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

[Guy Baconniere]

Thanks Canonical for this great Telemetry master piece
hidden in a Daily "News" (Message of the Day) deep inside
the core of Ubuntu.

I found it active on all the Ubuntu laptop of my friends
and coworkers, all Ubuntu servers from local ISP and my
work. As well as on all Ubuntu flavours and Ubuntu derived
Linux distros.

It is also present in cloud-init images of major cloud providers,
and all Docker images from Docker Registry based on Ubuntu.

What a (s)hell for transparency!

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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:
  Confirmed

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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