LWN.net

Arch Linux has updated kernel (privilege escalation).CentOS has updated kernel (C5: two remote denial of service vulnerabilities).Debian has updated bind9 (denial of service) and ecryptfs-utils (privilege escalation).Debian-LTS has updated bind9 (denial of service), ecryptfs-utils (privilege escalation), and librsvg (out-of-bounds heap read).Fedora has updated libxmp (F23; F22:multiple vulnerabilities), mbedtls (F23; F22:memory leak), qemu (F22: multiple vulnerabilities), and radicale (F23; F22: multiple vulnerabilities).openSUSE has updated cups-filters(Leap42.1: code execution).Oracle has updated kernel (OL5:two remote denial of service vulnerabilities).Scientific Linux has updated kernel (SL5: two remote denial of service vulnerabilities).SUSE has updated bind (SLE12-SP1:denial of service).Ubuntu has updated bind9 (denialof service), ecryptfs-utils (privilegeescalation), kernel (15.10; 15.04; 14.04:privilege escalation), libxml2 (twovulnerabilities), linux-lts-trusty (12.04:privilege escalation), linux-lts-utopic(14.04: privilege escalation), linux-lts-vivid (14.04: privilege escalation),linux-lts-wily (14.04: privilegeescalation), and linux-raspi2 (15.10: privilege escalation).

This article from CysecLabs starts a series explaining how return-oriented programming (ROP)can be used to exploit vulnerabilities in the kernel. "ROPtechniques take advantage of code misalignment to identify newgadgets. This is possible due to x86 language density, i.e., the x86instruction set is large enough (and instructions have different lengths),that almost any sequence of bytes can be interpreted as a validinstruction."

Back in 2014, LWN looked at the Meteor webapplication framework. Now, Meteor's developers are contemplatingwhy it failed to take over the world. "New developers love howeasy it is to get started with it, but can get discouraged when they startstruggling with more complex apps. And purely from a financial standpoint,it’s hard to build a sustainable business on the back of new developershacking on smaller apps. On the other hand, many of the more experienceddevelopers who’d be able to handle (and help solve) Meteor’s trickierchallenges are turned off by its all-in-one approach, and never even giveit a chance in the first place." They promise the imminentunveiling of a new approach that is going to address these problems.

The CyanogenMod developers have announcedthat they will be shutting down the WhisperPush secure messaging system (covered here in 2013). "We’veultimately made the decision that we will no longer be supportingWhisperPush functionality directly within CyanogenMod. Further, WhisperPushservices will be end-of-lifed beginning Feb 1st 2016. As this is a serverside implementation, all branches of CM from CM10.2 and forward will beaffected."

Two of the earliest figures in the Linux community were Lars Wirzenius andJoey Hess. So when the former offered us an interview with the latter, wewere quick to accept. Click below (subscribers only) for Joey's views onhis departure from Debian, Haskell development, off-the-grid living, andmore.

Debian has updated kernel(multiple vulnerabilities, including one from 2013).Debian-LTS has updated isc-dhcp(denial of service), passenger (environmentvariable injection), and srtp (denial of service).openSUSE has updated mbedtls(42.1: signature forgery), perl-Module-Signature (13.2, 13.1: multiplevulnerabilities), and polarssl (13.2:signature forgery).Red Hat has updated kernel(RHEL5: two remote denial of service vulnerabilities) and kernel (RHEL6.2: two denial of service vulnerabilities).SUSE has updated samba (SLE11SP4,SLE11SP3: multiple vulnerabilities) and kernel (SLE12: multiple vulnerabilities).

