As covered here in January, changes to theGNU C Library's memory-allocation routines have broken the "unexec" methodused to build the Emacs editor. Fixing this problem has proved to be morechallenging than originally thought; that issue has now come to a head in adisagreement that could cost the Emacs community one of its maintainers.
The Git project has announcedthe release of Git 2.11.0. This version prints longer abbreviatedSHA-1 names and has better tools for dealing with ambiguous short SHA-1s,it's faster at accessing delta chains, and has other performanceenhancements, and much more. The releasenotes contain more details.
CentOS has updated expat (C6:code execution) and memcached (C6: code execution).openSUSE has updated ffmpeg(Leap42.2: heap corruption) and virtualbox(Leap42.2: multiple unspecified vulnerabilities).Oracle has updated expat (OL7; OL6: code execution).Red Hat has updated expat(RHEL6,7: code execution) and thunderbird(RHEL5,6,7: multiple vulnerabilities).SUSE has updated mariadb (SLE12-SP1,2; SLES12: multiple vulnerabilities) and qemu (SLES12: multiple vulnerabilities).Ubuntu has updated python-cryptography (16.10, 16.04: bad key generation) and vim (code execution).
InfoWorld looksat the underfunded NTP project. "NTP is more than 30 years old—it may be the oldest codebase running on the internet. Despite some hiccups, it continues to work well. But the project’s future is uncertain because the number of volunteer contributors has shrunk, and there’s too much work for one person—principal maintainer Harlan Stenn—to handle. When there is limited support, the project has to pick and choose what tasks it can afford to complete, which slows down maintenance and stifles innovation."
Harald Welte looksback at the Openmoko phone with a ten-year perspective (and an almostunreadable low-contrast web page). "So yes, the smartphone world ismuch more restricted, locked-down and proprietary than it was back in theOpenmoko days. If we had been more successful then, that world might bequite different today. It was a lost opportunity to make the world embracemore freedom in terms of software and hardware."
The 4.9-rc7 kernel prepatch is out. Linussays that things are shaping up and it is possible, but perhaps not likely,that the final 4.9 release will happen on December 4. "Ibasically reserve the right to make up my mind next weekend."
Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 4.8.11 and 4.4.35 stable kernels. As usual, they containfixes throughout the kernel tree and users of those kernel series shouldupgrade.
The Verge looksat legislation in the UK that would allow police and intelligenceagencies to legally spy on its own people. "The legislation in question is called the Investigatory Powers Bill. It’s been cleared by politicians and awaits only the formality of royal assent before it becomes law. The bill will legalize the UK’s global surveillance program, which scoops up communications data from around the world, but it will also introduce new domestic powers, including a government database that stores the web history of every citizen in the country. UK spies will be empowered to hack individuals, internet infrastructure, and even whole towns — if the government deems it necessary."
The Fedora 25 release is now available "The Fedora Project is pleased to announce the immediate availability ofFedora 25, the next big step our journey into the containerized, modularfuture!" See the announcement and therelease notes for details on the many changes in this release.
Clement Lefebvre has announcedthe release of Cinnamon 3.2. This version has QT 5.7+ support, supportfor libinput touchpads as well as synaptics, and many more changes acrossthe stack.
Fedora Magazine has a briefoverview of the changes to be found in the workstation version of theFedora 25 release. "Wayland now replaces the old X11 displayserver by default. Its goal is to provide a smoother, richer experiencewhen navigating Fedora Workstation. Like all software, there may still besome bugs. You can still choose the old X11 server if required."
Linus has released the 4.9-rc6 kernelprepatch for testing. "We're getting further in the rc series, andwhile things have stayed pretty calm, I'm not sure if we're quite thereyet. There's a few outstanding issues that just shouldn't be issues at rc6time, so we'll just have to see. This may be one of those releases thathave an rc8, which considering the size of 4.9 is perhaps not thatunusual."
The stable kernel machine continues to produce updates; the latest are 4.8.9 and 4.4.33. Each contains the usual set ofimportant fixes. Note that 4.8.10 and4.4.34 are already in the review process;they can be expected on or after November 21.
The Linux Foundation has announced that it is consolidating three conferences under one name going forward. LinuxCon, CloudOpen, and ContainerCon join together under the "Linux Foundation Open Source Summit" name. For 2017, that encompasses three events: OSS Japan in Tokyo May 31-June 2, OSS North America in Los Angeles September 11-13, and OSS Europe in Prague October 23-25. "The Linux Foundation Open Source Summit in North America and Europe will also contain a brand new event, Community Leadership Conference. Attendees will have access to sessions across all events in a single venue, enabling them to collaborate and share information across a wide range of open source topics and areas of technology. They can take advantage of not only unparalleled educational opportunities, but also an expo hall, networking activities, hackathons, additional co-located events and The Linux Foundation’s diversity initiatives, including free childcare, nursing rooms, non-binary restrooms and a diversity luncheon."
