It's been a while since the last LWN update. That's generally a good
thing, but, as will be seen below, there's news to report.
In the area of subscriber counts, however, there's not a whole lot of news. The
number of individual subscribers continues to grow very slowly, and the
group subscriptions are growing a little less slowly. We've had some
modest increases in advertising and syndication income which have given us
some welcome breathing room, but LWN is still not earning enough to cover
the true expenses of creating it. As your editor's children approach
college age, this situation is becoming increasingly pressing.
LWN suffers from an obvious lack of attention to its business side. Much
effort goes into the creation of the best content that we can, and we have
no regrets about that. But without more attention to promoting the site,
actually selling subscriptions, making sure that the benefits of LWN
are clear to new visitors, selling advertisements, etc., LWN will not grow
to where it needs to be by the time it needs to get there. It is a rare
business which can thrive in the complete absence of a sales and marketing
effort.
So we need to free some time to devote toward making LWN a successful
business. We could just cut back on content, but that does not seem much
like a path with a successful conclusion either. So it has long been clear
to us that LWN needs more staff to get itself to a sustainable position.
The business, as it is organized now, needs more time than we are able to
put into it.
The good news is that, as a result of very careful spending, LWN actually
has a small stash of money in the bank. After our infamous credit card dispute in 2002, we
developed a healthy appreciation for the benefits of having enough cash on
hand to carry through an interruption of our income stream. That pile has
grown to the point that we are able to use it to fund another staff
position for a year or so in the hope that the cash flow balances out by
the end of that time. And that is what we intend to do.
So we are happy to report that, starting in June, longtime LWN writer Jake
Edge will be joining the crew full time. We asked Jake to provide a
description of himself for the readers, and got back:
Jake has been doing software development for various small
companies for more than 20 years. He first started using Linux in
1993 with a pile of Slackware floppies and has rarely used anything
else since. For the past several years he has been contributing
articles to LWN, mostly on the Security page. When he is not
hacking code or words, he likes to read, nap, play bridge or go,
watch birds, float on the river or all of them at once. He lives
in Western Colorado with his wife Kristine and their two, hairier
than most, daughters: Petra and Chamisa.
Jake will be contributing (more) content, working on the site code, and
generally helping to figure out how to turn LWN into a more successful
operation. Welcome, Jake!
On another front, we have often talked about the future of the "letters to
the editor" page. A quick check shows that the last time we had a letter
to publish was last January. So consider it official: the letters page is
now gone.
LWN.net will celebrate its tenth anniversary next January. Those years
have flown by; somehow we had never imagined that we would be doing this
for so long. There's only one reason why we have continued with this
exercise for all those years: our readers. Your support has kept us going
through all of the ups and downs. In response we offer our
most sincere thanks while we work toward being here for another ten years -
at least.
Our 20th anniversary issue, we suspect, will be about the year of the Linux
desktop.
Comments (46 posted)
The 2007 Open Source Business Conference featured a panel discussion on the
question of whether the Microsoft/Novell agreement is good for open source
or not. Your editor was asked to sit on this panel and try to represent
the community's point of view - as if the community
has a single
point of view. The event is a bit of a blur - only partially caused by the
beer your editor sought out to help with the recovery afterward - so this
will not be a complete report. Hopefully it will still be useful.
Other members of the panel were Justin Steinman (Novell), Sam Ramji
(Microsoft), and Alison Randal (O'Reilly). The panel was moderated by Doug
Levin, the CEO of Black Duck Software. Mr. Levin did an admirable job of keeping
this standing-room-only event on track and inclusive.
After the introductions, each panelist got to make some opening remarks.
Your editor had worried considerably over this stage of the event, and had
prepared the following statement. The actual words were not read from this
text, however; the intent was substantially the same but the wording was
generally different.
So is this agreement good for open source? For much of the agreement the
answer is simple. More money for open source companies, used to develop
more open source software, can only be a good thing. And our community has
always been about interoperability with everybody; no complaints there.
The situation changes when we look at the patent side of the deal,
however. Even if you accept that algorithms expressed in software are
patentable - something much of the world does not accept - the current
software patent situation in the U.S. is impossible to deal with. There
are thousands of software patents covering the most basic techniques.
You cannot write any non-trivial program without infringing upon an unknown
number of patents, without having ever seen those patents. There is no way
to know where they are until the tax collector shows up at the door.
It is hard not to see a certain amount of sincerity in Microsoft's recent
statement that it will not go out filing patent infringement suits.
Microsoft is arguably the largest victim of the U.S. software patent
regime, having literally been hit up for billions of dollars. The company
says that it is typically defending two dozen or so patent suits at any
given time. But when
Microsoft's CEO starts talking about how Linux users are carrying
undisclosed liabilities on their balance sheets, it makes that sincerity
hard to believe. That is a clear fear, uncertainty, and doubt attack.
As a platform for this sort of FUD, the agreement for Novell
is not a good thing for open source.
In the free software community, we are most careful about the provenance of
our code. We do our own work; that is the only thing which lets us give
that work away. Novell has now come and said that the free software it is
distributing is not our own work, that it owes a debt to Microsoft, which
wrote none of that software. The company's protestations that it has
acknowledged no infringement ring hollow; Novell is paying Microsoft for
something, and unless the company is willing to come out and say that its
payments are simple protection money, it is paying for perceived patent
infringements.
When a company in our community makes a statement that taxes are due to
Microsoft for the use of our work, it makes it harder for others to resist
that demand. It weakens our defense.
But the real reason why this agreement has taken such criticism from the
community is deeper. We in the community are proud of our work.
We have done it ourselves, and have not stolen anything from anybody. When
a company like Novell tells me that my work was stolen from Microsoft, and
that anybody using my work owes taxes to Microsoft, I cannot help but be
deeply offended. When such a statement comes from inside our community,
it's even worse. It feels like a betrayal of the trust which holds the
development community together, it's a divisive thing. In that way, I
think this agreement is not good for open source.
Justin Steinman's opening remarks mostly highlighted how the agreement has
been good for Novell. Microsoft is now selling SUSE Linux into places it
has never been before; in fact, Microsoft is now Novell's biggest single
sales channel. Increasing Linux adoption is a good thing, he says, and
this agreement has certainly served that end.
Allison Randal took the position that the agreement is mostly irrelevant
for open source. It's just another boring industry partnership, with the
usual sort of joint ventures. Had it been between Novell and IBM, she
says, nobody would have noticed. Microsoft's patents are a problem, like
so many other patents held by many others in the industry, many of which
would come to our defense if Microsoft were to decide to start suing Linux
users and start the "patent armageddon." Still, it would be nice, she
suggested, if Microsoft were to join the Open Invention Network and help
bring an end to this problem.
Sam Ramji talked mostly about interoperability. Microsoft sees the
computing network of the future as being entirely heterogeneous and it
wants to be a proper player in that environment. He reiterated the "we
would rather license than litigate" line, noting that Microsoft spends
about $100 million per year defending patent suits.
One of the questions from the audience had to do with the effect that GPLv3
will have on this agreement and potential patent litigation in general.
Justin and Sam both declined to comment, saying that they saw no point in
talking about a license which is still in a draft state. Allison pointed
out that GPLv3 is unlikely to change much from the current discussion
draft, but no more information was to be had from Microsoft or Novell.
There was also a comment to the effect that open source users are better
served by adherence to standards than interoperability agreements. Adding
support for Microsoft's OOXML format seems to be a particularly sensitive
point. Justin responded that if he were to go into a company trying to
sell a solution based on OpenOffice.org, and that solution could not
handle Office 2007 files, he would be laughed out the door. So supporting
Microsoft's formats is important, even if Novell's policy remains that
OpenDocument is the format of choice. Sam noted
that standards are great, but true interoperability requires a great deal
of work and testing; this agreement is about getting Microsoft and Novell
engineers together to do that work.
Perhaps the most surreal moment came in response to questions about why
Microsoft is going out trumpeting its 235 patents if it does not intend to
sue, and why it does not reveal the actual patents. Sam made the statement
that the 235 patents came out as a response to requests for greater
transparency in Microsoft's dealings on intellectual property issues - a
response which did not achieve universal respect among the members of the
audience. He did not want to address the question of revealing the
patents, though - and he did not have to. Microsoft's lawyer in charge of
open source issues just happened to be sitting in the front row; he sprung
up and claimed that Microsoft doesn't reveal the patents because the
administrative burden of doing so would be too high - a statement that The
Register had
much fun with the next day.
Allison made the point that the community really does not want to
know about these patents. Once we have been put on notice that we are
alleged to be infringing upon a specific patent, we must respond in one way
or another.
A theme that came out a few times in the discussion is that there are
voices within Microsoft arguing for greater participation with the open
source community. There are people within Microsoft who understand the
power of free software and who want the company to be a constructive force
in the industry as it heads in that direction. Like any large company,
Microsoft suffers from a certain amount of schizophrenia, with the result
that different messages will be heard from different groups. But there is
reason to hope that rational and friendly (though always competitive)
thought will prevail.
The session ended with a show-of-hands vote on whether the audience thought
the agreement was a good thing or not. There were approximately equal
numbers of yes and no votes - but the bulk of the audience did not vote at
all. In many minds, it seems, the jury is still out on whether this deal
is good for open source or not.
Comments (18 posted)
Since last November, there has been much discussion of the deal between
Microsoft and Novell. To an extent, it has all been talk in a vacuum,
since the actual text of the agreement has not been available. That has
finally changed, however; the terms of the agreement have been released
as part of Novell's (delayed) annual regulatory filings.
It turns out that there are three different agreements: the patent
cooperation agreement granting the patent non-licenses, the technical
collaboration agreement describing the technical work each company will
do, and the business
collaboration agreement on the business arrangements. In the case of
any disagreement between the agreements, the patent agreement wins out over
the other two, and the technical agreement beats the business agreement.
We still do not get to see the full set of terms; they have been redacted,
heavily in some places. So one is left trying to make sense of text like:
*** will exercise its *** to *** by no later than *** that (i) the
*** OpenOffice (version 2 or later) *** does or will *** Office
Open XML format ("Open XML"), and (ii) it will make a *** ***
If *** does not *** it will *** within the same time frame that
*** in the *** on a*** to *** Open XML. *** will provide its
*** to*** at least *** in advance of *** The *** will be ***
not to be *** will provide *** in the *** will *** of such ***
the Term, including through *** in the *** is defined in the
Business Collaboration Agreement.
Fortunately, the bulk of the agreement has not been so heavily obscured.
The core of the patent agreement is about what one would expect, given the
conversation over the last six months:
Subject to the Parties' compliance with the terms of this
Agreement, each party on behalf of itself and its Subsidiaries
("Covenanting Party") shall, under the terms set forth in Exhibit
A, covenant not to sue the other Party's Customers ("Covenanted
Customers") for infringement of Covered Patents of Covenanting
Party on account of such Covenanted Customers' use of Covered
Products of the other Party.
Of course, there's no end of fine print which should be read by anybody
wanting to rely upon this non-license. To begin with, Novell's customers
only get the non-license from Microsoft for as long as Novell complies with
the terms of the agreement. Many of those terms - especially in the
termination section - are blanked out. If Novell and Microsoft get into a
big disagreement in the future, the non-license could vanish overnight.
The definition of "Covered Products" is complex and full of exclusions. In
particular, "clone products" are not part of the deal:
"Clone Product" means a product (or major component thereof) of a
Party that has the same or substantially the same features and
functionality as a then-existing product (or major component
thereof) of the other Party ("Prior Product") and that (a) has
the same or substantially the same user interface, or (b)
implements all or substantially all of the Application Programming
Interfaces of the Prior Product.
Certain possible clone products shipped before the signing of the agreement
are excluded from this definition, but four (Wine, OpenXchange, StarOffice,
and OpenOffice) are explicitly excluded from the exclusion - though there
is a complicated dance to the effect that those products are not
necessarily clone products either. "Foundry products," seemingly being
those which are developed by third parties, are excluded. Then, there's
the "other excluded products" which include web-based office productivity
applications, video game consoles, business applications ("such as
accounting, payroll, human resources, project management, personnel
performance management, sales management, financial forecasting, financial
reporting, customer relationship management, and supply chain
management"), "unified communications," and, interestingly, mail
transfer agents. If you are a Novell customer running sendmail, and
Microsoft claims patents in sendmail, you can still be sued.
There's a few other details; the non-license is, unsurprisingly, not
transferable. There is an explicit clause that neither party is
acknowledging any infringement or even that the other side's patents are
valid. Lots of details on what happens when companies are acquired or spun
off. And so on. Novell has recently stated that the company itself
remains as open as ever to patent infringement suits by Microsoft, but
that's only partly true: both companies have forgiven each other for any
infringement which may have happened before the agreement was signed.
There is one exclusion here: there is no forgiveness for distributing Wine.
One last thing worth noting: at OSBC, both Novell and Microsoft refused to
comment on the possible impact of GPLv3, saying that it was inappropriate
to talk about a license in draft form. Novell is a little more forthcoming
in the "risk factors" section of its
annual report:
If the final version of GPLv3 contains terms or conditions that
interfere with our agreement with Microsoft or our ability to
distribute GPLv3 code, Microsoft may cease to distribute SUSE Linux
coupons in order to avoid the extension of its patent covenants to
a broader range of GPLv3 software recipients, we may need to modify
our relationship with Microsoft under less advantageous terms than
our current agreement, or we may be restricted in our ability to
include GPLv3 code in our products, any of which could adversely
affect our business and our operating results.
The technical cooperation agreement contains relatively few surprises.
Each company commits to working to make the other's system work better as a
virtualized guest. There will be a special "shim" layer which implements
Microsoft's top-secret hypercall API and glues it to Xen or another
hypervisor. There will be information sharing on management interfaces for
virtualized guests. An "optimization innovation laboratory" will be set up
on the U.S. east coast to "showcase, test, and validate" the various
virtualization efforts. There is an effort to collaborate on directory and
identity management. And there is cooperation around the Office Open XML
format; the first term of this agreement is the highly redacted section
quoted above, so it's hard to tell what is really going on.
The business cooperation agreement talks about creating a joint marketing
plan to sell the various activities described in this deal. Microsoft will
kick in $60 million to make this marketing happen; Novell gets to
decide how some of that money will be spent. The two companies promise to
endorse each other's offerings. Microsoft will be tossing in another
$34 million for a sales force trying to sell the combined offerings.
There is a special term prohibiting either company from selling the
combined Linux/Windows package as a single unit. Each company must
separately license its part of the offering to the customers.
Microsoft commits to buying $240 million in SUSE Linux certificates.
This section is highly redacted ("Microsoft may also *** through the
*** in which case an *** will be *** from the *** for the *** in the
Term") so there's a lot of presumably important details we'll never
know about.
Novell gets an exclusive deal in that Microsoft promises not to make any
similar deals with other Linux distributors for three years.
The bulk of this set of agreements really is as boring as some people have
claimed. It's two companies trying to make their products work better
together and to increase the market for both. The patent agreement is
worth some study, though, especially for anybody who is tempted to rely on
it to make their business somehow safer. The exclusions from coverage by
the non-license have not been highlighted by any of the PR from either
company, but they do very much affect the real nature of the coverage
provided. The complicated dance around exclusions may just be lawyers
trying to nail everything down, or it may indicate a deeper agenda
somewhere. For those of us wondering what is really going on, the release
of the text of these agreements may have shed rather less light than we
would have liked.
Comments (37 posted)
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet
Security
May 30, 2007
This article was contributed by Jake Edge.
A new firewall product for Windows laptops would generally be greeted
with yawns from the Linux community, but the newly announced
Yoggie Pico has some features that may
be of interest. The Pico is a device that contains a 'security processor'
running Linux and whole slew of free and open source security applications
in a USB 'key' form factor.
The intent is to provide a laptop user on the road the same level of security
as they would have behind the corporate firewall.
At its core, the Pico has an Intel CPU, some RAM and two separate banks of
flash. At boot time, it copies the read-only version of the software from
one bank to the other and runs from the copy; an attempt to ensure that
even if the Pico is successfully compromised, a reboot will restore it.
A driver is installed on the laptop that snags all network traffic just above
the link layer and sends it off to the Pico for filtering. This allows
traffic from all network interfaces to be intercepted.
The Pico provides firewall protection and Network Address Translation (NAT)
via iptables and runs
Snort for intrusion detection/prevention.
It also does content filtering of various internet protocols (HTTP, FTP,
POP3 and SMTP) to stop viruses, spyware, phishing and spam. It has three
proprietary, patent-pending, modules that in some, unspecified way correlate
the information gathered by the other security software to detect and
thwart previously unknown threats.
If you can believe everything that is said on the website, the Pico will
protect a laptop from any known or unknown threat immediately upon plugging
it in. One suspects the reality falls somewhat short of the hype. Statements
like: 'simply plug it to your laptop and you are completely secure' are
at best exaggerated, at worst deceptive; security is a process and a set of
tradeoffs, not a destination. How those tradeoffs are administered is
glossed over as well; too much configurability can be error-prone,
while too little can lead to unusable rigidity.