Perception Point disclosesa use-after-free vulnerability in the kernel's keyring subsystem; it isexploitable for local privilege escalation. "If a process causes thekernel to leak 0x100000000 references to the same object, it can latercause the kernel to think the object is no longer referenced andconsequently free the object. If the same process holds another legitimatereference and uses it after the kernel freed the object, it will cause thekernel to reference deallocated, or a reallocated memory. This way, we canachieve a use-after-free, by using the exact same bug from before. A lothas been written on use-after-free vulnerability exploitation in thekernel, so the following steps wouldn’t surprise an experiencedvulnerability researcher." This bug, introduced in 3.8, looks likea good one to patch quickly; of course, for vast numbers of users of mobile and embeddedsystems, that may not be an option.

Here is a longand detailed post from Andy Wingo on how he improved numericalperformance in the Guile language by carefully removing runtime typeinformation ("unboxing"). "If Guile did native compilation, it wouldalways be a win to unbox any integer operation, if only because you wouldavoid polymorphism or any other potential side exit. For bignums that arewithin the unboxable range, the considerations are similar to thefloating-point case: allocation costs dominate, so unboxing is almostalways a win, provided that you avoid double-boxing. Eliminating oneallocation can pay off a lot of instruction dispatch."

Swapnil Bhartiya takesa look at Mycroft AI and talks with CTO Ryan Sipes, on Linux.com. "Earlier this month, the developers released the Adapt intent parser as open source. When many people look at Mycroft, they think voice recognition is the important piece, but the brain of Mycroft is the Adapt intent. It takes natural language, analyzes the ultimate sentence, and then decides what action needs to be taken. That means when someone says “turn the lights off in the conference room,” Adapt grabs the intent “turn off” and identifies the entity as “conference room.” So, it makes a decision and then reaches out to whatever device is controlling the lights in the conference rooms and tells it to turn them off.That’s complex work. And, the Mycroft developers just open sourced the biggest and most powerful piece of their software."

Arch Linux has updated docker (information disclosure), ffmpeg (cross-origin attacks), go (information disclosure), go-ipfs (information disclosure), hub (information disclosure), keybase (information disclosure), ntp (man-in-the-middle attack), roundcubemail (code execution), and syncthing (information disclosure).Debian has updated tomcat7 (Security Manager bypass).Debian-LTS has updated prosody(guessable keys) and roundcube (code execution).Fedora has updated dhcp (F23:denial of service), golang (informationdisclosure), openssh (F23; F22: information disclosure), openstack-glance (F23: unspecified),php (F23; F22: multiple vulnerabilities), python-kdcproxy (F23: unspecified), salt (F23: insecure /tmp file handling), wireshark (F22: multiple vulnerabilities), and wordpress (F23; F22: cross-site scripting).Gentoo has updated openssh (multiple vulnerabilities).Mageia has updated openssh (multiple vulnerabilities), php (information disclosure), and qemu (multiple vulnerabilities).openSUSE has updated nodejs (two vulnerabilities) and openssh (13.1; 11.4: multiple vulnerabilities).

Version 1.2 of the MyPaint natural-media-painting application hasbeen released.Changes include new tools for smooth-stroke inking and flood filling,automatic file backup and recovery, the ability to group layers, andGTK+3 support. Ubuntu packages are already available through theproject's official testingPPA; builds will follow shortly for other distributions andplatforms. In the meantime, source bundles are provided at theproject's GitHub page.

Arch Linux has updated openssh (multiple vulnerabilities) and php (multiple vulnerabilities).CentOS has updated openssh(C7: multiple vulnerabilities).Debian has updated ganeti(denial of service; regression) and openssh (multiple vulnerabilities).Debian-LTS has updated dbconfig-common (information leak), dwarfutils (information leak), giflib (denial of service), isc-dhcp (denial of service), and openssh (multiple vulnerabilities).Mageia has updated ffmpeg(M5: multiple vulnerabilities), giflib(M5: heap-based buffer overflow), librsvg (M5: multiple vulnerabilities), and ruby-mail (M5: message injection).openSUSE has updated libebml, libmatroska (13.1, 13.2, Leap 42.1: multiplevulnerabilities), openssh (13.2; Leap 42.1: multiple vulnerabilities),and xen (13.2; 13.1; Leap 42.1: multiple vulnerabilities).Oracle has updated openssh(O7: multiple vulnerabilities).Red Hat has updated openssh(RHEL 7: multiple vulnerabilities).Scientific Linux has updated openssh (SL7: multiple vulnerabilities).Slackware has updated openssh (multiple vulnerabilities).SUSE has updated openssh (SLE12; SLE11-SP3; SLE11-SP4: multiple vulnerabilities) and openssh-openssl1 (SLE11-SECURITY: multiple vulnerabilities).Ubuntu has updated openssh(12.04, 14.04, 15.04, 15.10: multiple vulnerabilities).