The Tor blog has a post about the refresh of its Tor-enabled Android phone prototype, which is now in a workable state though it still has some rough edges. There is also a worrisome trend that the post highlights:"It is unfortunate that Google seems to see locking down Android as the only solution to the fragmentation and resulting insecurity of the Android platform. We believe that more transparent development and release processes, along with deals for longer device firmware support from SoC vendors, would go a long way to ensuring that it is easier for good OEM players to stay up to date. Simply moving more components to Google Play, even though it will keep those components up to date, does not solve the systemic problem that there are still no OEM incentives to update the base system. Users of old AOSP base systems will always be vulnerable to library, daemon, and operating system issues. Simply giving them slightly more up to date apps is a bandaid that both reduces freedom and does not solve the root security problems. Moreover, as more components and apps are moved to closed source versions, Google is reducing its ability to resist the demand that backdoors be introduced. It is much harder to backdoor an open source component (especially with reproducible builds and binary transparency) than a closed source one."
Arch Linux has updated firefox(multiple vulnerabilities), libgit2 (two vulnerabilities), python-django (two vulnerabilities), and python2-django (two vulnerabilities).Debian has updated firefox-esr (multiple vulnerabilities).Fedora has updated bind99 (F24:two vulnerabilities), firefox (F24: multiple vulnerabilities),and kernel (F24: denial of service).Gentoo has updated libuv(privilege escalation from 2015).Mageia has updated nss, firefox (multiple vulnerabilities).Oracle has updated firefox (OL7; OL6; OL5: multiple vulnerabilities) and nss and nss-util (OL7; OL6; OL5: twovulnerabilities).Red Hat has updated openssl(RHEL6: denial of service).
The EuroPython Society sharesthe sad news that Rob Collins has passed away. "Many of you may know Rob from the sponsored massage sessions he regularly ran at EuroPython in recent years and which he continued to develop, taking them from a single man setup (single threaded process) to a group of people setup by giving workshops (multiprocessing) and later on by passing on his skills to more leaders (removing the GIL) to spread wellness and kindness throughout our conference series."
Debian has updated akonadi (denial of service), gst-plugins-bad0.10 (code execution), and moin (cross-site scripting).Debian-LTS has updated mysql-5.5(multiple unspecified vulnerabilities) and postgresql-9.1 (PostgreSQL 9.1 is eol, usersare encouraged to upgrade).Mageia has updated libarchive (unspecified).openSUSE has updated pcre (13.2: multiple vulnerabilities).Oracle has updated 389-ds-base(OL6: three vulnerabilities) and kernel(OL6: multiple vulnerabilities).Red Hat has updated 389-ds-base(RHEL6: three vulnerabilities), atomic-openshift (RHOSCP3.3: redirect networktraffic), atomic-openshift-utils(RHOSCP3.2,3.3: code execution), firefox(RHEL5,6,7: multiple vulnerabilities), kernel (RHEL6: two vulnerabilities), and nss and nss-util (RHEL5,6,7: three vulnerabilities).
The Linux Foundation has announced that Microsoft has joined as a platinummember. "From cloud computing and networking to gaming, Microsoft has steadilyincreased its engagement in open source projects and communities. Thecompany is currently a leading open source contributor on GitHub andearlier this year announced several milestones that indicate the scope ofits commitment to open source development."
Mozilla has released Firefox 50.0. This version features improvedperformance for SDK extensions or extensions using the SDK module loader,added download protection for a large number of executable file types,added option to Find in page that allows users to limit search to wholewords only, and more. See the releasenotes for details.
Arch Linux has updated shutter (code execution).Debian-LTS has updated sudo (privilege escalation).Fedora has updated libgit2 (F24:unspecified), memcached (F24; F23: code execution), python-django (F24: two vulnerabilities), and tre (F24; F23: code execution).Gentoo has updated libpng(multiple vulnerabilities), polkit(privilege escalation), tnftp (commandexecution from 2014), xen (multiplevulnerabilities), and xinetd (privilegeescalation from 2013).openSUSE has updated Chromium (SPH for SLE12; Leap42.2, Leap42.1, 13.2: multiple vulnerabilities).Oracle has updated policycoreutils (OL7; OL6: sandbox escape).Red Hat has updated chromium-browser (RHEL6: multiplevulnerabilities), qemu-kvm-rhev (RHELOSP7 for RHEL7; RHELOSP6 for RHEL7; RHELOSP5 for RHEL7: denial ofservice), rh-mysql56-mysql (RHSCL: multiplevulnerabilities), and rh-php56 (RHSCL: multiple vulnerabilities).
