A warning about MMSSTV - YONIQ version 1.13.2Background. MMSSTV - YONIQ is a relatively new slow-scan television (SSTV) software available as an update to the popular MMSSTV SSTV application and labeled by the developer as "
a modern version of MMSSTV".
I had been using Yoniq v1.13.2 for some time now but back on February 19th 2022 the application was exhibiting constant freezing and became unresponsive. Interesting enough, about a day or so later, Yoniq was working fine again. This puzzled me.
Discovery. After performing some debugging on the application, I discovered some undocumented network connectivity from the Yoniq application to an external Internet server.
Yoniq routinely connects to FTP (port 21) at IP address 85.152.6.7 every 5 seconds. When Yoniq ceased to function earlier in February, this also happened to coincide with the following event log which I noted while having issues:
Name resolution for the name ioniq.evl.es timed out after none of the configured DNS servers responded. It just so happens that ioniq.evl.es is the FQDN for 85.152.6.7.
ping ioniq.evl.es
Pinging ioniq.evl.es [85.152.6.7] with 32 bytes of data:With that said, Yoniq continuously attempts to connect to the Internet and if it can not reach the server it will exhibit issues which was the cause of the application failure I experienced earlier in February.
Further investigation. So, what is going on with Yoniq?
ftp ioniq.evl.es
Connected to 85.152.6.7.
220---------- Welcome to Pure-FTPd [privsep] [TLS] ----------
220-You are user number 1 of 50 allowed.
220-Local time is now 01:40. Server port: 21.
220-This is a private system - No anonymous login
220-IPv6 connections are also welcome on this server.
220 You will be disconnected after 15 minutes of inactivity.
User (85.152.6.7:(none)):I downloaded and skimmed through the v1.13A source code for Yoniq which is freely available from the website and could not find any reference in the code which appears to make the application wanting to FTP connect to ioniq.evl.es. This now has me troubled, therefor, I ran a network packet capture on a Yoniq session and retrieve the user name and password for the FTP connection. Sure enough, as expected, I accessed the server and did some poking around to try and understand the intent behind this connection and if Yoniq was leaking any personal information.
As a side bar, you can use a web browser and navigate to
http://ioniq.evl.es/ which will get you a live stream of Disco Music Radio.
I do not like this behaviour in Yoniq version 1.13.2. Someone along the way modified the original Yoniq version 1.13A source code to add some additional features and recompiled it under Yoniq version 1.13.2 for distribution. I have not been able to find the v1.13.2 source code and the web site does mention new features, one of which mentions the requirement for an Internet connection for it to work, but there is no mention of this constant FTP connection occurring in the background without any user control over it.
Yoniq v1.13A. I re-tested Yoniq v1.13A and it behaves normally with no attempts to connect to the Internet. I also found that this version runs smoother without that occasional freezing of the spectrum / waterfall display which is experienced in version 1.13.2. That occasional freezing of the display in v1.13.2 also happens to con-insides with the application connecting to the Internet.
Recommendation. Some of you have asked me in the past what application I used for SSTV decoding and I had mentioned MMSSTV - YONIQ. If you are using Yoniq version 1.13.2 I recommend that you uninstall it then download and use version 1.13A.
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