There certainly is a niche for this kind of protection; laptop security
is often the Achilles heel of a company's network security. The Pico
driver provides administrators a means to disallow network traffic when the
Pico is not present which may help keep laptops from bringing home various
ills. As a separate hardware device that does not rely on much from the
host OS, the Pico could provide a nice laptop security device; it remains
to be seen if its $180-200 price point is attractive.
Yoggie plans to release a driver for Linux (as well as Mac OS X and Windows
Vista) sometime soon, but because it is relatively easy to run the same
applications on the laptop itself, it may not be a big seller in that
(already small) market. Depending on how hackable the device is, there might
be a rather larger market for a USB attached computer that can run
Linux. It will be interesting to see whether Yoggie stands in the way or
actively assists anyone interested in modifying their Pico for purposes
other than what the company had in mind. And if Linux hackers can figure
out how to 'mod' it and talk to it, with or without Yoggie's help, some very
interesting applications could result.
Some rumblings about GPL compliance have been heard in the community (for
example see the
comments on the LWN
announcement). No links to
source code could be found on the website; it is possible that the
code is shipped with the device though there are indications that is
not happening either. From the
website, it would appear that the company has been shipping a similar
Gatekeeper device with
a different form factor and connectivity. It appears to have
substantially the same software and one would have hoped that any GPL
compliance issues would have been resolved then. An answer to an inquiry
about the code is pending, stay tuned.
Comments (5 posted)
Brief items
Wired
reports on a vulnerability in a number of Firefox extensions. "
Unlike almost all of the extensions hosted at Mozilla, the foundation that created the open-source Firefox browser, these commercial extensions check for updates from servers controlled by their respective corporate overlords. And they fail to check for extensions from servers with SSL certificates, which most users know as sites that start with https://.
That means that users who open their browsers when using an open wireless connection are vulnerable to a hacker being able to intercept these third-party extensions' checks for updates at a plain http:// site and then pretend to be the update server."
Update: here's the disclosure of the
vulnerability from Christopher Soghoian, the researcher who found it.
Comments (20 posted)
New vulnerabilities
freetype: arbitrary code execution
| Package(s): | freetype |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-2754
|
| Created: | May 24, 2007 |
Updated: | June 1, 2010 |
| Description: |
The Freetype font rendering library versions 2.3.4 and below
has an integer sign error. Remote attackers may be able to
create a specially crafted TrueType Font file with a negative
n_points value that will cause an integer overflow and heap-based
buffer overflow, allowing the execution of arbitrary code. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
gforge: arbitrary code execution
| Package(s): | gforge |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-0246
|
| Created: | May 24, 2007 |
Updated: | May 30, 2007 |
| Description: |
The CVS browsing interface from the Gforge collaborative
development tool does not properly escape URLs.
This can be used by an attacker to execute arbitrary shell commands
with the privileges of the www-data user. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
madwifi: denial of service
| Package(s): | madwifi |
CVE #(s): | |
| Created: | May 25, 2007 |
Updated: | June 6, 2007 |
| Description: |
From this Secunia
advisory: "Some vulnerabilities have been reported in MadWifi,
which can be exploited by malicious, local users and malicious people to
cause a DoS (Denial of Service)." |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
mod_jk: proxy bypass
| Package(s): | mod_jk |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1860
|
| Created: | May 30, 2007 |
Updated: | March 7, 2008 |
| Description: |
From the Red Hat advisory: "Versions of mod_jk before 1.2.23 decoded request URLs by default inside
Apache httpd and forwarded the encoded URL to Tomcat, which itself did a
second decoding. If Tomcat was used behind mod_jk and configured to only
proxy some contexts, an attacker could construct a carefully crafted HTTP
request to work around the context restriction and potentially access
non-proxied content." |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
otrs2: code injection
| Package(s): | otrs2 |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-2524
|
| Created: | May 30, 2007 |
Updated: | June 8, 2007 |
| Description: |
The otrs2 ticket request system fails to properly sanitize input data, allowing the injection of arbitrary code. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (3 posted)
pulseaudio: denial of service
| Package(s): | pulseaudio |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1804
|
| Created: | May 30, 2007 |
Updated: | March 10, 2008 |
| Description: |
The pulseaudio network code suffers from a denial of service vulnerability exploitable by an unauthenticated attacker. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Updated vulnerabilities
acroread: multiple vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | acroread |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-5857
CVE-2007-0045
CVE-2007-0046
|
| Created: | January 11, 2007 |
Updated: | October 26, 2009 |
| Description: |
Adobes acrobat reader has the following vulnerabilities:
The Adobe Reader Plugin has a cross site scripting vulnerability that
can be triggered by processes malformed URLs. Arbitrary JavaScript can
be served by a malicious web server, leading to a cross-site scripting
attack.
Maliciously crafted PDF files can be used to trigger two vulnerabilities,
if an attacker can trick a user into viewing the files, arbitrary code
can be executed with the user's privileges. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
aircrack-ng: remote execution of arbitrary code
| Package(s): | aircrack-ng |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-2057
|
| Created: | April 23, 2007 |
Updated: | May 23, 2007 |
| Description: |
Jonathan So reported that the airodump-ng module does not correctly
check the size of 802.11 authentication packets before copying them
into a buffer. A remote attacker could trigger a stack-based buffer
overflow by sending a specially crafted 802.11 authentication packet to a
user running airodump-ng with the -w (--write) option. This could lead to
the remote execution of arbitrary code with the permissions of the user
running airodump-ng, which is typically the root user. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
apache: cross-site scripting
| Package(s): | apache |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-3918
|
| Created: | August 9, 2006 |
Updated: | April 4, 2008 |
| Description: |
From the Red Hat advisory: "A bug was found in Apache where an invalid Expect header sent to the server
was returned to the user in an unescaped error message. This could
allow an attacker to perform a cross-site scripting attack if a victim was
tricked into connecting to a site and sending a carefully crafted Expect
header." |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Asterisk: two SIP denial of service vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | Asterisk |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1561
CVE-2007-1594
|
| Created: | April 3, 2007 |
Updated: | August 27, 2007 |
| Description: |
The Madynes research team at INRIA has discovered that Asterisk contains a
null pointer dereferencing error in the SIP channel when handling INVITE
messages. Furthermore qwerty1979 discovered that Asterisk 1.2.x fails to
properly handle SIP responses with return code 0. A remote attacker could
cause an Asterisk server listening for SIP messages to crash by sending a
specially crafted SIP message or answering with a 0 return code. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
bind: denial of service
| Package(s): | bind |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-2241
|
| Created: | May 10, 2007 |
Updated: | June 8, 2007 |
| Description: |
ISC BIND 9.4.0 is vulnerable to a denial of service attack.
If recursion is enabled a remote attacker can use a special
sequence of queries to cause the daemon to exit. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
bugzilla: multiple vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | bugzilla |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-5453
CVE-2006-5454
CVE-2006-5455
|
| Created: | November 10, 2006 |
Updated: | August 28, 2007 |
| Description: |
Bugzilla has the following vulnerabilities:
Input data passed to various fields is not properly sanitized before
being passed back to users.
Users can gain unauthorized access to read attachment
descriptions while using diff mode.
HTTP GET and HTTP POST requests can be used to perform unauthorized
actions due to improper verification.
Input that is passed to showdependencygraph.cgi is not properly
sanitized before being returned to users. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
clamav: file descriptor leak
| Package(s): | clamav |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-2029
|
| Created: | May 21, 2007 |
Updated: | May 23, 2007 |
| Description: |
File descriptor leak in the PDF handler in Clam AntiVirus (ClamAV) allows
remote attackers to cause a denial of service via a crafted PDF file. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
cpio: arbitrary code execution
| Package(s): | cpio |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2005-4268
|
| Created: | January 2, 2006 |
Updated: | March 17, 2010 |
| Description: |
Richard Harms discovered that cpio did not sufficiently validate file
properties when creating archives. Files with e. g. a very large size
caused a buffer overflow. By tricking a user or an automatic backup
system into putting a specially crafted file into a cpio archive, a
local attacker could probably exploit this to execute arbitrary code
with the privileges of the target user (which is likely root in an
automatic backup system). |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
vixie-cron: privilege escalation
| Package(s): | cron |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-2607
|
| Created: | May 31, 2006 |
Updated: | June 1, 2009 |
| Description: |
The Vixie cron daemon does not check the return code from setuid(); if that call can be made to fail, a local attacker may be able to execute commands as root. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
cscope: buffer overflows
| Package(s): | cscope |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-4262
|
| Created: | October 2, 2006 |
Updated: | June 16, 2009 |
| Description: |
Will Drewry of the Google Security Team discovered several buffer overflows
in cscope, a source browsing tool, which might lead to the execution of
arbitrary code. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
cscope: buffer overflows
| Package(s): | cscope |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2004-2541
|
| Created: | May 22, 2006 |
Updated: | June 19, 2009 |
| Description: |
A buffer overflow in Cscope 15.5, and possibly multiple overflows, allows
remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via a C file with a long
#include line that is later browsed by the target. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
cups: denial of service
| Package(s): | cups |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-0720
|
| Created: | March 26, 2007 |
Updated: | February 7, 2008 |
| Description: |
Previous versions of the cups package could be forced to hang via a client
"partially negotiating" an ssl connection. In this state, cups would not
allow other connections to be made, a denial of service. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Cyrus-SASL: DIGEST-MD5 Pre-Authentication Denial of Service
| Package(s): | cyrus-sasl |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-1721
|
| Created: | April 21, 2006 |
Updated: | September 4, 2007 |
| Description: |
Cyrus-SASL contains an unspecified vulnerability in the DIGEST-MD5
process that could lead to a Denial of Service. An attacker could possibly
exploit this vulnerability by sending specially crafted data stream to the
Cyrus-SASL server, resulting in a Denial of Service even if the attacker is
not able to authenticate. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
dovecot: directory traversal
| Package(s): | dovecot |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-2231
|
| Created: | May 8, 2007 |
Updated: | May 21, 2008 |
| Description: |
Directory traversal vulnerability in index/mbox/mbox-storage.c in Dovecot
before 1.0.rc29, when using the zlib plugin, allows remote attackers to
read arbitrary gzipped (.gz) mailboxes (mbox files) via a .. (dot dot)
sequence in the mailbox name. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
elinks: code execution
| Package(s): | elinks |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-2027
|
| Created: | May 7, 2007 |
Updated: | October 30, 2009 |
| Description: |
Arnaud Giersch discovered that elinks incorrectly attempted to load
gettext catalogs from a relative path. If a user were tricked into
running elinks from a specific directory, a local attacker could execute
code with user privileges. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
elinks: arbitrary file access
| Package(s): | elinks |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-5925
|
| Created: | November 16, 2006 |
Updated: | October 22, 2009 |
| Description: |
The elinks text-mode browser has an arbitrary file access vulnerability
in the Elinks SMB protocol handler. If a user can be tricked into
visiting a specially crafted web page, arbitrary files may be read or
written with the user's permissions. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
evolution: format string error
| Package(s): | evolution |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1002
|
| Created: | March 27, 2007 |
Updated: | February 27, 2008 |
| Description: |
A format string error in the "write_html()" function in calendar/gui/
e-cal-component-memo-preview.c when displaying a memo's categories can
potentially be exploited to execute arbitrary code via a specially crafted
shared memo containing format specifiers. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
pop mail man-in-the-middle attacks
| Package(s): | evolution thunderbird mutt fetchmail |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1558
|
| Created: | May 8, 2007 |
Updated: | July 3, 2009 |
| Description: |
The APOP protocol allows remote attackers to guess the first 3 characters
of a password via man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks that use crafted message
IDs and MD5 collisions. NOTE: this design-level issue potentially affects
all products that use APOP, including (1) Thunderbird, (2) Evolution, (3)
mutt, and (4) fetchmail. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
fail2ban: denial of service
| Package(s): | fail2ban |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-6302
|
| Created: | February 16, 2007 |
Updated: | July 30, 2007 |
| Description: |
fail2ban 0.7.4 and earlier does not properly parse sshd logs file, which
allows remote attackers to add arbitrary hosts to the /etc/hosts.deny file
and cause a denial of service by adding arbitrary IP addresses to the sshd
log file, as demonstrated by logging in to ssh using a login name
containing certain strings with an IP address. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (3 posted)
ffmpeg: buffer overflows
| Package(s): | ffmpeg |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-4799
CVE-2006-4800
|
| Created: | September 14, 2006 |
Updated: | May 28, 2007 |
| Description: |
the AVI processing code in FFmpeg has a number of buffer overflow
vulnerabilities.
If an attacker can trick a user into loading a specially crafted
crafted AVI, arbitrary code can be executed with the user's privileges. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (2 posted)
file: denial of service
| Package(s): | file |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-2026
|
| Created: | April 18, 2007 |
Updated: | May 25, 2007 |
| Description: |
The gnu regular expression code in file 4.20 allows context-dependent
attackers to cause a denial of service (CPU consumption) via a crafted
document with a large number of line feed characters, which is not well
handled by OS/2 REXX regular expressions that use wildcards, as originally
reported for AMaViS. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
file: arbitrary code execution
| Package(s): | file |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1536
|
| Created: | March 22, 2007 |
Updated: | May 30, 2007 |
| Description: |
The "file" utility incorrectly checks the allocated heap memory size.
If a remote attacker can trick a user into looking at specially crafted
files with file, arbitrary code can be executed with the user's privileges. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
firefox: FTP PASV port-scanning
| Package(s): | firefox seamonkey |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1562
|
| Created: | March 23, 2007 |
Updated: | June 4, 2007 |
| Description: |
According to this
advisory, the FTP protocol includes the PASV (passive) command which is
used by Firefox to request an alternate data port. The specification of the
FTP protocol allows the server response to include an alternate server
address as well, although this is rarely used in practice. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
freetype: integer overflows
| Package(s): | freetype |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-0747
CVE-2006-1861
CVE-2006-2493
CVE-2006-2661
CVE-2006-3467
|
| Created: | June 8, 2006 |
Updated: | June 1, 2010 |
| Description: |
The FreeType library has several integer overflow vulnerabilities.
If a user can be tricked into installing a specially
crafted font file, arbitrary code can be executed with the privilege
of the user. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
gcc: file overwrite vulnerability
| Package(s): | gcc |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-3619
|
| Created: | September 6, 2006 |
Updated: | March 14, 2008 |
| Description: |
The fastjar utility found in the GNU compiler collection does not perform adequate file path checking, allowing the creation or overwriting of files outside of the current directory tree. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
gd: buffer overflow
| Package(s): | gd |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-0455
|
| Created: | February 7, 2007 |
Updated: | November 18, 2009 |
| Description: |
The gd graphics library contains a buffer overflow which could enable a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code. Note that various other packages include code from gd and could also be vulnerable. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (2 posted)
gdb: buffer overflow
| Package(s): | gdb |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-4146
|
| Created: | September 15, 2006 |
Updated: | June 12, 2007 |
| Description: |
A buffer overflow in dwarfread.c and dwarf2read.c debugging code in GNU
Debugger (GDB) 6.5 allows user-assisted attackers, or restricted users, to
execute arbitrary code via a crafted file with a location block
(DW_FORM_block) that contains a large number of operations. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
gedit: format string vulnerability
| Package(s): | gedit |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2005-1686
|
| Created: | June 9, 2005 |
Updated: | February 5, 2009 |
| Description: |
A format string vulnerability has been discovered in gedit. Calling
the program with specially crafted file names caused a buffer
overflow, which could be exploited to execute arbitrary code with the
privileges of the gedit user. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
gimp: arbitrary code execution
| Package(s): | gimp |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-2356
|
| Created: | May 1, 2007 |
Updated: | June 11, 2007 |
| Description: |
From this Secunia
advisory: "Marsu has discovered a vulnerability in Gimp, which
can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user's system. The
vulnerability is caused due to an error within the "set_color_table()"
function in plug-ins/common/sunras.c. This can be exploited to cause a
stack-based buffer overflow by e.g. tricking a user into opening a
specially crafted .RAS file." |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (3 posted)
grip: buffer overflow
| Package(s): | grip |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2005-0706
|
| Created: | March 10, 2005 |
Updated: | November 19, 2008 |
| Description: |
Grip, a CD ripper, has a buffer overflow vulnerability that can
occur when the CDDB server returns more than 16 matches. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
gzip: multiple vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | gzip |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-4334
CVE-2006-4335
CVE-2006-4336
CVE-2006-4337
CVE-2006-4338
|
| Created: | September 19, 2006 |
Updated: | January 20, 2010 |
| Description: |
Tavis Ormandy of the Google Security Team discovered two denial of service
flaws in the way gzip expanded archive files. If a victim expanded a
specially crafted archive, it could cause the gzip executable to hang or
crash.