Hector Marco and Ismael Ripoll reporta discouraging vulnerability in many encrypted disk setups: simply runningup too many password failures will eventually result in a root shell."This vulnerability allows to obtain a root initramfs shell onaffected systems. The vulnerability is very reliable because it doesn'tdepend on specific systems or configurations. Attackers can copy, modify ordestroy the hard disc as well as set up the network to exfiltratedata. This vulnerability is specially serious in environments likelibraries, ATMs, airport machines, labs, etc, where the whole boot processis protect (password in BIOS and GRUB) and we only have a keyboard or/and amouse."
The KDE Project has a littleproblem to report for users of the KDEneon distribution: "The package archive used by KDE neon wasincorrectly configured allowing anyone to upload packages to it. There isno reason to think that anyone actually did so but as a precaution we haveemptied the archives and removed ISOs built before this date." Oncethe process of rebuilding the archive is complete, users are recommended toupgrade to the new versions, or, better, simply reinstall.
The Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII) has announcedcontinued financial support for the Reproducible Builds Project."The grant extends the contribution to include Debian developersChris Lamb, Mattia Rizzolo, Ximin Luo and Vagrant Cascadian, as well asextending funding for Holger Levsen. Furthermore, this contribution addssupport for Ed Maste, working with FreeBSD." (Thanks to Paul Wise)
Getting live-patching capabilities into the mainline kernel has been amulti-year process. Basic patching support was merged for the 4.0 release,but further work has been stalled overdisagreements on how the consistency model — the code ensuring that a patchis safe to apply to a running kernel — should work. The addition of kernel stack validation has addressed thebiggest of the objections, so, arguably, it is time to move forward. Atthe 2016 Linux PlumbersConference, developers working on live patching got together to discusscurrent challenges and future directions.Click below (subscribers only) for the full report from LPC 2016.
CentOS has updated java-1.7.0-openjdk (C6: multiplevulnerabilities), libgcrypt (C6: flawedrandom number generation), and pacemaker(C6: privilege escalation).Debian has updated mariadb-10.0 (multiple vulnerabilities) and terminology (command execution).Fedora has updated bind (F24:denial of service), mingw-libwebp (F24:integer overflows), sudo (F24: privilege escalation), and tomcat (F24; F23: multiple vulnerabilities).Mageia has updated libwmf (denial of service), monit (cross-site request forgery), python-cryptography (returns empty byte-string), and quagga (stack overrun).openSUSE has updated flash-player(13.1: multiple vulnerabilities), mysql-community-server (Leap42.2: multiple vulnerabilities), and opera (Leap42.2; Leap42.1: multiple vulnerabilities).Red Hat has updated policycoreutils (RHEL6,7: sandbox escape).SUSE has updated flash-player(SLE12-SP1: multiple vulnerabilities) and mysql (SLE11-SP4: three vulnerabilities).
The 4.9-rc5 kernel prepatch is out. Linussays: "Things have definitely gotten smaller, so a normal releaseschedule (with rc7 being the last one) is still looking possible despitethe large size of 4.9. But let's see how things work out over the nextcouple of weeks. In the meantime, there's a lot of normal fixes in here,and we just need more testing."
Over at Linux Journal, Susan Sons has a lengthy article on security exercises, which are a way to test the readiness of a project or organization for some kind of security problem. "Scheduling exercises at a predictable time and reminding others when it will happen prevents confusion among staff. It is wise to begin with low-impact exercises (more on this below) that don't leverage production systems, and move on to higher-potential-impact exercises only when the organization's infrastructure and personnel have had most of the bugs shaken out. If something as small as a runaway process on a single server can seriously impact your business, it's better to find out at a planned time with all hands on deck than at 4am on a holiday when no one who knows what to do can be reached. The whole point of security exercises is to increase resilience: raise the threshold of what is normal for your team to deal with, what your systems can shrug off." She followed that article up with some example security exercises.
