Packetizer News

We are pleased to announce the release of Pug 1.7, the free, cloud-based file archiver for Linux/Unix designed to provide secure, automated, and cost-effective backups to cloud storage.

What is Pug?

Pug is an automated incremental backup solution tailored for Linux servers and NAS devices (including local, NFS, or CIFS mounts). Rather than re-uploading entire archives or duplicating data, Pug operates on a continuous, incremental basis. Key features include:

• Strong File Security: Automatically compresses (via gzip) and encrypts each file individually using AES Crypt (256-bit AES encryption) before it leaves your server.
• Deduplication: Smart detection ensures that identical files are only stored once in cloud storage, minimizing your Amazon S3 storage footprint and reducing costs.
• Revision History & Disaster Recovery: Maintains configurable file retention policies and multiple file revisions, allowing you to easily recover any specific version or restore complete file trees during disaster recovery.
• Automatic Pruning: Automatically expunges deleted files from S3 once they exceed your defined retention period.

What’s New in Version 1.7

• SHA-256 Hashes: Upgraded default file hashing from SHA-1 to SHA-256 for enhanced cryptographic integrity and security across the archival pipeline.
• MariaDB by Default: Transitioned the primary database driver to MariaDB. System administrators using existing MySQL setups can still utilize MySQL, but MariaDB is now the default configuration.
• Code Modernization: Internal enhancements, refactoring, and code modernizations to improve overall stability and maintainability.

Functionally, workflow and operational procedures remain seamless and identical to previous releases.

To learn more, read the documentation, or download the latest release, visit: https://pug.packetizer.com.

ASN.1 works quietly beneath technologies such as X.509 certificates, wireless communications, network-management protocols, and authentication systems. After years of working with X.509 and wireless protocols, industry experts kept encountering the same practical need: quickly verify a packet, inspect an encoding, or construct compliant data for testing. These tasks were too small to justify writing a new program, but disruptive enough to interrupt the work.

Ideally, the solution should be something like a calculator app but for ASN.1: a tool that stays close at hand, opens quickly, answers the immediate question, and lets you continue working.

That idea became ASN1, a native macOS workspace that keeps schemas, JSON values, encoded payloads, and diagnostics together. It supports writing and validating ASN.1 schemas; encoding and decoding BER, DER, OER, PER, UPER, and XER; GSER encoding; and visual inspection of BER and DER structures. Processing takes place locally on the Mac.

The ASN.1 language is valuable because it separates the definition of data from the mechanics of its encoding. Once the schema and tooling are in place, developers can work with defined structures rather than repeatedly creating custom parsers. The ASN1 app aims to make that workflow more immediate and approachable for Mac users, especially during the development and tinkering phases. The app is available for free on the Mac App Store, with an optional one-time Pro unlock for advanced features.

Website: https://asn1.inyosystems.com/

Mac App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/asn1/id6477905565

Paul E. Jones has published a new article emphasizing the importance of writing clean, maintainable code. In Writing Code for the Next Person, he discusses how well-documented and thoughtfully structured code improves reusability, reduces long-term costs, and benefits both developers and organizations. Drawing from his industry experience, Paul outlines key principles—including clear documentation, naming conventions, and consistent coding styles—that help engineers write code with future maintainers in mind.

Read the full article here.

One of the most popular file encryption software products on the Internet is AES Crypt. This project was supported by Packetizer, but has now been transitioned to Terrapane where the original author continues development and support.

AES Crypt 4 is the fourth major version of the popular encryption software. AES Crypt 4 is available as a GUI and command-line application for Windows, Linux, and Mac, with both binaries and source code published.

Key Updates:

• Enhanced Security: The key derivation function now uses FIPS-recommended PBKDF2 using HMAC-SHA-512 with 300,000 iterations, configurable via the command-line tool. We’ve also switched to PKCS#7 padding.
• Performance Boost: Intel Intrinsics functions improve performance by approximately 30% on Intel processors.
• Apple Silicon Support: The Mac version is now compiled for Apple Silicon.
• Safety Measures: Mac and Linux versions now refuse to overwrite existing files, aligning with the Windows version.
• Command-Line Enhancements: More options, integrated key generation, and a progress meter for long files.
• Code Overhaul: Rewritten in C++20 with daily unit tests and improved integration tests for enhanced code safety.
• Backward Compatibility: AES Crypt 4 remains fully compatible with all previous versions, ensuring access to encrypted files created by older versions.

All packages are available at https://www.aescrypt.com.

H.323 version 8 was formally approved in March 2022. This update brought with it a modest number of new features, reflecting a continued evolution of the popular protocol. Building on the advancements introduced in H.323 version 7, this new version extends the protocol's capabilities in several key areas that enhance its usability and integration with modern communication technologies.

In brief, this new revision expands advertisement and routing of calls based on language, support for WebRTC’s Data Channels, improved media channel security methods, advertisement of nominal audio levels for a more consistent user experience, and the ability to signal a plurality of payload types over the same RTP port.