Core Bitcoin developer Mike Hearn writesthat the Bitcoin experiment has failed. "In a company, someonewho did not share the goals of the organisation would be dealt with in asimple way: by firing him. But Bitcoin Core is an open source project, nota company. Once the 5 developers with commit access to the code had beenchosen and Gavin [Andresen] had decided he did not want to be the leader,there was no procedure in place to ever remove one. And there was nointerview or screening process to ensure they actually agreed with theproject’s goals." If Bitcoin is indeed failing as the article says,it's failing due to project governance issues rather than technical orregulatory problems.

Over at Opensource.com, VM (Vicky) Brasseur and Josh Berkus give advice to conference organizers on how they can improve their conferences for attendees. There are ten different areas they address, including "Clear communications", "Have a Code of Conduct (and train staff on what that means)", "Fix your darn badges", and "Working Wi-Fi (here be dragons)". "When asked, attendees have a lot of strong opinions on the subject of conference badges, and the majority of those opinions are not positive. Badges serve multiple purposes, but the single most important one is allowing attendees to identify each other. Yet, despite that, few conference badges do a good job of performing this one deceptively simple duty."

The Linux Foundation and Goodwill are working together to bring free Linux training and certification to adult students in Texas."The scholarship program will begin with The Goodwill Excel Center and the Goodwill Career and Technical Academy in Central Texas and is expected to expand to other communities in the future. The Goodwill Excel Center is the first free public charter high school for adults in Texas. Students age 17-50 have the opportunity to earn their high school diploma, complete an in-demand professional certification and begin post-secondary education.The Extended Learning Linux Foundation Scholarship Program created by Linux Foundation and Goodwill includes free access to the Intro to Linux (LFS101x) and Essentials of System Administration (LFS201) courses, and the Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator exam at no cost. Hundreds of disadvantaged individuals from underserved communities and a variety of backgrounds are expected to enroll in the new program in the year ahead."

The 2016 Linux Plumbers Conference (LPC) has announced its Call for Microconferences. LPC will be held in Santa Fe, NM, USA on November 2-4, co-located with the Kernel Summit. "A microconference is a collection of collaborative sessions focused on problems in a particular area of the Linux plumbing, which includes the kernel, libraries, utilities, UI, and so forth, but can also focus on cross-cutting concerns such as security, scaling, energy efficiency, or a particular use case. Good microconferences result in solutions to these problems and concerns, while the best microconferences result in patches that implement those solutions."

Debian has updated libpng (twovulnerabilities), pygments (codeexecution), and wordpress (cross-site scripting).Debian-LTS has updated cacti (SQLinjection) and inspircd (denial of serviceand possible IRC network privilege escalation).Fedora has updated gajim (F23; F22:man-in-the-middle attack), nodejs-ws (F23; F22:remote information disclosure), and perl-PathTools (F23: tainting botch).Mageia has updated apache-commons-collections (code execution),kernel-linus (multiple vulnerabilities), kernel-tmb (multiple vulnerabilities), libtiff (three vulnerabilities), mono (code execution from 2009), and roundcubemail (path traversal).openSUSE has updated gajim (42.1:man-in-the-middle attack), libpng12 (42.1:code execution), libpng15 (42.1: codeexecution), libpng16 (42.1: codeexecution), libxml2 (42.1: multiplevulnerabilities), and python-rsa (signatureforgery).SUSE has updated java-1_6_0-ibm(SLE10SP4: multiple vulnerabilities).Ubuntu has updated thunderbird(multiple vulnerabilities).