Tavis Ormandy of the Google Security Team discovered several code execution
flaws in the way gzip expanded archive files. If a victim expanded a
specially crafted archive, it could cause the gzip executable to crash or
execute arbitrary code. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
horde-kronolith: local file inclusion
| Package(s): | horde-kronolith |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-6175
|
| Created: | January 17, 2007 |
Updated: | March 7, 2008 |
| Description: |
Kronolith contains a mistake in lib/FBView.php where a raw, unfiltered
string is used instead of a sanitized string to view local files. An
authenticated attacker could craft an HTTP GET request that uses directory
traversal techniques to execute any file on the web server as PHP code,
which could allow information disclosure or arbitrary code execution with
the rights of the user running the PHP application (usually the webserver
user). |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
ImageMagick: integer overflows
| Package(s): | imagemagick |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1797
|
| Created: | April 4, 2007 |
Updated: | August 11, 2009 |
| Description: |
Multiple integer overflows in ImageMagick before 6.3.3-5 allow remote
attackers to execute arbitrary code via (1) a crafted DCM image, which
results in a heap-based overflow in the ReadDCMImage function, or (2) the
(a) colors or (b) comments field in a crafted XWD image, which results in a
heap-based overflow in the ReadXWDImage function, different issues than
CVE-2007-1667. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
imlib2: arbitrary code execution
| Package(s): | imlib2 |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-4806
CVE-2006-4807
CVE-2006-4808
CVE-2006-4809
|
| Created: | November 6, 2006 |
Updated: | August 13, 2007 |
| Description: |
M. Joonas Pihlaja discovered that imlib2 did not sufficiently verify the
validity of ARGB, JPG, LBM, PNG, PNM, TGA, and TIFF images. If a user
were tricked into viewing or processing a specially crafted image with
an application that uses imlib2, the flaws could be exploited to execute
arbitrary code with the user's privileges. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
ipsec-tools: denial of service
| Package(s): | ipsec-tools |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1841
|
| Created: | April 10, 2007 |
Updated: | August 28, 2007 |
| Description: |
A flaw was discovered in the IPSec key exchange server "racoon". Remote
attackers could send a specially crafted packet and disrupt established
IPSec tunnels, leading to a denial of service. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
java: multiple vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | java |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-4339
CVE-2006-4790
CVE-2006-6731
CVE-2006-6736
CVE-2006-6737
CVE-2006-6745
|
| Created: | January 18, 2007 |
Updated: | June 4, 2010 |
| Description: |
java has multiple vulnerabilities, these include:
an RSA exponent padding attack vulnerability, two vulnerabilities
which allow untrusted applets to access data in other applets,
vulnerabilities that involve applets gaining privileges due to
serialization bugs in the JRE and buffer overflows in the java image
handling routines that can give attackers read/write/execute capabilities
for local files. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
kdelibs: kate backup file permission leak
| Package(s): | kdelibs kate kwrite |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2005-1920
|
| Created: | July 19, 2005 |
Updated: | September 21, 2010 |
| Description: |
Kate / Kwrite, as shipped with KDE 3.2.x up to including 3.4.0, creates a file backup before saving a modified file. These backup files are created with default permissions, even if the original file had more strict permissions set. See this advisory for more information. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
kdelibs: cross-site scripting
| Package(s): | kdelibs konqeror |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-0537
|
| Created: | February 5, 2007 |
Updated: | August 13, 2007 |
| Description: |
Konqueror 3.5.5 does not properly parse HTML comments, which allows remote
attackers to conduct cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks and bypass some XSS
protection schemes by embedding certain HTML tags within a comment, a
related issue to CVE-2007-0478. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
kernel: denial of service
| Package(s): | kernel |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1357
|
| Created: | April 16, 2007 |
Updated: | November 14, 2007 |
| Description: |
The atalk_sum_skb function in AppleTalk for Linux kernel 2.6.x before
2.6.21, and possibly 2.4.x, allows remote attackers to cause a denial of
service (crash) via an AppleTalk frame that is shorter than the specified
length, which triggers a BUG_ON call when an attempt is made to perform a
checksum. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
kernel: denial of service
| Package(s): | kernel |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-4623
|
| Created: | October 18, 2006 |
Updated: | November 14, 2007 |
| Description: |
The kernel DVB layer can be caused to crash with maliciously-formatted unidirectional lightweight encapsulation (ULE) data. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
kernel: multiple vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | kernel |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-0005
CVE-2007-1000
|
| Created: | March 15, 2007 |
Updated: | November 14, 2007 |
| Description: |
The Linux kernel has a boundary error problem with the
Omnikey CardMan 4040 driver read and write functions. This can be used
to cause a buffer overflow and possible execution or arbitrary code with
kernel privileges.
The ipv6_getsockopt_sticky function in
net/ipv6/ipv6_sockglue.c is vulnerable to a NULL pointer dereference.
Local users can use this to crash the kernel or to disclose kernel
memory. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
kernel: denial of service
| Package(s): | kernel |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-0007
CVE-2007-0006
|
| Created: | February 15, 2007 |
Updated: | November 14, 2007 |
| Description: |
Linux kernel versions from 2.6.9 to 2.6.20 have a denial of service
vulnerability. A remote attacker can cause the key_alloc_serial
function's key serial number collision avoidance code to have a
null dereference, resulting in a crash. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
kernel: denial of service
| Package(s): | kernel |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-4535
CVE-2006-4538
|
| Created: | September 18, 2006 |
Updated: | January 5, 2009 |
| Description: |
Sridhar Samudrala discovered a local denial of service vulnerability
in the handling of SCTP sockets. By opening such a socket with a
special SO_LINGER value, a local attacker could exploit this to crash
the kernel. (CVE-2006-4535)
Kirill Korotaev discovered that the ELF loader on the ia64 and sparc
platforms did not sufficiently verify the memory layout. By attempting
to execute a specially crafted executable, a local user could exploit
this to crash the kernel. (CVE-2006-4538) |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
kernel: denial of service
| Package(s): | kernel |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1861
CVE-2007-2242
|
| Created: | May 1, 2007 |
Updated: | February 8, 2008 |
| Description: |
The netlink protocol has an infinite recursion bug that allows users to
cause a kernel crash. Also the IPv6 protocol allows remote attackers to
cause a denial of service via crafted IPv6 type 0 route headers
(IPV6_RTHDR_TYPE_0) that create network amplification between two routers. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
kernel: denial of service by memory consumption
| Package(s): | kernel |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-2936
|
| Created: | July 17, 2006 |
Updated: | November 14, 2007 |
| Description: |
The ftdi_sio driver (usb/serial/ftdi_sio.c) in Linux kernel 2.6.x up to
2.6.17, and possibly later versions, allows local users to cause a denial
of service (memory consumption) by writing more data to the serial port
than the driver can handle, which causes the data to be queued. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
kernel: denial of service
| Package(s): | kernel |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-0772
|
| Created: | February 23, 2007 |
Updated: | November 14, 2007 |
| Description: |
The Linux kernel before 2.6.20.1 allows remote attackers to cause a denial
of service (oops) via a crafted NFSACL 2 ACCESS request that triggers a free
of an incorrect pointer. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
kernel: denial of service
| Package(s): | kernel |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-5757
|
| Created: | November 13, 2006 |
Updated: | November 14, 2007 |
| Description: |
From the MOKB-05-11-2006
advisory: "The ISO9660 filesystem handling code of the Linux
2.6.x kernel fails to properly handle corrupted data structures, leading to
an exploitable denial of service condition. This particular vulnerability
seems to be caused by a race condition and a signedness issue. When
performing a read operation on a corrupted ISO9660 fs stream, the
isofs_get_blocks() function will enter an infinite loop when
__find_get_block_slow() callback from sb_getblk() fails ("due to various
races between file io on the block device and getblk")." |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
kernel: denial of service
| Package(s): | kernel |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-2935
CVE-2006-4145
CVE-2006-3745
|
| Created: | September 1, 2006 |
Updated: | July 30, 2008 |
| Description: |
Previous versions of the kernel package are subject to several
vulnerabilities. Certain malformed UDF filesystems can cause the system to
crash (denial of service). Malformed CDROM firmware or USB storage devices
(such as USB keys) could cause system crash (denial of service), and if
they were intentionally malformed, can cause arbitrary code to run with
elevated privileges. In addition, the SCTP protocol is subject to a remote
system crash (denial of service) attack. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
kernel: multiple vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | kernel |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-5749
CVE-2006-4814
CVE-2006-6106
|
| Created: | January 5, 2007 |
Updated: | January 8, 2009 |
| Description: |
A security issue has been reported in Linux kernel due to an error in
drivers/isdn/i4l/isdn_ppp.c as the "isdn_ppp_ccp_reset_alloc_state()"
function never initializes an event timer before scheduling it with the
"add_timer()" function.
The mincore function in the kernel does not properly lock access to user
space, which has unspecified impact and attack vectors, possibly related to
a deadlock.
Another vulnerability has been reported in Linux kernel caused by a
boundary error within the handling of incoming CAPI messages in
net/bluetooth/cmtp/capi.c. This can be exploited to overwrite certain
Kernel data structures. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
krb5: uninitialized pointers
| Package(s): | krb5 |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-6143
CVE-2006-3084
|
| Created: | January 10, 2007 |
Updated: | July 7, 2010 |
| Description: |
The kdamind daemon can, in some situations, perform operations on uninitialized pointers. This bug could conceivably open up the system to a code execution attack by an unauthenticated remote attacker, but it appears to be difficult to exploit. See this advisory for details. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
krb5: local privilege escalation
| Package(s): | krb5 |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-3083
|
| Created: | August 9, 2006 |
Updated: | July 7, 2010 |
| Description: |
Some kerberos applications fail to check the results of setuid() calls, with the result that, if that call fails, they could continue to execute as root after thinking they had switched to a nonprivileged user. A local attacker who can cause these calls to fail (through resource exhaustion, presumably) could exploit this bug to gain root privileges. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
krb5: multiple vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | krb5 |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-0956
CVE-2007-0957
CVE-2007-1216
|
| Created: | April 3, 2007 |
Updated: | March 24, 2008 |
| Description: |
A flaw was found in the username handling of the MIT krb5 telnet daemon
(telnetd). A remote attacker who can access the telnet port of a target
machine could log in as root without requiring a password. MIT krb5 Security Advisory 2007-001
Buffer overflows were found which affect the Kerberos KDC and the kadmin
server daemon. A remote attacker who can access the KDC could exploit this
bug to run arbitrary code with the privileges of the KDC or kadmin server
processes. MIT krb5 Security Advisory
2007-002
A double-free flaw was found in the GSSAPI library used by the kadmin
server daemon. MIT krb5 Security Advisory
2007-003 |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
ktorrent: incorrect validation
| Package(s): | ktorrent |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1384
CVE-2007-1385
CVE-2007-1799
|
| Created: | March 13, 2007 |
Updated: | October 24, 2007 |
| Description: |
Bryan Burns of Juniper Networks discovered that KTorrent did not
correctly validate the destination file paths nor the HAVE statements
sent by torrent peers. A malicious remote peer could send specially
crafted messages to overwrite files or execute arbitrary code with user
privileges. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
lftp: shell command execution
| Package(s): | lftp |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-2348
|
| Created: | May 4, 2007 |
Updated: | September 16, 2009 |
| Description: |
mirror --script in lftp before 3.5.9 does not properly quote shell
metacharacters, which might allow remote user-assisted attackers to execute
shell commands via a malicious script. NOTE: it is not clear whether this
issue crosses security boundaries, since the script already supports
commands such as "get" which could overwrite executable files. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
libgadu: memory alignment bug
| Package(s): | libgadu |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2005-2370
|
| Created: | July 29, 2005 |
Updated: | June 25, 2007 |
| Description: |
Szymon Zygmunt and Michal Bartoszkiewicz discovered a memory alignment
error in libgadu (from ekg, console Gadu Gadu client, an instant
messaging program) which is included in gaim, a multi-protocol instant
messaging client, as well. This can not be exploited on the x86
architecture but on others, e.g. on Sparc and lead to a bus error,
in other words a denial of service.
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
libgtop2: buffer overflow
| Package(s): | libgtop2 |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-0235
|
| Created: | January 15, 2007 |
Updated: | August 9, 2007 |
| Description: |
The /proc parsing routines in libgtop are vulnerable to a buffer overflow.
If an attacker can run a process in a specially crafted long
path then trick a user into running gnome-system-monitor,
arbitrary code can be executed with the user's privileges. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
libmodplug: boundary errors
| Package(s): | libmodplug |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-4192
|
| Created: | December 11, 2006 |
Updated: | May 4, 2011 |
| Description: |
Luigi Auriemma has reported various boundary errors in load_it.cpp and
a boundary error in the "CSoundFile::ReadSample()" function in
sndfile.cpp. A remote attacker can entice a user to read crafted modules
or ITP files, which may trigger a buffer overflow resulting in the
execution of arbitrary code with the privileges of the user running the
application. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
libpng: denial of service
| Package(s): | libpng |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-2445
|
| Created: | May 17, 2007 |
Updated: | March 23, 2009 |
| Description: |
Libpng can be crashed when processing malformed PNG files.
It may also be possible to exploit this vulnerability to execute arbitrary
code. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
libpng: buffer overflow
| Package(s): | libpng |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-3334
|
| Created: | July 19, 2006 |
Updated: | December 15, 2008 |
| Description: |
In pngrutil.c, the function png_decompress_chunk() allocates
insufficient space for an error message, potentially overwriting stack
data, leading to a buffer overflow. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
libpng: heap based buffer overflow
| Package(s): | libpng |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-0481
|
| Created: | February 13, 2006 |
Updated: | December 15, 2008 |
| Description: |
A heap based buffer overflow bug was found in the way libpng strips alpha
channels from a PNG image. An attacker could create a carefully crafted PNG
image file in such a way that it could cause an application linked with
libpng to crash or execute arbitrary code when the file is opened by a
victim. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
libtiff: buffer overflow
| Package(s): | libtiff |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-2193
|
| Created: | June 15, 2006 |
Updated: | September 1, 2008 |
| Description: |
The t2p_write_pdf_string function in libtiff 3.8.2 and earlier is vulnerable
to a buffer overflow. Attackers can use a TIFF file with UTF-8 characters
in the DocumentName tag to overflow a buffer, causing a denial of service,
and possibly the execution of arbitrary code. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
libxml2 - arbitrary code execution
| Package(s): | libxml2 |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2004-0110
|
| Created: | February 26, 2004 |
Updated: | August 19, 2009 |
| Description: |
Yuuichi Teranishi discovered a flaw in libxml2 versions prior to 2.6.6.
When fetching a remote resource via FTP or HTTP, libxml2 uses special
parsing routines. These routines can overflow a buffer if passed a very
long URL. If an attacker is able to find an application using libxml2 that
parses remote resources and allows them to influence the URL, then this
flaw could be used to execute arbitrary code. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
libxml2: multiple buffer overflows
| Package(s): | libxml2 |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2004-0989
|
| Created: | October 28, 2004 |
Updated: | August 19, 2009 |
| Description: |
libxml2 prior to version 2.6.14 has multiple buffer overflow
vulnerabilities, if a local user passes a specially crafted
FTP URL, arbitrary code may be executed. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
lighttpd: denial of service
| Package(s): | lighttpd |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1869
CVE-2007-1870
|
| Created: | April 18, 2007 |
Updated: | June 11, 2007 |
| Description: |
lighttpd 1.4.12 and 1.4.13 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of
service (cpu and resource consumption) by disconnecting while lighttpd is
parsing CRLF sequences, which triggers an infinite loop and file descriptor
consumption. (CVE-2007-1869)
lighttpd before 1.4.14 allows attackers to cause a denial of service
(crash) via a request to a file whose mtime is 0, which results in a NULL
pointer dereference. (CVE-2007-1870) |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
lookup-el: insecure temporary file
| Package(s): | lookup-el |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-0237
|
| Created: | March 19, 2007 |
Updated: | December 10, 2007 |
| Description: |
Tatsuya Kinoshita discovered that Lookup, a search interface to electronic
dictionaries on emacsen, creates a temporary file in an insecure fashion
when the ndeb-binary feature is used, which allows a local attacker to
craft a symlink attack to overwrite arbitrary files. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
lynx: arbitrary command execution
| Package(s): | lynx |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2005-2929
|
| Created: | November 14, 2005 |
Updated: | September 14, 2009 |
| Description: |
An arbitrary command execute bug was found in the lynx "lynxcgi:" URI
handler. An attacker could create a web page redirecting to a malicious URL
which could execute arbitrary code as the user running lynx. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
mod_jk: stack overflow
| Package(s): | mod_jk |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-0774
|
| Created: | March 5, 2007 |
Updated: | May 30, 2007 |
| Description: |
A stack overflow flaw was found in the URI handler of mod_jk. A remote
attacker could visit a carefully crafted URL being handled by mod_jk and
trigger this flaw, which could lead to the execution of arbitrary code as the
'apache' user. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
mod_perl: denial of service
| Package(s): | mod_perl |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1349
|
| Created: | April 12, 2007 |
Updated: | July 18, 2007 |
| Description: |
Apache mod_perl versions 1.30 and below have a vulnerability in
PerlRun.pm and RegistryCooker.pm. PATH_INFO is not properly
escaped before use in a regular expression, allowing remote attackers
to cause a denial of service via a specially crafted URI. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
mod_security: remote rule bypass
| Package(s): | mod_security |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1359
|
| Created: | May 17, 2007 |
Updated: | May 23, 2007 |
| Description: |
The Apache mod_security extension has a remote rule bypass vulnerability.
