop so motd-news cannot contact
motd.ubuntu.com without curl even if ENABLED=1 by default

GDPR : EU's General Data Protection Regulation since daily reporting of
computer's infos are proceeded without the user's consent. Cf. GDPR
application comments [https://gdpr.eu/eu-gdpr-personal-data/], in
particular with respect to Recital 30 [https://gdpr.eu/recital-30
-online-identifiers-for-profiling-and-identification/]

Internet protocol (IP) addresses; information that is related to an
individual’s tools, applications, or devices, like their computer.

Canonical Ltd. has handled my personal information without concent.
By collecting twice a day the following informations:

- The public IP address where Ubuntu system is used (part of the log of the HTTPS server)
- Date / Time when collected (part of the log of the HTTPS server)
- Harware info such as CPU Vendor and Model (via /proc/cpuinfo)
- The distribution version (via /etc/lsb-release)
- The operating system (via uname -o)
- The Linux kernel release (via uname -r)
- The computer architecture aka machine hardware name (via uname -m)
- Cloud Hosting: cloud identifier such as aws, gce, azure, lxd (via cloud-id part of cloud-init)
- Total number of seconds the system has been up (via /proc/uptime)
- The sum of how much time each core has spent idle in seconds (via /proc/uptime)
- Version of curl software (launched as root which is a bad IT practice and a security risk)

-- 
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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1867424

Title:
  motd-news transmitting private hardware data without consent or
  knowledge in background

Status in base-files package in Ubuntu:
  Won't Fix

Bug description:
  In package base-files there is a script /etc/update-motd.d/50-motd-
  news that harvests private hardware data from the machine and
  transmits it in the background every day.  There is no notice, no
  consent, no nothing.  This should be by default disabled until there
  is informed consent.

  This solution is simple:

  1. Change ENABLED=1 to ENABLED=0 in the file /etc/default/motd-news and 
  2. Place a comment in the file disclosing the fact that the 50-motd-news script will harvest private hardware data and upload it to motd.ubuntu.com daily if the end-user enables it.

  Creating databases that maps ip address to specify hardware is a
  threat to both privacy and security.  If an adversary knows the
  specific hardware and the ip address for that hardware their ability
  to successfully attack it is greatly increased.

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