Theo de Raadt suggests that a significant OpenSSH security issue is aboutto be exposed; the message reads, in full: "Important SSH patch comingsoon. For now, every on all operating systems, please do the following:Add undocumented 'UseRoaming no' to ssh_config or use '-oUseRoaming=no'to prevent upcoming #openssh client bug CVE-2016-0777. More later."Update: that important patch appears to be OpenSSH 7.1p2, available now. "The OpenSSH client code between 5.4 and 7.1 contains experimential support for resuming SSH-connections (roaming). The matching server code has never been shipped, but the client code was enabled by default and could be tricked by a malicious server into leaking client memory to the server, including private client user keys." There are a few other security fixes there as well.Update 2: see the Qualys advisory for vast amounts of detail.

The LWN.net Weekly Edition for January 14, 2016 is available.

The Qt Company has announced changes to the open source licensing andproduct structure of the Qt cross-platform application developmentframework. "New versions of Qt will be licensed under a commercial license, GPLv2, GPLv3, and LGPLv3, but no longer under LGPLv2.1. The updated open source licenses better ensure end user freedom when using open source licensed versions of Qt. LGPLv3 explicitly forbids the distribution of closed embedded devices. Distributing software under these terms includes a patent grant to all receivers of the software. Commercial Qt licensing removes these requirements and includes professional technical support from The Qt Company."

Arch Linux has updated libxslt (denial of service).Debian has updated isc-dhcp (denial of service).Debian-LTS has updated claws-mail (code execution).Fedora has updated openvpn (F22:multiple vulnerabilities), pitivi (F22: code execution), and shotwell (F23; F22: validate TLS certificates).openSUSE has updated ffmpeg(Leap42.1: multiple vulnerabilities).Slackware has updated dhcp (denial of service).Ubuntu has updated isc-dhcp(denial of service) and libvirt (multiple vulnerabilities).

The user namespaces feature is conceptuallyfairly straightforward—allow users to run as root in their own space, whilelimiting their privileges on the system outside that space—but theimplementation has, perhaps unsurprisingly, proven to be quite tricky. There are some assumptions about user IDs and howthey operate thatare deeply wired into the kernel in various subsystems; shaking those outhas taken some time, which led to some hesitation about enabling thefeature in distribution kernels. But that reluctance has largely passed atthis point, which makes the recent discoveryof a root-privilege escalation using user namespaces and the overlayfilesystem (overlayfs) that much more dangerous.Subscribers can click below for the full story from this week's edition.

Version 4.6 of theArdour audio editor is available. "4.6 includes some notable newfeatures - deep support for the Presonus FaderPort control surface,Track/Bus duplication, a new Plugin sidebar for the Mixer window - as wellas the usual dozens of fixes and improvements to all aspects of theapplication, particularly automation editing."The full list of enhancements is quite long; see the announcement fordetails.

Fedora has updated kernel (F23:multiple vulnerabilities), lighttpd (F23; F22:denial of service), nghttp2 (F22: codeexecution), qemu (F23: multiplevulnerabilities), and wireshark (F23: multiple vulnerabilities).Mageia has updated bugzilla (multiple vulnerabilities), claws-mail (code execution), mariadb (multiple vulnerabilities), openvpn (multiple vulnerabilities), python-rsa (signature forgery), and ruby (code execution).Red Hat has updated kernel(RHEL6.6: two vulnerabilities).Ubuntu has updated oxide-qt(15.10, 15.04, 14.04: multiple vulnerabilities).

Version 2.0 of theAnsible configuration management system has been released. "Thisis by far one of the most ambitious Ansible releases to date, and itreflects an enormous amount of work by the community, which continues toamaze me. Approximately 300 users have contributed code to what has beenknown as 'v2' for some time, and 500 users have contributed code to modulessince the last major Ansible release." New features includeplaybook-level exception handling, better error diagnostics, a new set ofOpenStack modules, and more. See thechangelog for more (terse) details.