A remote attacker can exploit this by sending a specially crafted POST
request that bypasses the module ruleset. The attacker can potentially
use this to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the web server. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
moin: arbitrary JavaScript execution
| Package(s): | moin |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-2423
|
| Created: | May 8, 2007 |
Updated: | March 10, 2008 |
| Description: |
A flaw was discovered in MoinMoin's error reporting when using the
AttachFile action. By tricking a user into viewing a crafted MoinMoin
URL, an attacker could execute arbitrary JavaScript as the current
MoinMoin user, possibly exposing the user's authentication information
for the domain where MoinMoin was hosted. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
mplayer: buffer overflow
| Package(s): | mplayer |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1246
|
| Created: | March 8, 2007 |
Updated: | April 1, 2008 |
| Description: |
MPlayer versions up to 1.0rc1 have a buffer overflow in the
loader/dmo/DMO_VideoDecoder.c DMO_VideoDecoder_Open function.
user-assisted remote attackers can use this to create a buffer overflow
and possibly execute arbitrary code. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
mydns: buffer overflows
| Package(s): | mydns |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-2362
|
| Created: | May 23, 2007 |
Updated: | December 17, 2007 |
| Description: |
Multiple buffer overflows in MyDNS allow remote attackers to cause a denial of
service (daemon crash) and possibly execution of arbitrary code. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
mysql: denial of service
| Package(s): | mysql |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1420
|
| Created: | March 22, 2007 |
Updated: | May 21, 2008 |
| Description: |
MySQL subselect queries using "ORDER BY" can be used by an attacker with
access to a MySQL instance in order to create an intermittent denial
of service. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
mysql: format string bug
| Package(s): | mysql |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-3469
|
| Created: | July 21, 2006 |
Updated: | July 30, 2008 |
| Description: |
Jean-David Maillefer discovered a format string bug in the
date_format() function's error reporting. By calling the function with
invalid arguments, an authenticated user could exploit this to crash
the server. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
MySQL: privilege violations
| Package(s): | mysql |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-4031
CVE-2006-4226
|
| Created: | August 25, 2006 |
Updated: | July 30, 2008 |
| Description: |
MySQL 4.1 before 4.1.21 and 5.0 before 5.0.24 allows a local user to access
a table through a previously created MERGE table, even after the user's
privileges are revoked for the original table, which might violate intended
security policy (CVE-2006-4031).
MySQL 4.1 before 4.1.21, 5.0 before 5.0.25, and 5.1 before 5.1.12, when run
on case-sensitive filesystems, allows remote authenticated users to create
or access a database when the database name differs only in case from a
database for which they have permissions (CVE-2006-4226). |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
MySQL: logging bypass
| Package(s): | mysql |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-0903
|
| Created: | April 4, 2006 |
Updated: | May 21, 2008 |
| Description: |
MySQL 5.0.18 and earlier allows local users to bypass logging mechanisms
via SQL queries that contain the NULL character, which are not properly
handled by the mysql_real_query function. NOTE: this issue was originally
reported for the mysql_query function, but the vendor states that since
mysql_query expects a null character, this is not an issue for mysql_query. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (2 posted)
nbd: arbitrary code execution
| Package(s): | nbd |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2005-3534
|
| Created: | January 6, 2006 |
Updated: | March 7, 2011 |
| Description: |
Kurt Fitzner discovered that the NBD (network block device) server did not
correctly verify the maximum size of request packets. By sending specially
crafted large request packets, a remote attacker who is allowed to access
the server could exploit this to execute arbitrary code with root
privileges. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
ncompress: buffer underflow
| Package(s): | ncompress |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-1168
|
| Created: | August 10, 2006 |
Updated: | February 21, 2012 |
| Description: |
The ncompress compression utility has a missing boundary check.
A local user can use a maliciously created file to cause a
a .bss buffer underflow. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
openldap: security bypass
| Package(s): | openldap |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-4600
|
| Created: | September 29, 2006 |
Updated: | June 12, 2007 |
| Description: |
slapd in OpenLDAP before 2.3.25 allows remote authenticated users with
selfwrite Access Control List (ACL) privileges to modify arbitrary
Distinguished Names (DN). |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
OpenSSH: denial of service
| Package(s): | openssh |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-4925
CVE-2006-5052
|
| Created: | October 6, 2006 |
Updated: | November 15, 2007 |
| Description: |
packet.c in ssh in OpenSSH allows remote attackers to cause a denial of
service (crash) by sending an invalid protocol sequence with
USERAUTH_SUCCESS before NEWKEYS, which causes newkeys[mode] to be NULL.
An unspecified vulnerability in portable OpenSSH before 4.4, when running
on some platforms, allows remote attackers to determine the validity of
usernames via unknown vectors involving a GSSAPI "authentication abort." |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
openssh: remote denial of service
| Package(s): | openssh |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-4924
CVE-2006-5051
|
| Created: | September 27, 2006 |
Updated: | September 17, 2008 |
| Description: |
Openssh 4.4 fixes some
security issues, including a pre-authentication denial of service, an
unsafe signal hander and on portable OpenSSH a GSSAPI authentication abort
could be used to determine the validity of usernames on some platforms. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
php: multiple vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | php |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1001
CVE-2007-1285
CVE-2007-1718
CVE-2007-1583
|
| Created: | April 16, 2007 |
Updated: | December 4, 2007 |
| Description: |
A denial of service flaw was found in the way PHP processed a deeply nested
array. A remote attacker could cause the PHP interpreter to crash by
submitting an input variable with a deeply nested array. (CVE-2007-1285)
A flaw was found in the way the mbstring extension set global variables. A
script which used the mb_parse_str() function to set global variables could
be forced to enable the register_globals configuration option, possibly
resulting in global variable injection. (CVE-2007-1583)
A flaw was discovered in the way PHP's mail() function processed header
data. If a script sent mail using a Subject header containing a string from
an untrusted source, a remote attacker could send bulk e-mail to unintended
recipients. (CVE-2007-1718)
A heap based buffer overflow flaw was discovered in PHP's gd extension. A
script that could be forced to process WBMP images from an untrusted source
could result in arbitrary code execution. (CVE-2007-1001) |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
php: several vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | php |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-4481
CVE-2006-4484
CVE-2006-4485
|
| Created: | September 8, 2006 |
Updated: | June 13, 2008 |
| Description: |
The file_exists and imap_reopen functions in PHP before 5.1.5 do not check
for the safe_mode and open_basedir settings, which allows local users to
bypass the settings (CVE-2006-4481).
A buffer overflow in the LWZReadByte function in ext/gd/libgd/gd_gif_in.c
in the GD extension in PHP before 5.1.5 allows remote attackers to have an
unknown impact via a GIF file with input_code_size greater than
MAX_LWZ_BITS, which triggers an overflow when initializing the table array
(CVE-2006-4484).
The stripos function in PHP before 5.1.5 has unknown impact and attack
vectors related to an out-of-bounds read (CVE-2006-4485). |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
php: buffer overflows
| Package(s): | php |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-5465
|
| Created: | November 3, 2006 |
Updated: | January 18, 2010 |
| Description: |
The Hardened-PHP Project discovered buffer overflows in
htmlentities/htmlspecialchars internal routines to the PHP Project. Of
course the whole purpose of these functions is to be filled with user
input. (The overflow can only be when UTF-8 is used) |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
php: several vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | php |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1864
CVE-2007-2509
CVE-2007-2510
|
| Created: | May 8, 2007 |
Updated: | July 18, 2007 |
| Description: |
A heap buffer overflow flaw was found in the PHP 'xmlrpc' extension. A
PHP script which implements an XML-RPC server using this extension
could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code as the 'apache'
user. Note that this flaw does not affect PHP applications using the
pure-PHP XML_RPC class provided in /usr/share/pear. (CVE-2007-1864)
A flaw was found in the PHP 'ftp' extension. If a PHP script used this
extension to provide access to a private FTP server, and passed untrusted
script input directly to any function provided by this extension, a remote
attacker would be able to send arbitrary FTP commands to the server.
(CVE-2007-2509)
A buffer overflow flaw was found in the PHP 'soap' extension, regarding the
handling of an HTTP redirect response when using the SOAP client provided
by this extension with an untrusted SOAP server. No mechanism to trigger
this flaw remotely is known. (CVE-2007-2510) |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
phpbb2: missing input sanitizing
| Package(s): | phpbb2 |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-1896
|
| Created: | May 22, 2006 |
Updated: | February 11, 2008 |
| Description: |
It was discovered that phpbb2, a web based bulletin board, insufficiently
sanitizes values passed to the "Font Color 3" setting, which might lead to
the execution of injected code by admin users. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
phpbb2: multiple vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | phpbb2 |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2005-3310
CVE-2005-3415
CVE-2005-3416
CVE-2005-3417
CVE-2005-3418
CVE-2005-3419
CVE-2005-3420
CVE-2005-3536
CVE-2005-3537
|
| Created: | December 22, 2005 |
Updated: | February 11, 2008 |
| Description: |
The phpbb2 web forum has a number of vulnerabilities including:
a web script injection problem, a protection mechanism bypass, a
security check bypass, a remote global variable bypass, cross site
scripting vulnerabilities, an SQL injection vulnerability,
a remote regular expression modification problem, missing input
sanitizing, and a missing request validation problem. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
phpwiki: remote code execution
| Package(s): | phpwiki |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-2024
CVE-2007-2025
|
| Created: | May 17, 2007 |
Updated: | September 12, 2007 |
| Description: |
The phpwiki Upload page does not properly check the extension of a file.
This can be used by a remote attacker to upload a specially crafted PHP file
and execute arbitrary PHP code with the privileges of the PhpWiki user. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
postgresql: SQL injection
| Package(s): | postgresql |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-2313
CVE-2006-2314
|
| Created: | May 24, 2006 |
Updated: | June 6, 2007 |
| Description: |
The PostgreSQL team has put out a set of "urgent updates" (in the form of the 7.3.15, 7.4.13, 8.0.8, and 8.1.4 releases) closing a
newly-discovered set of SQL injection issues. Details about the problem
can be found on the
technical information page; in short: multi-byte encodings can be used
to defeat normal string sanitizing techniques. The update fixes one problem
related to invalid multi-byte characters, but punts on another by simply
disallowing the old, unsafe technique of escaping single quotes with a
backslash. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
postgresql: privilege escalation
| Package(s): | postgresql |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-2138
|
| Created: | April 24, 2007 |
Updated: | June 18, 2007 |
| Description: |
PostgreSQL 8.2 and all back versions are vulnerable to a privilege escalation exploit
in SECURITY DEFINER functions. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
pptpd: denial of service
| Package(s): | pptpd |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-0244
|
| Created: | May 9, 2007 |
Updated: | September 3, 2007 |
| Description: |
The PoPToP server daemon contains a bug which allows an attacker to tear down a connection through a malformed GRE packet. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
python: information disclosure
| Package(s): | python |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-2052
|
| Created: | May 9, 2007 |
Updated: | July 30, 2009 |
| Description: |
Python 2.4 and 2.5 contain a bug in PyLocale_strxfrm() which could enable an attacker to read portions of unrelated memory. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
qemu: multiple vulnerabilities
Comments (none posted)
qt: "/../" injection
| Package(s): | qt |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-0242
|
| Created: | April 4, 2007 |
Updated: | September 13, 2007 |
| Description: |
Andreas Nolden discovered a bug in qt3, where the UTF8 decoder does not
reject overlong sequences, which can cause "/../" injection or (in the case
of konqueror) a "<script>" tag injection. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (2 posted)
quagga: denial of service
| Package(s): | quagga |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1995
|
| Created: | May 2, 2007 |
Updated: | July 3, 2007 |
| Description: |
A malicious peer can cause the quagga routing daemon to crash by sending a properly crafted BGP packet. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
quake: buffer overflow
| Package(s): | quake3-bin |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-2236
|
| Created: | May 10, 2006 |
Updated: | January 12, 2009 |
| Description: |
Games based on the Quake 3 engine are vulnerable to a buffer overflow exploitable by a hostile game server. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
ratbox: denial of service
| Package(s): | ratbox |
CVE #(s): | |
| Created: | May 18, 2007 |
Updated: | May 23, 2007 |
| Description: |
A Denial of Service (DoS) vulnerability exists in the Ratbox IRC Daemon,
versions up to and including 2.2.5. Too many pending connections to the
server from a single unknown client could result in a resource starvation. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
rpm: arbitrary code execution
| Package(s): | rpm |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-5466
|
| Created: | November 6, 2006 |
Updated: | August 28, 2007 |
| Description: |
An error was found in the RPM library's handling of query reports. In
some locales, certain RPM packages would cause the library to crash. If
a user was tricked into querying a specially crafted RPM package, the
flaw could be exploited to execute arbitrary code with the user's
privileges. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
samba: several vulnerabilities
Comments (none posted)
Mozilla: multiple vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | seamonkey firefox thunderbird |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-6077
CVE-2007-0008
CVE-2007-0009
CVE-2007-0775
CVE-2007-0777
CVE-2007-0778
CVE-2007-0779
CVE-2007-0780
CVE-2007-0800
CVE-2007-0981
CVE-2007-0995
CVE-2007-0996
|
| Created: | February 26, 2007 |
Updated: | July 23, 2007 |
| Description: |
Several flaws were found in the way SeaMonkey processed certain malformed
JavaScript code. A malicious web page could execute JavaScript code in such
a way that may result in SeaMonkey crashing or executing arbitrary code as
the user running SeaMonkey. (CVE-2007-0775, CVE-2007-0777)
Several cross-site scripting (XSS) flaws were found in the way SeaMonkey
processed certain malformed web pages. A malicious web page could display
misleading information which may result in a user unknowingly divulging
sensitive information such as a password. (CVE-2006-6077, CVE-2007-0995,
CVE-2007-0996)
A flaw was found in the way SeaMonkey cached web pages on the local disk. A
malicious web page may be able to inject arbitrary HTML into a browsing
session if the user reloads a targeted site. (CVE-2007-0778)
A flaw was found in the way SeaMonkey displayed certain web content. A
malicious web page could generate content which could overlay user
interface elements such as the hostname and security indicators, tricking a
user into thinking they are visiting a different site. (CVE-2007-0779)
Two flaws were found in the way SeaMonkey displayed blocked popup windows.
If a user can be convinced to open a blocked popup, it is possible to read
arbitrary local files, or conduct an XSS attack against the user.