Christian Schaller writesthat, after all these years, a stock Fedora system will be able to play MP3files. "I know this has been a big wishlist item for a long time fora lot of people so I am really happy that we are finally in a position tofulfill that wish. You should be able to download the mp3 plugin on day 1through GNOME Software or through the missing codec installer in variousGStreamer applications. For Fedora Workstation 26 I would not be surprisedif we decide to ship it on the install media."
Fedora has updated chromium (F24:multiple vulnerabilities), chromium-native_client (F24:multiple vulnerabilities), dracut (F24:information disclosure), jasper (F24:multiple vulnerabilities), and xen (F24:multiple vulnerabilities).Mageia has updated flash-player-plugin (multiple vulnerabilities), kernel (multiple vulnerabilities), and mariadb (multiple vulnerabilities).Red Hat has updated kernel(RHEL7.2: denial of service) and systemd(RHEL7.2: denial of service).SUSE has updated php5 (SLE12:three vulnerabilities).Ubuntu has updated qemu, qemu-kvm (multiple vulnerabilities).
Neil Brown writes: "For a little longer than a year now, I have been using Notmuch as my primary meansof reading email. Though the experience has not been without someannoyances, I feel that it has been a net improvement and expect to keepusing Notmuch for quite some time." Click below (subscribers only) for hisfull report.
Debian has updated libxslt (code execution).Fedora has updated dbus (F23:code execution), firefox (F23: twovulnerabilities), and pacemaker (F23: privilege escalation).openSUSE has updated mariadb(13.2: multiple vulnerabilities) and nodejs(Leap42.1, 13.2: code execution).Red Hat has updated flash-plugin(RHEL5,6: multiple vulnerabilities).Scientific Linux has updated libgcrypt (SL6: flawed random numbergeneration) and pacemaker (SL6: privilege escalation).
Dave Täht has been working to save the Internet for the last six years (atleast). Recently, his focus has been on improving the performance ofnetworking over WiFi — performance that has been disappointing for as longas anybody can remember. The good news, as related in his 2016 Linux PlumbersConference talk, is that WiFi can be fixed, and thefixes aren't even all that hard to do. Users with the right hardware and awillingness to run experimental software can have fast WiFi now, and itshould be available for the rest of us before too long.
The digiKam Software Collection 5.3.0 has been released. This version isavailable as an AppImage bundle. "AppImage is an open-source project dedicated to provide a simple way to distribute portable software as compressed binary file, that standard user can run as well, without to install special dependencies. All is included into the bundle, as last Qt5 and KF5 frameworks. AppImage use Fuse file-system, which is de-compressed into a temporary directory to start the application. You don't need to install digiKam on your system to be able to use it. Better, you can use the official digiKam from your Linux distribution in parallel, and test the new version without any conflict with one used in production. This permit to quickly test a new release without to wait an official package dedicated for your Linux box. Another AppImage advantage is to be able to provide quickly a pre-release bundle to test last patches applied to source code, outside the releases plan."
The second service pack for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Desktop and otherproducts, has been released. Highlightsinclude software defined networking and network function virtualization,the new SUSE Package Hub for package updates, the ability to skip servicepack releases (e.g. upgrade from SLES 12 to SLES 12-SP2), architecturesupport for AArch64 and Raspberry Pi, and much more.
Debian has updated mat (information leak) and openjdk-7 (multiple vulnerabilities).Debian-LTS has updated python-imaging (two vulnerabilities).Fedora has updated ansible (F24:two vulnerabilities), ghostscript (F24: twovulnerabilities), icu (F24: codeexecution), java-1.8.0-openjdk-aarch32(F24: multiple vulnerabilities), and kernel(F24: two vulnerabilities).openSUSE has updated bind (Leap42.1; 13.2: denial of service).Oracle has updated java-1.7.0-openjdk (OL6; OL5:multiple vulnerabilities) and libgcrypt(OL6: flawed random number generation).Red Hat has updated chromium-browser (RHEL6: memory leak), libgcrypt (RHEL6,7: flawed random numbergeneration), pacemaker (RHEL6: privilege escalation), and qemu-kvm-rhev (RHOSP8; RHOSP9: denial of service).Scientific Linux has updated java-1.7.0-openjdk (SL5,6: multiple vulnerabilities).
HackerBoards takesa look at the 64-bit Orange Pi. "Shenzhen Xunlong is keeping up its prolific pace in spinning off new Allwinner SoCs into open source SBCs, and now it has released its first 64-bit ARM model, and one of the cheapest quad-core -A53 boards around. The Orange Pi PC 2 runs Linux or Android on a new Allwinner H5 SoC featuring four Cortex-A53 cores and a more powerful Mali-450 GPU."