Mark Radcliffe writesabout important legal developments from 2015, including the firstruling on GPLv3 (in Germany): "In this case, the user cured itsbreach within the necessary period, but refused to sign a 'cease anddesist' declaration which was sought by the plaintiff to ensure that thedefendant would have an incentive not to breach the terms of the GPLv3again. The court ruled that the reinstatement provision in Section 8 didnot eliminate the plaintiff's right to a preliminary injunction to preventfurther infringements, particularly if the defendant had refused to signthe plaintiff's cease-and-desist declaration."

Mozilla has announcedthat it will be shutting down the persona.org authentication service inNovember. It has been two years since Persona was "transitionedto community ownership"; now the other shoe has dropped. "Due tolow, declining usage, we are reallocating the project’s dedicated,ongoing resources and will shut down the persona.org services that we run.Persona.org and related domains will be taken offline on November 30th,2016." There is aset of "shutdown guidelines" to help sites still using Persona totransition to something else. (LWN looked atPersona in 2013).

Netcraft reportsthat the US Department of Defense (DoD) is still issuing SHA-1 signedcertificates, and using them to secure connections to .mil websites."The DoD is America's largest government agency, and is tasked with protecting the security of its country, which makes its continued reliance on SHA-1 particularly remarkable. Besides the well known security implications, this reliance could already prove problematic amongst the DoD's millions of employees. For instance, Mozilla Firefox 43 began rejecting all new SHA-1 certificates issued since 1 January 2016. When it encountered one of these certificates, the browser displayed an Untrusted Connection error, although this could be overridden. If DoD employees become accustomed to ignoring such errors, it could become much easier to carry out man-in-the-middle attacks against them."

Arch Linux has updated dhcpcd (denial of service), gajim (man-in-the-middle), wireshark-cli (multiple vulnerabilities), wireshark-gtk (multiple vulnerabilities), wireshark-qt (multiple vulnerabilities), and wordpress (cross-site scripting).Debian has updated gnutls26 (signature forgery), openssl (signature forgery), perl (returns untainted strings), prosody (two vulnerabilities), sudo (privilege escalation), and xscreensaver (denial of service).Debian-LTS has updated icu(information leak) and sudo (privilege escalation).Fedora has updated kea (F23:denial of service), mod_nss (F23: enablesinsecure ciphersuites), and rsync (F23: unsafe destination path).Mageia has updated armagetron (two vulnerabilities), kernel (multiple vulnerabilities), phpmyadmin (installation path disclosure), pitivi (code execution), and rtmpdump (code execution).openSUSE has updated phpMyAdmin(Leap42.1, 13.2, 13.1: installation path disclosure), pitivi (Leap42.1, 13.2: code execution), and rubygem-mail, (Leap42.1, 13.2: SMTP injection).Oracle has updated kernel 3.8.13 (OL7; OL6: denialof service), kernel 2.6.39 (OL6; OL5: multiple vulnerabilities), kernel2.6.32 (OL6; OL5: multiple vulnerabilities).Red Hat has updated openstack-nova (RHELOSP5,6,7 for RHEL7; RHELOSP5 for RHEL6: information leak).Ubuntu has updated firefox (signature forgery).

Linus has, as expected, announced therelease of the 4.4 kernel. Some of the headline features in this release includethe mlock2() system call withsupport for deferred memory locking,I/O polling in the block layer,the LightNVM patches for low-level controlof solid-state storage devices,the ability for unprivileged users to loadBPF programs into the kernel, and much more.Some more information can be found on the KernelNewbies 4.4 page.