(CVE-2007-0780, CVE-2007-0800)
Two buffer overflow flaws were found in the Network Security Services (NSS)
code for processing the SSLv2 protocol. Connecting to a malicious secure
web server could cause the execution of arbitrary code as the user running
SeaMonkey. (CVE-2007-0008, CVE-2007-0009)
A flaw was found in the way SeaMonkey handled the "location.hostname" value
during certain browser domain checks. This flaw could allow a malicious web
site to set domain cookies for an arbitrary site, or possibly perform an
XSS attack. (CVE-2007-0981) |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
shadow-utils: mailbox creation vulnerability
| Package(s): | shadow-utils |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-1174
|
| Created: | May 25, 2006 |
Updated: | June 12, 2007 |
| Description: |
The useradd tool from the shadow-utils package has a potential security
problem. When a new user's mailbox is created, the permissions are
set to random garbage from the stack, potentially allowing the
file to be read or written during the time before fchmod() is called. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
slocate: information disclosure
| Package(s): | slocate |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-0227
|
| Created: | February 22, 2007 |
Updated: | September 4, 2012 |
| Description: |
The slocate permission checking code has a local information disclosure
vulnerability. During the reporting of matching files, slocate does not
respect the parent directory's read permissions, resulting in hidden
filenames being viewable by other local users. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
snort: remote arbitrary code execution
| Package(s): | snort |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-5276
|
| Created: | March 2, 2007 |
Updated: | September 7, 2007 |
| Description: |
The Snort intrusion detection system is vulnerable to a buffer overflow
in the DCE/RPC preprocessor code. Remote attackers can send
specially crafted fragmented SMB or DCE/RPC packets which can be used
to allow the the remote execution of arbitrary code. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
squirrelmail: missing input sanitizing
| Package(s): | squirrelmail |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1262
|
| Created: | May 14, 2007 |
Updated: | June 15, 2007 |
| Description: |
It was discovered that the webmail package Squirrelmail performs
insufficient sanitizing inside the HTML filter, which allows the
injection of arbitrary web script code during the display of HTML
email messages. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
tcpdump: denial of service
| Package(s): | tcpdump |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1218
|
| Created: | March 5, 2007 |
Updated: | November 15, 2007 |
| Description: |
Off-by-one buffer overflow in the parse_elements function in the 802.11
printer code (print-802_11.c) for tcpdump 3.9.5 and earlier allows remote
attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) via a crafted 802.11
frame. NOTE: this was originally referred to as heap-based, but it might be
stack-based. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
tetex: buffer overflow
| Package(s): | tetex |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-0650
|
| Created: | May 8, 2007 |
Updated: | May 13, 2008 |
| Description: |
A buffer overflow in the open_sty function in mkind.c for makeindex 2.14 in
teTeX might allow user-assisted remote attackers to overwrite files and
possibly execute arbitrary code via a long filename. NOTE: other overflows
exist but might not be exploitable, such as a heap-based overflow in the
check_idx function. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
tomcat: directory traversal
| Package(s): | tomcat |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-0450
|
| Created: | May 2, 2007 |
Updated: | February 27, 2008 |
| Description: |
Versions of tomcat prior to 5.5.22 do not properly filter filename separator characters, enabling information disclosure attacks. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
util-linux: access restriction bypass
| Package(s): | util-linux |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-7108
|
| Created: | May 2, 2007 |
Updated: | June 15, 2007 |
| Description: |
From the Red Hat advisory: a flaw was found in the way the login process handled logins which did not
require authentication. Certain processes which conduct their own
authentication could allow a remote user to bypass intended access policies
which would normally be enforced by the login process. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
vim: arbitrary shell code execution
| Package(s): | vim |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-2438
|
| Created: | April 30, 2007 |
Updated: | May 25, 2007 |
| Description: |
Vim allows two functions, feedkeys() and writefile(), to be used in the
sandbox. Functions executed via modelines in files being edited are
verified by the sandbox; a user who is coerced into opening a
specially-crafted file could cause the system to execute arbitrary shell
code supplied by the attacker. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
vixie-cron: weak permissions may cause errors
| Package(s): | vixie-cron |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1856
|
| Created: | April 17, 2007 |
Updated: | December 4, 2007 |
| Description: |
During an internal audit, Raphael Marichez of the Gentoo Linux Security
Team found that Vixie Cron has weak permissions set on Gentoo, allowing
for a local user to create hard links to system and users cron files,
while a st_nlink check in database.c will generate a superfluous error. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
wordpress: another pile of vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | wordpress |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1622
CVE-2007-1893
CVE-2007-1894
CVE-2007-1897
|
| Created: | May 2, 2007 |
Updated: | July 6, 2007 |
| Description: |
Wordpress suffers from another set of vulnerabilities including a couple of cross-site scripting problems, an access restrictions bypass issue, and an SQL injection vulnerability. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
XFree86 X.org: integer overflows
| Package(s): | xfree86 x.org |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1003
CVE-2007-1667
CVE-2007-1351
CVE-2007-1352
|
| Created: | April 3, 2007 |
Updated: | August 11, 2009 |
| Description: |
iDefense reported an integer overflow flaw in the XFree86 XC-MISC
extension. A malicious authorized client could exploit this issue to cause
a denial of service (crash) or potentially execute arbitrary code with root
privileges on the XFree86 server. (CVE-2007-1003)
iDefense reported two integer overflows in the way X.org handled various
font files. A malicious local user could exploit these issues to
potentially execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the X.org server.
(CVE-2007-1351, CVE-2007-1352)
An integer overflow flaw was found in the XFree86 XGetPixel() function.
Improper use of this function could cause an application calling it to
function improperly, possibly leading to a crash or arbitrary code
execution. (CVE-2007-1667) |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
xine: format string vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | xine |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-0017
|
| Created: | January 23, 2007 |
Updated: | August 10, 2007 |
| Description: |
Multiple format string vulnerabilities in (1) the cdio_log_handler function
in modules/access/cdda/access.c in the CDDA (libcdda_plugin) plugin, and
the (2) cdio_log_handler and (3) vcd_log_handler functions in
modules/access/vcdx/access.c in the VCDX (libvcdx_plugin) plugin, in
VideoLAN VLC 0.7.0 through 0.8.6 allow user-assisted remote attackers to
execute arbitrary code via format string specifiers in an invalid URI, as
demonstrated by a udp://-- URI in an M3U file. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
xine-lib: arbitrary code execution
| Package(s): | xine-lib |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1387
|
| Created: | March 13, 2007 |
Updated: | April 1, 2008 |
| Description: |
Moritz Jodeit discovered that the DirectShow loader of Xine did not
correctly validate the size of an allocated buffer. By tricking a user
into opening a specially crafted media file, an attacker could execute
arbitrary code with the user's privileges. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
xine-lib: buffer overflow
| Package(s): | xine-lib |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-6172
|
| Created: | December 5, 2006 |
Updated: | June 5, 2007 |
| Description: |
A buffer overflow was discovered in the Real Media input plugin in
xine-lib. If a user were tricked into loading a specially crafted stream
from a malicious server, the attacker could execute arbitrary code with the
user's privileges. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
xine-lib: buffer overflow
| Package(s): | xine-lib |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-1664
|
| Created: | April 27, 2006 |
Updated: | February 27, 2008 |
| Description: |
xine-lib does an improper input data boundary check on
MPEG streams. A specially crafted MPEG file can be
created that can cause arbitrary code execution when the
file is accessed. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
xinit: race condition
| Package(s): | xinit |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2006-5214
|
| Created: | October 17, 2006 |
Updated: | August 9, 2007 |
| Description: |
A race condition allows local users to see error messages generated during
another user's X session. This could allow potentially sensitive
information to be leaked. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
xmms: BMP handling vulnerability
| Package(s): | xmms |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-0653
CVE-2007-0654
|
| Created: | March 28, 2007 |
Updated: | July 26, 2011 |
| Description: |
xmms suffers from vulnerabilities in its handling of BMP images. Should a hostile image be included in an xmms skin, it could lead to code execution on the user's system. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
xscreensaver: password check bypass
| Package(s): | xscreensaver |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1859
|
| Created: | May 2, 2007 |
Updated: | June 13, 2007 |
| Description: |
On a system which uses a remote directory service for passwords, a local attacker can crash xscreensaver by disrupting network connectivity, thus bypassing the password check and gaining access to the system. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
zziplib: buffer overflow
| Package(s): | zziplib |
CVE #(s): | CVE-2007-1614
|
| Created: | April 4, 2007 |
Updated: | September 5, 2007 |
| Description: |
dmcox discovered a boundary error in the zzip_open_shared_io() function
from zzip/file.c . A remote attacker could entice a user to run a zziplib
function with an overly long string as an argument which would trigger the
buffer overflow and may lead to the execution of arbitrary code. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet
Kernel development
Brief items
The current 2.6 prepatch is 2.6.22-rc3,
released on May 25.
"
The geeks with embedded hardware can consider themselves doubly
special (and not just because your mothers told you you are), because we've
got updates to ARM, SH and Blackfin. What more could you possibly want?
Some ATA updates? USB suspend problem solving? Infiniband? DVB and MMC
updates? Network drivers and some fixes for silly network problems? Yeah we
got them!" The
long-format
changelog has the details.
The current stable 2.6 release is 2.6.21.3, released on May 24 with a
single patch, being a security fix for the geode-aes driver. 2.6.21.2 came out on May 23
with a rather longer set of fixes.
For older kernels: 2.6.20.12 was released on
May 24 with the geode-aes fix. 2.6.16.52-rc1 showed up on
May 25 with a handful of fixes.
Comments (none posted)
Kernel development news
Over the years, we've done lots of nice "extended functionality"
stuff. Nobody ever uses them. The only thing that gets used is the
standard stuff that everybody else does too.
--
Linus Torvalds
Comments (none posted)
Things have been quiet on the syslet/threadlet/fibril
front for some time. Part of the reason for that, it would seem, is that
Ingo Molnar has been busy with the completely fair scheduler work and has
not been able to get back to this other little project. This work is not
dead, though; instead it has been picked up by Zach Brown (who came up with
the original "fibril" concept). Zach has released
an updated patch bringing this
work back to the foreground. He has not made a whole lot of changes to the
syslet code - yet - but that does not mean that the patch is uninteresting.
Zach's motivation for this work, remember, was to make it easier to
implement and maintain proper asynchronous I/O (AIO) support in the kernel. His
current work continues toward that goal:
For the time being I'm focusing on simplifying the mechanisms that
support the sys_io_*() interface so I never ever have to debug
fs/aio.c (also known as chewing glass to those of us with the
scars) again.
In particular, one
part of the new syslet patch is a replacement for the
io_submit() system call, which is the core of the current AIO
implementation. Rather than start the I/O and return, the new
io_submit() uses the syslet mechanism, eliminating a lot of
special-purpose AIO code in the process. Zach's stated goal is to
get rid of the internal kiocb structure altogether. The current
code is more of a proof of concept, though, with a lot of details yet to
fill in. Some benchmarks have been posted,
though, as Zach says, "They haven't wildly regressed, that's about as much as can be said
with confidence so far." It is worth noting that, with this patch,
the kernel is able to do asynchronous buffered I/O through
io_submit(), something which the mainline has never yet supported.
The biggest area of discussion, though, has been over Jeff Garzik's
suggestion that the kevent code should be integrated with syslets. Some
people like the idea, but others, including
Ingo, think that kevents do not provide any sort of demonstrable
improvement over the current epoll interface. Ulrich Drepper, the glibc
maintainer, disagreed with that assessment,
saying that the kevent interface was a step in the right direction if it
does not perform any better.
The reasoning behind that point of view is worth a look. The use of the
epoll interface requires the creation of a file descriptor. That is fine
when applications use epoll directly, but it can be problematic if glibc is
trying to poll for events (I/O completions, say) that the application does
not see directly.
There is a single space for file descriptors, and applications often think
they know what should be done with every descriptor in that space. If
glibc starts creating its own private file descriptors, it will find itself
at the mercy of any application which closes random descriptors, uses
dup() without care, etc. So there is no way for glibc to use file
descriptors independently from the application.
Possible solutions exist, such as giving glibc a set of private, hidden
descriptors. But Ulrich would rather just go with a memory-based interface
which avoids the problem altogether. And Linus would rather not create any new interfaces at
all. All told, it has the feel of an unfinished discussion; we'll be
seeing it again.
Comments (12 posted)
Memory defragmentation is a subject which has appeared often on this page -
even if no solutions have yet found their way into the mainline kernel.
Most of the defragmentation approaches out there work at the page level
with the idea of being able to satisfy multi-page allocations reliably.
There is another type of fragmentation problem, however, which also has the
ability to complicate the kernel's memory management: fragmentation within
slab pages.
The slab allocator grabs full pages and divides them into allocations of
the same size. For example, kernel code which will often allocate a
specific structure type will create a slab for that type, allowing those
allocations to be satisfied quickly and efficiently. The slab allocator
can release pages back to the kernel when all of the objects within those
pages have been freed. In real use, however, objects tend to get spread
across many pages, leaving the allocator with a pile of partially-used
pages and no way to return memory to the system. This sort of internal
fragmentation can lead to inefficient memory usage and the inability to
reclaim memory when it is needed.
Christoph Lameter's slab
defragmentation patch aims to solve this problem by getting slab users
to cooperate in freeing specific slab pages. A defragmentation-aware slab
user will start by creating a structure of the new kmem_cache_ops
type:
struct kmem_cache_ops {
void *(*get)(struct kmem_cache *cache, int nr, void **objects);
void (*kick)(struct kmem_cache *cache, int nr, void **objects,
void *private);
};
In this structure are two methods which the slab user must define. When
the slab code picks a specific page to try to free (typically a page with a
relatively small number of allocated objects), it will make an array of
those objects and pass it to the get() method. That method has a
guarantee that all of the objects are allocated at the time of the call;
its job is to increase the reference count of each object to prevent it
from being freed while other things are happening. The return value is a
private pointer which will be used later.
Note that the get() method is called in something like interrupt
context with slab locks held. So it cannot do a whole lot, and, in
particular, it cannot call any slab operations.
After get() returns, the slab code will pass the same parameters
into kick(), along with whatever value get() returned.
Depending on the situation, the private value could be a pointer
to internal housekeeping or simply a flag saying that it will not be
possible to free all of the objects. Assuming it is possible,
kick() should attempt to free every object in the objects
array. Slab operations are permissible in kick(), and the
function is welcome to reallocate and move the objects. Reallocation will
have the effect of freeing the target page and coalescing objects into a
smaller number of fully-used pages.
There is no return value from kick(); the slab code simply checks
to see if there are any remaining objects on the page to decide whether the
operation succeeded or not. It is perfectly acceptable for the operation
to fail; that will happen, for example, if code in other parts of the
kernel holds references to the target objects.
The slab creation function has had its API changed to allow the association
of a set of operations with a given cache:
struct kmem_cache *kmem_cache_create(const char *name, size_t size,
size_t align, unsigned long flags,
void (*ctor)(void *, struct kmem_cache *, unsigned long),
const struct kmem_cache_ops *ops);
The destructor is no longer used, so it has been removed from the list of
kmem_cache_create() parameters and replaced by the ops
structure.
The patch includes code to add defragmentation support for the inode and
dentry caches - often the two largest slab caches in a running system.
There is also a new function:
int kmem_cache_vacate(struct page *page);
This function will attempt to move all slab objects out of page,
which really should be a page managed by the slab allocator; a non-zero
return value indicates success. Among other things, this function can be
used to clear specific pages which would help complete a higher-order
allocation.
There has been relatively little discussion of this patch set; the core
concept appears not to be overly controversial. It looks like a relatively
low-overhead way to improve how the kernel uses memory; even the most
critical reviewer can have a hard time getting upset about that.
Comments (1 posted)
Back in September, LWN took a look at
Rohit
Seth's containers patch. Since that time, containers development has
moved on to Paul Menage who, like Rohit, posts from a google.com address.
The patch has evolved considerably, to the point that Rohit's name no
longer appears within it. As of the recently posted
containers V10 patch, this
mechanism is reaching a reasonably mature state.
This patch introduces a couple of new concepts into the kernel. The first
one has an old name: "subsystem". Fortunately, the driver core has just
removed its "subsystem" concept, leaving the term free. In the container
patch, a subsystem is some part of the kernel which might have an interest
in what groups of processes are doing. Chances are that most subsystems
will be involved with resource management; for example, the container patch
turns the Linux cpusets mechanism (which binds processes to specific groups
of processors) into a subsystem.
A "container" is a group of processes which shares a set of parameters used
by one or more subsystems. In the cpuset example, a container would have a
set of processors which it is entitled to use; all processes within the
container inherit that same set. Other (not yet existing) subsystems could
use containers to enforce limits on CPU time, I/O bandwidth usage, memory
usage, filesystem visibility, and so on. Containers are hierarchical, in
that one container can hold others.
As an example, consider the simple hierarchy to the right. A server used
to host containerized guests could establish two top-level containers to
control the usage of CPU time. Guests, perhaps, could be allowed 90% of
the CPU, but the administrator may want to place system tasks in a separate
container which will always get at least 10% of the processor - that way,
the mail will continue to be delivered regardless of what the guests are
doing. Within the "Guests" container, each individual guest has its own
container with specific CPU usage policies.
The container mechanism is not limited to a single hierarchy; instead, the
administrator can create as many hierarchies as desired. So, for example,
the administrator of the system described above could create an entirely
different hierarchy for the control of network bandwidth usage. By
default, all processes would be in the same container, but it is possible
to set up policy which would shift processes to a different container when
they run a specific application. So a web browser might be moved into a
container which gets a relatively high portion of the available bandwidth
while Bittorrent clients find themselves relegated to an unhappy container
with almost no bandwidth available.
Different container hierarchies need not resemble each other in any way.
Each hierarchy has one or more subsystems associated with it; a subsystem
can only be attached to a single hierarchy. If there is more than one
hierarchy, each process in the system will be in more than one container -
one in each hierarchy.
The administration of containers is performed through a special virtual
filesystem. The documentation suggests that it could be mounted on
/dev/container, which is a bit strange; it has nothing to do with
devices. One container filesystem instance will be mounted for each
hierarchy to be created. The association of subsystems with hierarchies is
done at mount time, by way of mount options. By default, all known
subsystems are associated with a hierarchy, so a command like:
mount -t container none /containers
would create a single container hierarchy with all known subsystems on
/containers. A setup like the one described above, instead, could
be created with something like:
mount -t container -o cpu cpu /containers/cpu
mount -t container -o net net /containers/net
The desired subsystems for each container hierarchy are simply provided as
options at mount time. Note that the "cpu" and "net" subsystems mentioned
above do not actually exist in the current container patch set.