For more information, see the page H.323v8 Overview page.

This month marks Packetizer’s 20th anniversary. It is hard to believe it has been that long since Packetizer first began publishing content on the Internet. With tens of thousands of visitors every month, it has been remarkable to see the site blossom and prove to be a valuable resource for people interested to learn more about VoIP and videoconferencing technologies.

Over the years, the site has grown to offer various software products and other informational content that is useful to both developers of protocols and to those desiring to secure information. We also added some fun stuff that’s utterly useless beyond entertainment, like an implementation of Sierpinski Triangle and Cambridge Obfuscator.

While we have seen amazing interest in tools like AES Crypt and had a lot of fun with other technologies along the way, the primary motivation for creating Packetizer was to educate developers and users in the area of collaborative technologies, and we remain focused on that. We value open standards and appreciate the fact that we have witnessed and been a part of a transition from legacy PSTN technology to IP-based technologies. That said, we are saddened by the fact that open standards are not embraced as much today as they were before.

Years ago, developers and consumers were interested in H.323 and SIP for voice and video communications. For a while, XMPP was hot for instant messaging and presence. As time progressed, though, we witnessed a regression in the industry to proprietary systems and protocols, with H.323 and SIP used only as bridging protocols between proprietary islands. In many ways, that’s disappointing.

Nonetheless, Packetizer has been and will remain a resource for packet-switched conversational protocols. Perhaps with time, people will begin to realize again the importance of industry standards and we can see a renewed interest in and growth of technologies that work with each other. We would still love to see something like H.325 become a reality.

Perhaps long overdue, but Packetizer is making the migration to use HTTPS to secure all communications between you and our servers. While there really isn’t much in terms of confidential information shared via Packetizer, using HTTPS is nonetheless a way to help further protect your privacy.

The first move was to switch the primary web site (www.packetizer.com) to HTTPS. All URLs you might have on your sites, documentation, bookmarked, etc. will still work, as we redirect all HTTP queries to HTTPS. Even so, you might wish to update your links where it makes sense.

The next step, which we will be undertaking over the coming months, is the support of HTTPS on all of our subdomains and secondary domains. We are going to take advantage of the free certificates that will be made available via the Let’s Encrypt initiative. That’s an awesome move by the industry, just in case you have not heard about it.

If you find any broken links on the site due to the move from HTTP to HTTPS, or if you get any browser warnings, please let us know about it. Since we operate several domains running a limited number of servers, we do utilize Server Name Identification (SNI). Older browsers do not support that. However, if your browser is so old that it does not work today, you really need to just move to a new, secure browser.

WebFinger is a protocol that allows one to discover information about people or other entities on the Internet. It is possible, for example, to take one's email address (actually an "acct:" URI that looks like an email address) and discover information that that person wishes to share.

For example, a user might share an avatar, various means to contact them, or even their Bitcoin address to receive money.

The specification was published today by the IETF as RFC 7033, after several years of effort by a large number of interested people.

You can learn more about WebFinger here.

WebFinger is a new Internet protocol that allows people to find information about people and things on the Internet. For example, suppose you receive an email from somebody and would like to return a call to the person, but do not have the person in your contact list. If the person publishes his phone number via WebFinger, then your email client can quickly discover the phone number and provide it to you as a contact option. A person can publish nearly anything via WebFinger, including contact information, blog locations, social network identifiers, avatars, or nearly anything else.

Technically, one does not actually publish information within the WebFinger protocol itself. Rather, one publishes this information somewhere else on the Internet; WebFinger just points to that information. WebFinger essentially returns a set of links of a various types. Clients looking for particular information, such as a picture or phone number, would make additional queries to links listed in the WebFinger response. Since each link is labeled with a clearly identifiable link relation type, the client can quickly find exactly what information it is seeking.

WebFinger can simplify interaction with social networking sites, blogs, or other web sites wherein you might normally have an account and log in. When you visit a web site, you can simply provide your account identifier (e.g., your email address). The web site you are visiting can then query information about you, perhaps displaying the name and avatar you published via WebFinger. If the site allows you to post information about yourself, it might allow you to log into the site and WebFinger can help facilitate a seamless login experience using technologies like OpenID Connect.

Packetizer created an open source implementation of a WebFinger server that you are free to download and use on your web site. There are actually several WebFinger server and client implementations already available from various developers.

Pug is automated backup software designed for use on Linux that allows one to copy files on a server to cloud storage, compressing and encrypting each file individually before uploading.

Unlike other backup solutions that require use of external physical storage and backing up the same data over and over again, Pug works incrementally. As new files are created or as files change, Pug pushes them into the cloud. Only new or changed files are backed up and every version (or as many versions as you specify) is maintained in the cloud, any one of which may be immediately accessed. Further, Pug is smart enough to recognize that two files are identical and only archives a single copy of a file in cloud storage, thus reducing storage costs.

Pug uses Amazon S3 for cloud storage, through the software is designed so that changes can easily be made to support other cloud storage services.

To learn more about Pug, visit the Pug home page!