At his blog, Daniel Vrátil provides an extensive update on the status of Akonadi, the KDE project's personal information management (PIM) data service. He focuses on the changes made during the port to KDE Frameworks 5, starting with the switch from a text-based to a binary protocol. "This means we spent almost zero time on serialization and we are able to transmit large chunks of data between the server and the applications very, very efficiently." The ripple effects include changes to the database operations and, eventually, to the public API. Finally, he addresses the disappearance of the KJots note-taking application. "What we did not realize back then was that we will effectively prevent people from accessing their notes, since we don’t have any other app for that! I apologize for that to all our users, and to restore the balance in the Force I decided to bring KJots back. Not as a part of the main KDE PIM suite but as a standalone app."

CentOS has updated gnutls (C6; C7: signature forgery),libldb (C6; C7: multiple vulnerabilities), nss (C6; C7: signature forgery),openssl (C6; C7: signature forgery), rpcbind (C6; C7:denial of service),samba (C6; C7: multiple vulnerabilities), and samba4 (C6: multiple vulnerabilities).Fedora has updated bugzilla (F23; F22:multiple vulnerabilities),kea (F22: denial of service), libvirt (F22: path traversal), mediawiki (F22: multiple vulnerabilities), nghttp2 (F23: code execution), roundcubemail (F23; F22:path traversal),ruby (F22: multiple vulnerabilities), and shellinabox (F23; F22:DNS rebinding).openSUSE has updated wireshark (13.1, 13.2, Leap 42.1:multiple vulnerabilities).Oracle has updated gnutls (O6; O7: signature forgery),libldb (O7; O6: remote memory disclosure), nss (O7; O6: signature forgery),openssl (O7; O6: signature forgery), rpcbind (O7; O6:denial of service),samba (O6; O7: multiple vulnerabilities), and samba4 (O6: multiple vulnerabilities).Red Hat has updated gnutls(RHEL 6,7: signature forgery), libldb(RHEL 6,7: multiple vulnerabilities), nss (RHEL 6,7: signature forgery), openssl (RHEL 6,7: signature forgery), openstack-nova (RHEL 6: insecure VM instances), rpcbind (RHEL 6,7: denial of service), samba (RHEL 7; RHEL 6: multiple vulnerabilities),and samba4 (RHEL 6: multiple vulnerabilities).Scientific Linux has updated gnutls (SL 6,7: signature forgery), libldb (SL 6,7: multiple vulnerabilities), nss (SL 6,7: signature forgery), openssl (SL 6,7: signature forgery), rpcbind (SL 6,7: denial of service), samba (SL 7; SL6: multiple vulnerabilities),and samba4 (SL 6: multiple vulnerabilities).Ubuntu has updated gnutls26,gnutls28 (12.04, 14.04, 15.04: signature forgery), nss (12.04, 14.04, 15.04, 15.10: signature forgery), and openssl (12.04: signature forgery).

PostgreSQL 9.5 has been releasedwith lots of new features for the database management system, includingUPSERT, row-level security, and several "big data" features. We previewedsome of these features back in July and August. "A most-requested feature by application developers for several years,'UPSERT' is shorthand for 'INSERT, ON CONFLICT UPDATE', allowing newand updated rows to be treated the same. UPSERT simplifies web andmobile application development by enabling the database to handleconflicts between concurrent data changes. This feature also removesthe last significant barrier to migrating legacy MySQL applications toPostgreSQL."

CentOS has updated thunderbird (C7; C6; C5: multiple vulnerabilities).Fedora has updated libpng (F23:two vulnerabilities).openSUSE has updated grub2 (42.1:code execution).Red Hat has updated kernel(RHEL6: two vulnerabilities).Scientific Linux has updated thunderbird (multiple vulnerabilities).Ubuntu has updated libpng (twovulnerabilities) and pygments (code execution).