Creating new containers is just a matter of making a directory in the
appropriate spot in the hierarchy. Containers have a file called
tasks; reading that file will yield a list of all processes
currently in the container. A process can be added to a container by
writing its ID to the tasks file. So a simple way to create a
container and move a shell into it would be:
mkdir /containers/new_container
echo $$ > /containers/new_container/tasks
Subsystems can add files to containers for use in setting resource limits
or otherwise controlling how the subsystem works. For example, the cpuset
subsystem (which does exist) adds a file called cpus containing
the list of CPUs established for that container; there are several other
files added as well.
It's worth noting that the container patch does not add a single system
call; all of the management is performed through the virtual filesystem.
With a basic container mechanism in place, most of the action in the future
is likely to be in the creation of new subsystems. One can imagine, for
example, hooking the existing process ID virtualization code into
containers, as well as adding no end of resource controllers. The creation
of a subsystem is relatively straightforward; the subsystem code starts by
creating and registering a container_subsys structure. That
structure contains an integer subsys_id field which should be set
to the subsystem's specific ID number; these numbers are set staticly in
<linux/container_subsys.h>. Implicit in this arrangement is
that subsystems must be built into the kernel; there is no provision for
adding subsystems as loadable modules.
Each subsystem defines a set of methods to be used by the container code,
beginning with:
int (*create)(struct container_subsys *ss, struct container *cont);
int (*populate)(struct container_subsys *ss, struct container *cont);
void (*destroy)(struct container_subsys *ss, struct container *cont);
These three are called whenever a container is created or destroyed; this is
the chance for the subsystem to set up any bookkeeping it will need for the
new container (or clean up for a container which is going away). The
populate() method is called after the successful creation of a new
container; its purpose is to allow the subsystem to add management files to
that container.
Four methods are for the addition and removal of processes:
int (*can_attach)(struct container_subsys *ss, struct container *cont,
struct task_struct *tsk);
void (*attach)(struct container_subsys *ss, struct container *cont,
struct container *old_cont, struct task_struct *tsk);
void (*fork)(struct container_subsys *ss, struct task_struct *task);
void (*exit)(struct container_subsys *ss, struct task_struct *task);
If a process is explicitly added to a container after creation, the
container code will call can_attach() to determine whether the
addition should succeed. If the subsystem allows the action to happen, it
should have performed any needed allocations to ensure that the subsequent
attach() call succeeds. When a process forks, fork()
will be called to add the new child to the container. Exiting processes
call exit() to allow the subsystem to clean up.
Clearly, there's more to the interface than described here; see the thorough documentation file packaged with
the patch for much more detail. Your editor would not venture a guess as
to when this code might be merged, but it does seem that this is the
mechanism that the containers community has decided to push. So, sooner or
later, it will likely be contained within the mainline.
Comments (12 posted)
Patches and updates
Kernel trees
Core kernel code
Development tools
Device drivers
Documentation
Filesystems and block I/O
Memory management
Networking
Architecture-specific
Security-related
Virtualization and containers
Miscellaneous
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet
Distributions
News and Editorials
Fedora 7 was originally scheduled to be released on May 24, 2007. That
target slipped a week, to May 31, 2007, so it may be out by the time you
read this article. Fedora 7 has been
called
"
the most ambitious release of Fedora that we've undertaken".
The merger of Core and Extras alone was an ambitious project, and F7 has
much more.
Not all of the features
that were targeted for Fedora 7 made it in, but very many new features will
be found in this release. Here's a list of some of the new features in
Fedora 7:
- Consolidated dictionaries for each language - instead of a separate
dictionary for OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Thunderbird and aspell there is
only one dictionary shared by these applications.
- Eclipse plugins.
- Fast User Switching allows multiple desktop sessions that are easily
switched between without logging out.
- An Install Everything spin for those who want it all.
- A KDE spin for those who want KDE and not GNOME.
- The Prime spin can be used for a
desktop/workstation/developer/server install.
- The ability to create a Targeted spin - include only the packages
you want without the clutter.
- An improved firewire stack.
- Support for KVM in the kernel and virtualization tools.
- F7 uses libata for parallel ATA support, instead of the 'old-ide'
stack.
- Installable Live CDs and DVDs.
- Core and Extras merged into a single CVS root and a single build
system.
- A snapshot of the nouveau driver.
- RPM and Yum Enhancements.
- The default kernel is tickless for improved power management.
- Bodhi is the new Fedora Update System, rewritten for the new
combined universe.
- Pungi is used for tree building instead of the internal
builddistro/etc scripts.
- More wireless firmware support.
- Smolt is a hardware reporting tool that will allow Fedora developers
to understand the hardware that Fedora runs on better.
Additional documentation for Fedora can be found here.
Comments (1 posted)
New Releases
Technalign, Inc.
has announced the release of their Pioneer Basic 2.1 desktop Linux
operating system.
"
Pioneer Basic R2.1 is similar to Basic R2.0 with several exceptions. The biggest exception is that Pioneer Release 2.1 is based on Feisty and not Edgy while it continues to be based on Kubuntu. Adept is nolonger incorporated as the update manager, but is now replaced with Synaptic per the business and consumer communities. Also notable are the Guarddog Firewall as well as the KlamAV anti-virus utilities that have been added and OpenOffice 2.2."
Comments (none posted)
Distribution News
HP has announced the release of version 4.0 of its Linux Common Operating
Environment system. "
Essentially, it lets someone custom design a system running Linux via
the LinuxCOE System Designer website (choosing from over 100 Linux
distributions), download a customized boot image onto a USB drive or CD
and then install elsewhere according to the original design. Once a
system is up and running, LinuxCOE provides continued lifecycle support
for patch and package updates."
Full Story (comments: 12)
There are many teams within Debian, each with its own habits and tools. A
wiki site is currently under
construction that will help people find out more about Debian teams.
Full Story (comments: none)
Familiar is a Linux
distribution for handheld devices.
Synergy allows you to share a
single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different
operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware.
So, if you have a handheld device running Familiar you can now use Synergy
to control your handheld with your computer mouse and keyboard.
Full Story (comments: none)
The Fedora Project
website has
received a face lift. "
Prior to today that site went straight to the
wiki, which is largely developer content with good (but somewhat hard to
find) docs. Now we're expanding on fedoraproject.org and adding some more
user-centric content like that found at http://docs.fedoraproject.org/."
Full Story (comments: none)
OpenPKG has announced its support (and use) of RPM5. "
As OpenPKG
depends on RPM and Ralf S. Engelschall is both an Open Source software
developer and a strong supporter of important foreign Open Source software
projects, he agreed to actively support Jeff Johnson's new stated roadmap
towards the forthcoming RPM 5.0 by providing him and his newly formed RPM
project team the necessary central project infrastructure. rpm5.org was
chosen by Jeff Johnson as the new location, under which today the RPM
project was finally relaunched by him."
Full Story (comments: 2)
OpenSUSE has moved both YaST and ZYPP to svn.opensuse.org - other
repositories will soon follow.
Full Story (comments: none)
A new
mailing
list has been created for Ubuntu Masters Of The Universe mentoring. If
you would like to become a MOTU, this list is for you.
Full Story (comments: none)
Distribution Newsletters
The Fedora Weekly News for May 26, 2007 covers the Fedora Project Web face
lift, Fedora 7 RC2 "Fedora" spin i386 available, Fedora 7 at Respins.org
and much more.
Full Story (comments: none)
The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter for May 27, 2007 covers Dell's long awaited
release of computers with Ubuntu preinstalled, the newly created Wine team,
a new planet has been added to our blog solar system for US LoCos, an
interview with Corey Burger, the newly approved Community Council member, a
quick summary on the new procedure to become an Ubuntu Core Developer, and
the spotlight is on the Catalan Team this week which was recently
officially approved.
Full Story (comments: none)
The
DistroWatch
Weekly for May 28, 2007 is out. "
Fedora 7, the latest and
arguably most ambitious release from the increasingly community-friendly
Fedora Project, will hit the download mirrors later this week. With its
installable live CDs, merged package repositories and much improved
artwork, the new Fedora should prove a major attraction on the 2nd quarter
release calendar. But will it be able to regain some of the market share it
lost in recent years to the more aggressive desktop Linux distributions?
We'll have to wait and see. In other major news of the week, Dell has
fulfilled its promise and started shipping the first desktop computers with
Ubuntu pre-installed. Finally, don't miss our first look review of
PCLinuxOS 2007 by Chris Smart and check out the list of four new Linux
distributions that have been added to the DistroWatch database: BeaFanatIX,
Granular Linux, Openfiler and Parted Magic."
Comments (none posted)
Newsletters and articles of interest
HowtoForge has tutorials on setting up
the
perfect server with Mandriva 2007 Spring and
the
perfect desktop with PCLinuxOS 2007.
Comments (none posted)
Distribution reviews
Linux.com
reviews
Gentoo 2007.0 code-named Secret Sauce. "
Gentoo 2007.0 is available
in several formats for various platforms. As per its torrent download
statistics, most popular are the live DVD, the live CD, and the minimal CD
for x86 and AMD64 platforms. The live CD contains Linux kernel 2.6.19, Xorg
7.2, GNOME 2.16.0, OpenOffice.org 2.1.0, Firefox 2.0.0.3, Thunderbird
1.5.0.10, Evolution 2.8.2.1, and X-Chat and Gaim (now Pidgin) for IRC and
instant messaging. The DVD version has everything the CD has, along with
KDE 3.5.5, XFCE 4.4.0, GIMP 2.2.14, Abiword 2.4.6, KOffice 1.6.1, and
several other applications, tools, and libraries."
Comments (none posted)
LinuxDevices
looks at a
server-oriented Linux distribution for Sony's Playstation3. "
Helios
describes its PS3 distro as a version of TerraSoft's Yellow Dog Linux (YDL)
for the PS3 that has been simplified and optimized for use as a server
OS. The simplifications are said to result in 40 percent more RAM available
for server applications. Optimizations include AppleTalk support in the
kernel, and a Java 1.5 environment pre-installed." A
press release is
available from HELIOS.
Comments (none posted)
ServerWatch
takes a
look at Voyage Linux. "
Voyage Linux is pretty amazing. The stock
image can be run from a bootable live CD or installed into any storage
medium you want. It supports all bootable media, including PXE network
boot. It's designed for wireless routers, but because it includes apt-get
it is easily and highly customizable. If you've been wishing for a tiny
Linux you can easily tweak to meet your needs, starting from the smallest
possible image and adding what you want, this just might be it."
Comments (none posted)
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol
Development
May 30, 2007
This article was contributed by Nathan Sanders
May 28th marked the official commencement of student projects for the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2007. The Ubuntu Linux distribution is among the program's heavyweights, with twenty projects lined up for 2007. Its status as a significant organization is not surprising given the remarkable momentum of the distribution, which has undeniably become a juggernaut in the Free software community after only a few short years of development. The GSoC students and the Ubuntu developer-mentors they are paired with need only work for one season, but their contributions will have lasting value to the Ubuntu distribution, the applications it packages, and, in some cases, other distributions that share the code they write.
Ubuntu's GSoC projects are too numerous to explore comprehensively here. More information on all of them is available at the Ubuntu GSoC page. We contacted students and mentors from five of Ubuntu's GSoC projects and asked them to describe how their initial proposals have evolved to the projects they are now working on, what their work will do for Ubuntu users, and how other distributions may benefit.
Lois Desplat's "Revision Controlled Home Directories" (mentored by Martin Pitt)
Mentor Martin Pitt, a member of the exclusive Ubuntu Core Development Team, describes Desplat's project, dubbed "Mnemosyne," as "a backup system with extra features". Despite any temptations to go wild with the concept of revision control as is applied to code, Pitt is seeking to temper the project for the desktop and guarantee that it is minimally taxing on resources, well integrated, and extensible so that it may work with multiple backend and frontends. The results of the discussion between Pitt and Desplat was compiled into an adjusted Mnemosyne project plan and timeline.
The new plans are a bit more fleshed-out than what is listed on the GSoC project page. Canonical's own Bazaar revision control system will be adopted as the primary backend over SVN. SVN will still be implemented as an optional plugin as a demonstration of backend development. Commits of changed files could be done instantaneously, but to use resources realistically they will probably be done nightly or at some other time interval - as in a traditional backup scheme.
Revision control systems do have advantages over traditional backup schemes and the ubiquitous Recycling Bin system. The system will allow users to revert back to several versions of their files rather than one specific backup. Moreover, the system will facilitate other features typical of code repositories, even if their use for file handling isn't immediately obvious. Users will be able to merge text files, patch binaries, and keep the repository on a remote device. If the entire /home directory is revision controlled, as is planned, this will include both personal documents and configuration files. Mnemosyne will also be designed for easy extension to /etc or elsewhere.
Mnemosyne is being designed as a daemon for committing, a command-line program for configuration and management, frontends for Gnome/KDE, and heavy integration into GNOME's Nautilus file manager (with KDE's Konqueror as a goal). The file manager integration will allow users to selectively omit files from revisioning (so, for instance, a very large file is not revisioned nightly), force commits, or retrieve past versions. These tools will be written in Python, reverting to C++ if necessary to "interface with another application." The tools should all be distribution-agnostic and could very well appear outside of Ubuntu.
Desplat is a software engineering student at San Jose State University. He has experience participating in open source projects with the OGRE rendering engine. He has established a Launchpad site for Mnemosyne where users may keep track of his work. Weekly reports will also be published on the GSoC coordination list. Expect a testable version of the daemon by mid-June and beta .deb packages by early July.
Kévin Dunglas' "Privacy tool(s) for Ubuntu" (mentored by Jani Monoses)
Modeled in the style of Apple's FileVault, Dunglas is building Privacy Tool, a GUI to accomplish three principal privacy goals that he has identified for Ubuntu. His tool will facilitate /home directory encryption, swap partition encryption, and the creation of a "safe deposit box" to secure individual files. He notes that he will also build a temporary file cleanser for Firefox if time allows.
Dunglas has yet to identify the encryption backend he will use for his tool. TrueCrypt and cryptsetup have been named as possibilities. He plans to perform /home directory encryption in-place, via a backend that either encrypts in-place directly or by moving files into the new, encrypted directory. Dunglas has no plans to implement full-filesystem encryption with Privacy Tool, stating that the /home directory and swap are the most critical places for privatizing user data. The safe deposit box will be offered as a mechanism for encrypting additional files.
Privacy Tool will be a Gtk/Gnome application built with Glade and Python. Though Dunglas has no plans to port it beyond Ubuntu, he is conscious of possible ports to other distributions and is building Privacy Tool from widely available packages. He hopes to make an alpha release available towards the end of July.
Dunglas is a computer science student at the Institut Universitaire de Technologie de Lens in France. He has been involved with Ubuntu France for several years. Mentor Jani Monoses is a Romanian computer science engineer strongly involved with the Xubuntu derivative.
Krzysztof Lichota's "Automatic boot and application start file prefetching" (mentored by Tollef Fog Heen)
This project is the continuation of a longstanding effort among Linux distributions to shorten application startup time by techniques such as prefetching. According to Lichota, Windows XP implements a system whereby application and system startup are analyzed to identify files used in the process. Those files can then be "prefetched" into cached memory upon future startups to minimize overall disk access. This technique, in addition to reorganizing these files into sequential, easy-to-access order on the disc may dramatically decrease launch time.
Lichota has made the full text of his Prefetching project application available. In it, he gives detailed analysis of the various prefetching schemes which have already been implemented (including two former GSoC projects) and systematically lists their deficiencies. In short, Lichota hopes that his system will be less RAM-dependent than the Ubuntu Boot Readahead,
will be more effective at analyzing application-launch file usage than
Preload, and will require less user-interaction and improve on the disk defragmentation
capabilities of
Pagecache tools.
The key to Lichota's project will be to work at a lower level than previous systems. While the Preload method employs a daemon to periodically invoke prefetching routines, Lichota will hook prefetching into the fundamental Linux exec() function, probably by patching the kernel itself. He hopes to reuse code from these previous projects for prefetching functions where appropriate.
Lichota has already begun writing his tool for reorganizing pre-fetching files on the hard disk. Unfortunately, there are no plans to implement this tool for anything but ext3 filesystems. Lichota believes that his code will apply mostly to the kernel and that it would be fairly easy for other distributions to adopt his work. He hopes to have a working, though untested, version of the prefetching tool in mid-July and an untested version of the disk tool in August. Lichota will also implement an ext3 tool for metadata pre-caching if time permits.
Krzysztof Lichota is a PhD student at Warsaw University who has already earned a Masters degree from their computer science department. He has five years of experience working for the storage industry on cluster solutions. Lichota has been encouraging his own students to participate in the GSoC for two years now and is among several University of Warsaw computer science students who are participating in the 2007 GSoC .