Mozilla hasrun into a hitch with its plans to deprecate SHA-1 certificates."However, for Firefox users who are behind certain'man-in-the-middle' devices (including some security scanners and antivirusproducts), this change removed their ability to access HTTPS web sites.When a user tries to connect to an HTTPS site, the man-in-the-middle devicesends Firefox a new SHA-1 certificate instead of the server’s realcertificate. Since Firefox rejects new SHA-1 certificates, it can’tconnect to the server." An update backing out the SHA-1 deprecationhas been posted, but affected users will have to install it manually(assuming they don't use a distribution-supported version, of course).

The LWN.net Weekly Edition for January 7, 2016 is available.

Glyn Moody conducted an interview with Ian Murdock in 1999. In thisarticle on Ars Technica, Glyn looks back at Debian's early history, as Ianrecounted it in that interview. "When we spoke in 1999, he was delighted by how the project had continued to develop: "I often tell people that I didn't know that Debian would be a success until after I left. Because the whole idea was that Debian would be something that would take on a life of its own, and that if it could do that it would outlive my involvement. And it did, and in fact it's not just surviving, but it's thriving. And I'm very proud of that.""

Debian has updated git (code execution) and kernel (multiple vulnerabilities).Debian-LTS has updated linux-2.6(three vulnerabilities).Fedora has updated openvpn (F23: multiple vulnerabilities) and quassel (F23; F22: denial of service).Oracle has updated thunderbird (OL7; OL6: multiple vulnerabilities).Red Hat has updated thunderbird(RHEL5,6,7: multiple vulnerabilities).SUSE has updated samba(SLE11-SP2: multiple vulnerabilities).Ubuntu has updated kernel (15.10; 15.04:privilege escalation), ldb (twovulnerabilities), linux-lts-vivid (14.04:privilege escalation), linux-lts-wily(14.04: privilege escalation), linux-raspi2(15.10: privilege escalation), and samba (multiple vulnerabilities).

The kernel development community is organized as a hierarchy, withdevelopers submitting patches to maintainers who will, in turn, committhose patches to a repository and push them upstream to higher-level maintainers. Thishierarchy logically looks a lot like the directory hierarchy of the kernelsource itself; most maintainers look after one or more subtrees of thekernel source tree. But does that model really describe how patches makeit into the mainline? The kernel's git repository, with the aid of somescripting, holds an answer to that question.

Linux.com coverstwo announcements from the Linux Foundation Automotive Grade Linux (AGL)Collaborative Project. Four new major automotive OEMs have joinedthe project, and a new AGL Unified Code Base (UCB) distribution hasbeen released. "At CES, the AGL UCB will be featured as part of the GENIVI CES 2016 Demonstration Showcase in the Trump International Hotel on January 6-7, 2016. Demo applications for navigation, HVAC control, radio, media player and browser, settings and home screen are on display this week.This new distribution integrates the best components from AGL, Tizen, GENIVI and related open source code into a single AGL Unified Code Base, allowing carmakers to leverage a common platform for rapid innovation."

Fedora has updated bouncycastle(F22: invalid curve attack), jenkins (F23; F22:multiple vulnerabilities), libpng15 (F23; F22: twovulnerabilities), and pcre (F22: multiple vulnerabilities).openSUSE has updated xfsprogs(Leap42.1: information disclosure).SUSE has updated kvm (SLE11-SP3:two vulnerabilities).

The Git 2.7.0 release is now available, adding a number of enhancements tothis version-control system. The headline feature appears to be amuch-needed rework of gitk for better appearance on high-DPI displays, butthere are a number of other improvements as well.

Dan Gillmor describeshis experience moving to Ubuntu full-time. "So for anyone who’seven slightly interested in retaining significant independence in desktopand laptop computing, Linux is looking like the last refuge. (On anassortment of other devices, from supercomputers to servers to mobilephones to embedded systems, Linux is already a powerhouse.) I’m glad I madethis move."

RFC 1883, Internet Protocol, Version 6 (IPv6) Specification, was published20 years ago. Ars Technica takesa look at IPv6 adoption. "First the good news. According to Google's statistics, on December 26, the world reached 9.98 percent IPv6 deployment, up from just under 6 percent a year earlier. Google measures IPv6 deployment by having a small fraction of their users execute a Javascript program that tests whether the computer in question can load URLs over IPv6. During weekends, a tenth of Google's users are able to do this, but during weekdays it's less than 8 percent. Apparently more people have IPv6 available at home than at work."

Arch Linux has updated rtmpdump (code execution).Debian has updated samba (multiple vulnerabilities).Debian-LTS has updated cacti(regression in previous update), libvncserver (memory corruption), and samba (multiple vulnerabilities).Fedora has updated claws-mail(F22: code execution), conntrack-tools (F23; F22:denial of service), libpng12 (F23;F22: multiple vulnerabilities), mediawiki (F23: multiple vulnerabilities),mingw-giflib (F23; F22: heap-based buffer overflow), thunderbird (F22: multiple vulnerabilities),and xen (F22: multiple vulnerabilities).openSUSE has updated claws-mail(Leap42.1, 13.2, 13.1: code execution) and firefox (Leap42.1, 13.2, 13.1: signature forgery).SUSE has updated kvm (SLE11-SP4: two vulnerabilities).

As expected, Linus has released 4.4-rc8rather than the final 4.4 release. "Normally, me doing an eighthrelease candidate means that there is some unresolved issue that stillneeds more time to get fixed. This time around, it just means that I wantto make sure that everybody is back from the holidays and there isn'tanything pending, and that people have time to get their merge window pullrequests all lined up. No excuses about how you didn't have time to getthings done by the time the merge window opened, now."

James Bottomley is tryingto make life easier for projects that want to accept contributionsusing the developer certificateof origin as the contribution agreement, but which are concerned aboutpatent grants. "The lever that will help to make this move is asimple pledge, which can be published on a corporate website, that allowscorporations expecting to make legitimate contributions to patent bindinglicences under the DCO to do so properly without needing any additionalContributor Licence Agreements. Essentially it would be an explicitstatement that when their developers submit code to a project under the DCOusing a corporate signoff, they’re acting as agents for the necessarypatent and copyright grants, meaning you can always trust a DCO signofffrom that corporation."

Just over one year ago, LWN covered thedeliberations within the Python project on how to improve itsdevelopment workflow. Now, after much discussion, it has been announcedthat the project will be moving over to GitHub. "While there werepeople who publicly said they would prefer not to go with GitHub but wouldbegrudgingly use it if we chose to go that route, I had multiple core devsemail me privately saying they hoped I would choose GitHub. I think most ofthat stemmed from having used GitHub for other open source projects and/orwork, making even dormant core devs say they would be able to become activeagain if we switched to GitHub thanks to eliminating the barrier of havingto keep up with our custom workflow for code reviews and using hg forcommits."

The GIMP project has released its annual year-end retrospective, looking back on development on the GIMP editor itself, project infrastructure, and closely related software projects like the Generic Graphics Library (GEGL). Highlights from the past twelve months include the conversion of more tools to using GEGL operations, support for a new perceptual color space, and improvements to image-blending modes. Several new features were added to support painting (including on-screen-canvas flipping and rotation), and work was put into the UI themes.For its part, GEGL gained experimental support for multithreading and mipmaps. The GIMP site was also redesigned, with the launch timed to correspond to GIMP's 20th birthday. "Most of the work we did this year is available in v2.9.2, the first development release in 2.9.x series made in late November. Improved MyPaint Brush tool and visual changes (icon themes, dark theme) will be available in upcoming v2.9.4 release. We expect to continue finalizing the GEGL port and the existing feature set in 2016."

The first security updates of 2016 have arrived.Debian has updated ganeti(multiple vulnerabilities) and icedove(multiple vulnerabilities).Debian-LTS has updated ia32-libs (multiple vulnerabilities).openSUSE has updated mozilla-nss (13.1, 13.2, Leap 42.1:signature forgery) and MozillaThunderbird (13.1, 13.2, Leap 42.1: multiple vulnerabilities).