Mentor Tollef Fog Heen is a member of the Ubuntu Core Development Team.
Two important resources exist for those interested in Lichota's project. He has constructed a site to track progress on the Prefetching GSoC project and a general site which he would like to become a base for all future Linux prefetching development. Those interested in participating in development are encouraged to join the prefetch-devel mailinglist.
Petter Remen's "Device & Driver Manager for Ubuntu" (mentored by Kyle McMartin)
The inspiration for Remen's project comes from a device manager specification developed by Ubuntu kernel developer Ben Collins. His goal was to implement a GUI Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) device manager for GNOME that will allow users to modify driver configuration without touching plaintext configuration files or a command line. Collins warns that the existing GNOME hal-device-manager, which displays a hardware device tree taken from HAL, but does little for user-friendly configuration, will have to be forked and some kernel hacking may be necessary.
Remen clearly outlines his vision for the project's GUI. The tool will immediately present users with a list of hardware categorized by simple terminology, which can also be filtered by user defined criteria. For each listed device, the tool will display the currently enabled driver and allow the user to replace or reconfigure the driver. Furthermore, the tool will facilitate loading drivers from CDs or other user-specified locations and allow users to disable devices. Users will be able to save their configurations in "hardware profiles" to apply upon reboot or implement on another computer.
Remen indicates on his GSoC project page that extensibility will be an objective of his work. He lists X server and CUPS configuration, independent from HAL, as possible future extensions to his project. Although the existing hal-device-manager is cross-platform, Remen will be implementing features that will make his tool Linux-specific. If, indeed, kernel development is necessary for his project, it may be difficult for other distributions to incorporate his work.
Mentoring the project will be Kyle McMartin, employed by Canonical as an Ubuntu kernel hacker and a member of the core development team.
Tomé Vardasca's "Ubuntu bootloader manager" (mentored by Scott James Remnant)
Bootloader configuration functionality has been present in the administration tools of SUSE and Mandriva for several years, but is an element of GUI system configuration conspicuously absent in Ubuntu. Vardasca's project will integrate bootloader configuration into Ubuntu's Ubiquity operating system installer, and duplicate the functionality for a GNOME control center module. The tool is only being designed with the GNU GRUB bootloader in mind.
As outlined in the full Ubuntu bootloader manger specification, users will be able to edit the list of operating systems presented by the bootloader and their ordering, configure kernel options, set passwords for the console and operating systems, and theme the bootloader. The tool will keep a copy of the configuration in an XML file in case replacement is necessary, along with a backup to use in case of user input error.
Theming options will play a major role in Vardasca's tool.
It will include an interface for installing
GfxBoot,
and an enhanced version of GRUB designed for aesthetics. Alternatively, the tool will enable theming vanilla GRUB with a splash screen and a custom color scheme. A theme editor will be provided for this purpose. The configuration tool will include a preview window with a screenshot of the theme.
Although the code integrated into the Ubiquity installer may be difficult to port, the GNOME control center module will be written in Python and may find its way into other distributions. Vardasca intends to provide an alpha version of the configuration tool at the end of May and complete the integration into Ubiquity and the GNOME control center by the end of July. Those interested in participating should visit the Ubuntu Bootloader Manager Launchpad project page.
Vardasca is a health informatics student at the Superior School of Technology and Management at the Leiria Polytechnic Institute. He became interested in Ubuntu after switching from Windows upon the release of Vista. He says that friends' requests prompted him to develop a bootloader manager: "I guessed I could do it in the Google Summer of Code and, surprisingly, I guessed well." Mentor Scott James Remnant is a member of the Ubuntu Core Development Team.
Comments (2 posted)
System Applications
Interoperability
Version 3.0.25a of Samba has been announced.
"
This is the second production release of the Samba 3.0.25 code
base and is the version that servers should be run for for all
current bug fixes."
Full Story (comments: none)
Networking Tools
Version 0.9.3 of conntrack-tools has been announced.
"
The netfilter project proudly presents conntrack-tools-0.9.3
The userspace daemon conntrackd covers the specific aspects of stateful
Linux firewalls to enable high availability solutions, and can be used
as statistics collector of the firewall use as well. The daemon is
highly configurable and easily extensible."
Full Story (comments: none)
Package Management
A new site has been launched at
rpm5.org; it
claims to be "
the home of the official RPM Package Manager (RPM) code
base." This site should not be confused with
rpm.org, which is the home of Red Hat's fork of
RPM; rpm5 is the Jeff Johnson fork. A
RPM5 roadmap has also
been posted: "
The main RPM development is already focused on the
development of the forthcoming RPM 5.0. The primary goals of RPM 5.0 are
the additional support for the XML based archiving format XAR, an
integrated package dependency resolver, further improved portability and
extended cross-platform support."
Comments (13 posted)
Printing
Version 1.0 of oopstops
has been announced.
"
This CUPS filter sanitizes the PostScript jobs created by OpenOffice 2.x. It makes the PostScript jobs DSC compliant, thus further processing by the pstops filter works without problems."
Comments (none posted)
Desktop Applications
Animation Software
The
Synfig
irregular news for May 30 is out. For those who have not heard of
Synfig before, it is "
a powerful, industrial-strength vector-based 2D
animation software package, designed from the ground-up for producing
feature-film quality animation with fewer people and resources." It
was a proprietary product initially, but is now available under the GPL.
Comments (none posted)
Audio Applications
Version 0.99.79 of Alsaplayer and version 1.0.4 of fftscope have
been announced.
For Alsaplayer: "
Basic keyboard navigation and loop inside a selection have been added."
For fftscope: "
This release is a major bugfix release and each user is encouraged to upgrade."
Full Story (comments: none)
Version 0.9.9.1 of Faust is out with some new capabilities.
"
Faust is a functional programming language for real-time signal
processing and synthesis that targets high-performance audio processing
applications and plugins. The Faust compiler translates Faust programs
into optimized C++ code for a variety of audio platforms : Jack, Alsa,
OSS, Ladspa, VST, MaxMSP, Q, PD, SuperCollider, etc."
Full Story (comments: none)
Release 0.76b of RTMix, an audio performance coordination tool, is out.
"
Well, it's been over 2 (3?) years since last release, but rtmix refuses to
die ;-). Thanks solely to Robin Gareus and his heroic work in making rtmix
gcc4 compliant, I am releasing rtmix version 0.76(b). Apart from compile error
fixes (courtesy of Robin), there have been a few cosmetic tweaks, but most
notably, the source is now released under a 100% GPL-compliant license."
Full Story (comments: none)
Version 1.2 beta 2 of
Speex,
an open-source patent-free audio compression format designed for speech,
is available. Changes include:
"
The RAM requirement for wideband has gone down drastically (i.e. more than 2x). A new resampler module has been added, providing arbitrary sampling rate conversion -- fast. The echo canceller has also been improved. A bug in 1.2beta1 that made the echo canceller unstable has been fixed. The echo canceller should now converge faster, be robust and tolerant of incorrect capture-playback synchronisation. The preprocessor has also been greatly improved. Not only should the quality be better, but it is now fully converted to fixed-point. At last, early TriMedia support (incomplete) has been merged."
Comments (none posted)
Business Applications
KeyJnote
is a cross-platform slide presentation application that aims to
add style to presentations.
"
KeyJnote is a program that displays presentation slides. But unlike OpenOffice.org Impress or other similar applications, it does so with style. Smooth alpha-blended slide transitions are provided for the sake of eye candy, but in addition to this, KeyJnote offers some unique tools that are really useful for presentations."
Comments (none posted)
Data Visualization
Stable version 1.1 of MathGL
has been announced.
"
MathGL library make wide spectrum of mathematical graphics (plots, surfaces, contours, isosurfaces and so on) in platform independent way. Graphics may be exported to EPS, PNG, JPEG or TIFF formats. Front-end for library is based on OpenGL and GLUT libraries. Also it is possible to draw plot in console regime directly to file (bitmap or PostScript) without using X-server. Output graphics is adopted to use with wxWidgets and FLTK libraries."
Comments (none posted)
Desktop Environments
The GNOME project has released a
roadmap for GNOME 2.20 and
beyond. "
The GNOME Roadmap is a big-picture view of functionality we
expect GNOME to include in short-term and long-term future. The roadmap is
based on feedback from current GNOME developers and other community
members."
Full Story (comments: 27)
GnomeDesktop.org
has announced a new Bounty program for the Planner application.
"
Bounties for new features to be added to Planner are being offered by Intouch.
Requested features are:
1) Ability to produce variance reports
2) Ability to filter projects by resource
3) Ability to link projects via a milestone
4) Automatic email to resources when a part of their schedule has been changed".
Comments (none posted)
The following new GNOME software has been announced this week:
You can find more new GNOME software releases at
gnomefiles.org.
Comments (none posted)
The May 27, 2007 edition of the
KDE Commit-Digest has been
announced.
The content summary says:
"
Continued work in Plasma, particularly in
the clock visualisations. Kalzium uses the GetHotNewStuff framework to
download new molecules for its 3d viewer, plus speed optimisations for the
rendering of these molecules. The start of fullscreen support in the Gwenview
image viewer. Work begins on a WebKit-based KPart..."
Comments (none posted)
KDE.News offers a video-heavy
look at the KWin window manager in KDE4. "
KWin has implemented effects in a way that allows a number of different rendering methods to be used, depending on your specific combination of hardware and drivers. These features have brought KWin rapidly into the era of dazzling eyecandy, along with some pleasant surprises on the usability front."
Comments (none posted)
KDE.News
covers the ongoing
HIG Hunting Season.
"
Are you fed up with cryptic error messages you don't understand? Then get involved! This week's target of the HIG Hunting Season is warnings and error messages."
Comments (none posted)
The following new KDE software has been announced this week:
You can find more new KDE software releases at
kde-apps.org.
Comments (none posted)
A new Linux Desktop Testing Project (LDTP) tutorial document
is available. [pdf] Feedback is requested.
Full Story (comments: none)
Desktop Publishing
Version 1.3.4 of Scribus, a page layout application, has been announced.
"
Almost one year in the making, this release brings Scribus to a new
plateau in professional print capabilities, innovative features and a
completely re-written text layout engine."
Full Story (comments: none)
Version 3.6.4 of WIKINDX
is out with feature enhancements and minor bug fixes.
"
WIKINDX is a free single or multi-user research environment storing
searchable bibliographies, notes and citations and integrated with a WYSIWYG
word processor for the authoring of publication-ready articles automatically
formatted to chosen citation styles."
Comments (none posted)
Electronics
Release 2007-05-25 of
Kicad,
a printed circuit CAD application, is out with a bug fix for
3D shape display and improvements to the Gerber file viewer.
Comments (none posted)
Version 3.6.94 of
XCircuit,
an electronic schematic drawing tool, is out with bug fixes. See the
changes
document for details.
Comments (none posted)
Financial Applications
Version 2.8.5 of
SQL-Ledger,
a web-based accounting system, is out. See the
What's New document for change details.
Comments (none posted)
Graphics
KDE.News
mentions
a new fund raising effort for
Krita, a painting and
image editing application for KOffice.
"
Krita development is in a crucial phase, we are adding fun, useful and amazing stuff at a stunning rate. But there are things that no Krita developer can do, because we lack the proper hardware. Krita's renaissance started with a simple Wacom Graphire tablet, and it led to some great new possibilities. But to implement support for modern tablet features like tilt and stylus rotation we need to buy more advanced tablets and art pens, and to make that possible, we need your help!"
Comments (none posted)
Interoperability
The May 26, 2007 edition of the
Wine Weekly Newsletter
is online with coverage of the Wine project. Topics include:
Novell's Patent Fun, ntoskrnl.exe, Gecko Package Update,
Making Direct3D Threadsafe, Free Fonts, Keyboard Handling Changes and
AppDB Vandalism.
Comments (none posted)
Office Applications
Release 1.0.2 of BasKet Note Pads (
reviewed here last February) is
out. There's a few enhancements, but the more important part of the
announcement is the appeal for developers. "
BasKet Note
Pads has no developer anymore. Without new
developers, I'm afraid the project will have to be
stopped (and unavailable on KDE 4)." BasKet has some real fans; now
is the time for those who would like to see this application make progress
to jump in and help.
Full Story (comments: 3)
Office Suites
The May, 2007 edition of the OpenOffice.org Newsletter
is out with the latest OO.o office suite articles and events.
Full Story (comments: none)
RSS Software
Version 0.9 or LeafRSS
has been announced.
"
This version includes full smarty template integration, as well as options to embed the articles in another web page, or even to allow the output of the filter as an RSS feed."
Comments (none posted)
Miscellaneous
Version 0.2.4 of moap, a "swiss army knife for project maintainers
and developers",
has been announced. The project description states:
"
It aims to help in keeping you in the flow of maintaining, developing and releasing, automating whatever tasks can be automated. It allows you to parse DOAP files and submit releases, send release mails, create iCal files and RSS feeds, maintain version control ignore lists, check in based on the latest ChangeLog entry, and more."
Comments (none posted)
Stable release 5.0.0 of
MultiTail,
an enhanced version of the command line tail utility,
has been announced.
"
Merge of last development version with last stable version. Some of the
new features are: added support (in color schemes) for alternating
colors and attributes can be merged for multiple matching lines, added
case insensitive toggle and history to searchfields, colorscheme for
motion, Argus, portsentry, mpstat, p0f and strace, added wordwrap-mode,
various fixes and updates (man-page/on-line help), conversions and color
schemes can use external scripts."
Full Story (comments: none)
Languages and Tools
Haskell
Adam Turoff presents
part one in an O'Reilly article series on Haskell.
"
Let me start by being perfectly clear: if you are a professional programmer, then Haskell is in your future.
In 1987, this statement would have been equally true about Smalltalk. Today, 20 years later, object-oriented programming, class hierarchies, model-view-controller patterns, and other ideas from Smalltalk are now commonplace, even though Smalltalk never saw widespread adoption.
Haskell is in a similar situation today. It is an esoteric language, yet stable and reliable enough for serious work."
Comments (none posted)
Python
The May 28, 2007 edition of the Python-URL! is online with
a new collection of Python article links.
Full Story (comments: none)
Ruby
Meshplex.org has some
online tutorials on the Ruby language and the Ruby on Rails web platform.
(Thanks to Luke).
Comments (none posted)
Tcl/Tk
The May 30, 2007 edition of the Tcl-URL! is online with new
Tcl/Tk articles and resources.
Full Story (comments: none)
Cross Compilers
Version 2.7.0 RC3 of
SDCC,
A C cross-compiler for Intel 8051, Maxim 80DS390, Zilog Z80 and Motorola 68HC08 processors, is out.
Comments (none posted)
Libraries
Version 1.0 of
Burstsort has been announced.
"
Burstsort is a library for sorting strings, and is currently the fastest algorithm for doing so, being much faster than Quicksort and Radixsort. It has applications to computational linguistics, genomics, and many other areas of science where sorting strings is required."
Comments (none posted)
Version 0.5.1 of kdtree
has been announced.
"
kdtree is a simple, easy to use C library for working with kd-trees. Kd-trees are an extension of binary search trees to k-dimensional data. They facilitate very fast searching, and nearest-neighbor queries. This particular implementation is designed to be efficient and very easy to use. It is completely written in ANSI/ISO C, and thus completely cross-platform."
Comments (none posted)
Miscellaneous
Vikram Shukla
looks
at semaphores. "
Multithreaded applications are part and parcel
of day-to-day commercial application. It would be difficult to imagine any
full fledged application running commercially that is not
multithreaded. Applications must use the multithreaded approach to improve
on the performance of the application or systems. However, most beautiful
things in life do not come without a price. Likewise, if the multithreaded
feature needs to be used by the application, then it comes with a set of
issues, such as deadlocks, race conditions, incorrect behavior of threads,
etc. To overcome these issues, the OS provides a set of tools like Mutex,
semaphores, signals and barriers that are handy in solving multithreaded
multiprocessed issues. This article discusses one of these tool,
semaphores, and provides some insight about them."
Comments (none posted)
Page editor: Forrest Cook
Linux in the news
Recommended Reading
Tina Gasperson
reviews
the Intel Classmate PC on Linux.com.
"
Some say the Classmate PC is Intel's answer to (or competition with) the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) effort. Intel is hawking the lilliputian laptop in "emerging markets" like Nigeria, India, and Mexico as a solution for worldwide education of primary and secondary students. It's to be officially released and shipped en masse to schools in Africa and South and Central America by the end of June. Recently my children and I borrowed a Classmate PC loaded with a custom version of Mandriva Linux. Most of us had fun."
Comments (24 posted)
Computerworld
covers Dell's launch of three PCs that will ship with Ubuntu Linux.
"
Dell Inc. will officially launch its first three consumer PCs running the Ubuntu 7.04 Linux OS on Thursday -- two desktops and an Inspiron E1505n notebook PC.
The new models give buyers a third choice when shopping for a PC at Dell: a machine with Windows installed, a machine with no OS, on which they can install one of their choice, and now a machine with Ubuntu Linux already installed. Other PC makers, including Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) and Lenovo Group Ltd. also sell PCs that run Linux, but mainly on customized machines, because retail demand for the open-source OS is tiny compared to that for Windows."
Comments (25 posted)
Trade Shows and Conferences
Linux.com
covers
Pablo d'Angelo's presentation at the Libre Graphics Meeting. "
The
lead developer of the Hugin panorama-stitching application, Pablo d'Angelo,
has proposed a new open database for collecting camera lens information
that could be used to correct systematic distortion in photographs. The
database would be populated by user-submitted calibration data and some
data donated from a competitor, but the exact format and licensing of the
database are still under consideration. One developer's suggestion would
make proprietary software that uses the database pay for the
privilege."
Comments (2 posted)
HPCwire
covers the
Gelato ICE Itanium Conference & Expo. "
Scientists, developers,
and engineers from 56 companies and institutions convened from all around
the globe for the April 2007 Gelato ICE: Itanium Conference & Expo held
in San Jose, California. The event was organized by the Gelato Federation,
an international technical community dedicated to advancing Linux on the
Intel Itanium architecture. Conference sponsors included HP, Intel, and the
Itanium Solutions Alliance, and media sponsors HPCwire and
GRIDtoday."
Comments (none posted)
Companies
eWeek
covers open
source projects at Microsoft. "
Microsoft is launching a slew of
initiatives to help Web sites identify visitors. First, the company is
kicking off four open-source projects to support the development of ID
cards for online users. Microsoft is also releasing one of its identity
management specs, Identity Selector Interoperability Profile, under its OSP
(Open Specification Promise), meaning the specification is clear of
licensing fees or patent worries."
Comments (2 posted)
ZDNet
reports that Novell will soon announce more information in
its patent agreement with Microsoft.
"
Novell plans to reveal the details in conjunction with filing its upcoming annual report with the Securities and Exchange Commission, spokesman Bruce Lowry said Wednesday at the Open Source Business Conference here. The report had been held up by Novell's investigation into its stock option compensation practices.
"We will be filing our SEC filing by the end of this month. We will be publishing the Microsoft agreements as attachments," Lowry said during a panel discussion. The agreements will have some details redacted, he said."
Comments (none posted)
Linux at Work
LinuxDevices
looks at the
Yoggie Pico. "
Yoggie Security Systems has squeezed a complete
hardware firewall for Windows systems into a USB key sized form-factor. The
"Yoggie Pico" runs Linux 2.6 along with 13 security applications on a
520MHz PXA270, a powerful Intel processor popular in smartphones and other
high-end consumer devices."
Comments (11 posted)
Legal
Nicholas Petreley
discusses
the
Sue me first Microsoft list in a Linux Journal posting.
"
I bought the domain name HeyMicrosoftSueMe.org at the suggestion of Marcel Gagné after posting a blog entry on the topic. The idea was to ask Linux users to join me in calling Microsoft's bluff. Let's get the patent infringement claims tried in court and get this over with. Several people talked me out of it. Fortunately, a lawyer named Christian Einfeldt had the same idea and followed through."
Comments (9 posted)
Linux.com has
a series of
videos of Eben Moglen talking about GPLv3 in Ogg format. "
One of
the highlights of my visit to San Diego for the Red Hat Summit was the
opportunity to sit down one-on-one with Professor Eben Moglen. From that
interview, we have selected six segments on various topics for your viewing
pleasure, and will be publishing one each day this week. First up, an
explanation of all the things that GPLv3 is about other than the MS/Novell
deal." In the second segment, Eben
explains
why MS should remove patents from the Novell agreement.
Comments (none posted)
Interviews
KDE.News
introduces this
People Behind KDE interview
with Jason Harris. "
In what ways do you make a contribution to
KDE? I'm the lead developer of KStars, the desktop planetarium, and I
wrote KPlotWidget, which is now part of kdelibs. I'm also one of the admins
for the kde-edu mailing list, I was involved in Google Summer of Code 2006,
and I initiated the KDE 4 Release Team."
Comments (none posted)
Resources
Linux.com
looks at
the RIP (Remove It Permanently) extension for Firefox. "
Are you
irritated by huge graphical ads smack in the middle of an article? Or maybe
you don't want to waste bandwidth viewing the dozens of images in a review,
or user icons in forum boards? You can remove them for good with a single
click by using Firefox's RIP extension, which zaps anything out of a Web
page, permanently."
Comments (6 posted)
ZDNet
looks
at the
ReCaptcha project. "
A group of Carnegie Mellon University programmers has launched a service
called ReCaptcha that can help cut down on spam while letting people
digitize books. The project is a variation of the widely used "Captcha"
technique to weed out computer abuse such as e-mailing spam or posting spam
on blog comments. Captchas require users to pass little pattern recognition
tests, commonly reading distorted or obscured words."
Comments (6 posted)
Nathan Willis
explores Qtpfsgui on Linux.com.
"
A lot of photos tagged with "HDR" turn up on Flickr and similar photo sharing sites these days. They're unnatural, surreal, sometimes crazy-looking images with the bright areas darkened, the dark areas brightened, and lots of saturation. You can get in on the craze under Linux using Qtpfsgui."
Comments (none posted)
Reviews
Linux.com
reviews
Art of Illusion.
"
Blender gets the lion's share of press among free 3-D modeling applications, but it is not the only player in the field. Art of Illusion (AOI) is a mature, GPL-licensed 3-D modeler with robust editing, animation, and rendering features, and it's a lot easier to use than Blender."
Comments (none posted)
OS Reviews
compares
three open source games. "
Entering the arena are three different
offsprings of id Software's various liberated engines. First, there is
PrBoom, which is based on the Doom engine. Moving one step further in FPS
history comes Nexuiz, being built on top of the DarkPlaces engine, which in
turn is derived from Quake I. The Quake III Arena engine is the one most
recently released under the GPL and serves as the basis for
OpenArena."
Comments (9 posted)
Page editor: Forrest Cook
Announcements
Non-Commercial announcements
Here's
a press release from
Turre Legal on a recent ruling from the Helsinki District Court. In
brief, the court ruled that, since the content scrambling system (CSS)
mechanism used with DVDs has been to thoroughly compromised, it is no
longer an "effective" protection mechanism; as a result, circumventing it
is not illegal. "
Defendant's counsel Mikko Välimäki thinks the
judgment can have major implications: 'The conclusions of the court can be
applied all over Europe since the word 'effective' comes directly from
the directive'. He continues: 'A protection measure is no longer
effective, when there is widely available end-user software implementing a
circumvention method.'" (Thanks to Chel van Gennip).
Comments (29 posted)
MozillaZine
reports on the Mozilla Foundation's search for a new Executive
Director.
"
The Mozilla Foundation is looking for a new Executive Director to lead and
manage the organisation. The successful candidate will take over from Frank
Hecker, who declared his intention to resign as Executive Director last
month. At that time, Mitchell Baker, Chair of the Mozilla Foundation Board of
Directors, announced that recruiter Eunice Azzani has been engaged to help
identify potential Executive Director candidates."
Comments (none posted)
The Ardour digital audio workstation project
has announced
a new sponsor, the SAE Institute.
"
SAE Institute, the leading worldwide college for audio engineering, has agreed to become a corporate sponsor of Ardour, the open source digital audio workstation project. This major sponsorship ensures continual development of Ardour as a free, community-based audio recording and production software. Ardour has previously received corporate support from Solid State Logic and Harrison, but has primarily relied on donations from the public and the dedication of creator Paul Davis".
Comments (none posted)
Commercial announcements
The folks at Mozilla (whether it's "Corporation" or "Foundation" is not specified) have
announced the awarding of a $100,000 grant to the Participatory Culture Foundation, which is working on the development of the Democracy Player (soon to be renamed "Miro," apparently). (LWN
reviewed Democracy Player last September).
Comments (9 posted)
Novell, Inc. has
announced that it is working with the Electronic Frontier Foundation
to reform software patents worldwide.
"
Novell and the EFF will work to lobby governments and national and
international organizations to develop legislation and policies around
patents designed to promote innovation. A key area of focus will be the
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), where member governments
of the United Nations meet to coordinate positions on intellectual property
issues. Given the ease with which software ideas and code cross borders, a
global approach to the issue is required"
Comments (4 posted)
OpenLogic, Inc. has
announced a partnership with Japan's K.K. Ashisuto.
"
"OpenLogic and Ashisuto will make enterprise-grade open source
management tools and support available for large Japanese enterprises using
open source products," said Steven Grandchamp, CEO of OpenLogic. "The
combination of Ashisuto's customer support experience and OpenLogic's open
source software experience will empower open source users to manage and use
open source software more easily while reducing risk."
Under the agreement, OpenLogic will provide support to Ashisuto
customers for hundreds of open source packages."
Comments (none posted)
Frictional Games has announced the release of the game Penumbra.
"
Recently we moved our office to a more Arctic location and took the
opptortunity to get ourselves a penguin pet. We put him through various
challenging escapades, strange rituals and voila: We can proudly present the Linux version of Penumbra: Overture Episode 1.
Penumbra: Overture is a first person survival horror game, created by
Frictional Games and runs on the internally developed HPL-Engine. An engine
that is now cross-platform, soon to be supporting the Mac OS X platform as
well."
Full Story (comments: 1)
Sun Microsystems, Inc. has
announced a collaboration with Redflag Chinese 2000
Software Co., Ltd.
"
Sun Microsystems, Inc., the OpenOffice.org community and
Redflag Chinese 2000 Software Co., Ltd., today announced a joint
development effort that will focus on integrating new features in the
Chinese localization of OpenOffice.org, as well as quality assurance
and work on the core applications. Additionally, Redflag Chinese 2000
made public its commitment to the global OpenOffice.org community
stating it would strengthen its support of the development of the
world's leading free and open source productivity suite."
Comments (2 posted)
VA Software Corporation has
announced that it is changing its name to SourceForge, Inc.
"
VA Software
Corporation (Nasdaq: LNUX), the online media and e-commerce leader in
community-driven open source innovation, today announced it has changed its
name to SourceForge, Inc. The change reflects the company's strategic focus
on its network of Web properties following the disposition of its
enterprise software business. The company's Nasdaq ticker symbol will
remain the same."
Comments (none posted)
Calls for Presentations
A call for papers has gone out for the Open Source Developers'
Conference 2007. The event will be held in Brisbane, Australia on
November 27-29, 2007, proposals are due by June 30.
Full Story (comments: none)
Upcoming Events
Two 64 Studio workshops will take place in the UK this summer.
"
There will be 64 Studio workshops at both Debian Day (Edinburgh, 16th
June, https://debconf7.debconf.org/wiki/DebianDay ) and LugRadio Live
(Wolverhampton, 8th July,
http://www.lugradio.org/live/2007/index.php/Main_Page )."
Full Story (comments: none)
KDE.News
looks forward to
Akademy 2007. "
With only a month to go the schedule for Akademy 2007
is filling up. Our tutorial day has been popular enough to fill up two
days covering subjects from Interview in Qt 4 to Emacs, Kopete plugins and
an introduction to KDE development."
Comments (none posted)
Registration for GUADEC is now open.
"
The GUADEC team is pleased to announce the registration is now open for GUADEC 2007 and will stay open up until the event.
To register, please go to
http://www.guadec.org/registration/."
Full Story (comments: none)
KDE.News
reports
on the KDE presence at
LUGRadio Live 2007.
"
KDE will be exhibiting at LUGRadio Live 2007 which is back in Wolverhampton,
England on July 7th and 8th. The event, now in its third year, is the largest
gathering of Free Software projects in the UK. LUGRadio Live overlaps with
the end of Akademy in Glasgow so you may want to stop by on your way home."
Comments (none posted)
KDE.News
covers the KDE
presence at LinuxTag 2007.
"
This year Germany's LinuxTag conference and exhibition takes place in in Berlin's Messe for the first time. As with previous years there will be a KDE booth, where you can meet some of the people behind KDE. Meet them and talk about the project, programs, features and, of course, about the upcoming KDE 4 platform."
Comments (none posted)
Novell is giving away 50 visitor vouchers for LinuxTag.
"
We can provide approx. 50 visitor vouchers which enables you to get free
access to the event. If you're interested please send Florian an email.
He'll than provide you with a code to activate the
ticket online. This happens on first come, first serve basis."
Full Story (comments: none)
The Summer School of Sound will take place at St. Martins College,
Lancaster, UK on June 27-29, 2007.
"
Marloes de Valk and Aymeric Mansoux will lead a three day course,
exploring free and open source software available for home studio purposes
such as audio and midi sequencers, sound editors and virtual effect
racks, as well as the creative possibilities of puredata in an audio
workstation setup. The course will also provide information on how
to release and publish your work online (from encoding, to licensing
and streaming).
The Summer School of Sound will also include an evening performance on
Thursday 28 June by GOTO10 artists de Valk and Mansoux, as well as
Claude Heiland-Allen and Chun Lee."
Full Story (comments: none)
Events: June 7, 2007 to August 6, 2007
The following event listing is taken from the
LWN.net Calendar.
| Date(s) | Event | Location |
June 9 June 10 |
PyCon Uno - First Python Italian conference |
Florence, Italy |
June 10 June 15 |
DebCamp |
Edinburgh, Scotland |
| June 10 |
Pluto Meeting 2007 |
Padova, Italy |
June 11 June 14 |
Third International Conference on Open Source Systems |
Limerick, Ireland |
June 13 June 15 |
Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit |
Mountain View, CA, USA |
| June 16 |
DebianDay |
Edinburgh, Scotland |
| June 16 |
Firefox Developer Conference |
Tokyo, Japan |
June 17 June 23 |
Debian Developer Conference |
Edinburgh, Scotland |
June 17 June 22 |
2007 USENIX Annual Technical Conference |
Santa Clara, USA |
June 18 June 20 |
O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference |
San Jose, CA, USA |
June 18 June 20 |
Advanced Workshop on GCC Internals |
Bombay, India |
June 20 June 22 |
IT Underground |
Dublin, Ireland |
| June 20 |
Open Source Showcase @ OpenAdvantage |
Birmingham, UK |
| June 23 |
Mozilla Developer Day |
Paris, France |
June 25 June 27 |
SOA World Conference and Expo 2007 |
New York, NY, USA |
June 27 June 30 |
2007 Linux Symposium |
Ottawa, Canada |
June 27 June 29 |
Summer School of Sound |
Lancaster, UK |
| June 29 |
NLUUG event theme innovation Enschede |
Enschede, the Netherlands |
June 30 July 7 |
Akademy 2007 |
Glasgow, Scotland |
July 2 July 6 |
Learning Programming with PHP |
Redditch, Worcestershire, UK |
| July 6 |
II WHYFLOSS CONFERENCE MADRID |
Madrid, Spain |
| July 7 |
Italian PostgreSQL Day |
Prato, Tuscany, Italy |
July 7 July 8 |
LugRadio Live 2007 |
Wolverhampton, United Kingdom |
July 9 July 11 |
EuroPython 2007 |
Vilnius, Lithuania |
July 9 July 13 |
PostgreSQL 8.2 Bootcamp at the Big Nerd Ranch |
Atlanta, USA |
July 10 July 11 |
The Linux Foundation Japan Symposium |
Tokyo, Japan |
July 12 July 13 |
IV GUADEC-ES |
Granada, Spain |
July 12 July 13 |
DIMVA 2007 |
Lucerne, Switzerland |
| July 14 |
UK Gentoo Meeting 2007 |
London, UK |
July 15 July 21 |
GNOME Users' And Developers' European Conference |
Birmingham, England |
July 18 July 20 |
GCC and GNU Toolchain Developers' Summit |
Ottawa, Canada |
July 22 July 24 |
Ubuntu Live |
Portland, OR, USA |
July 23 July 27 |
O'Reilly Open Source Convention |
Portland, OR, USA |
July 23 July 27 |
Asterisk Bootcamp with Jared Smith at Big Nerd Ranch |
Atlanta, USA |
July 23 July 25 |
Open Group Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference |
Austin, TX, USA |
July 24 July 27 |
Ninth course on the Exim mail transfer agent |
Cambridge, UK |
July 28 August 2 |
Black Hat USA 2007 |
Las Vegas, NV, USA |
July 30 August 3 |
Ruby on Rails Bootcamp at the Big Nerd Ranch |
Atlanta, USA |
August 3 August 5 |
Wikimania 2007 (Annual Wikimedia conference) |
Taipei, Taiwan |
August 3 August 5 |
DefCon 15 |
Las Vegas, NV, USA |
August 4 August 7 |
LinuxWorld Conference & Expo |
San Francisco, CA, USA |
If your event does not appear here, please
tell us about it.
Page editor: Forrest Cook