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LWN.net Weekly Edition for August 1, 2002

Is it really The End?

Last week, we stated that, due to lack of anything even close to the amount of money needed to pay the LWN staff, the publication of the LWN.net Weekly Edition would end on August 1. Since then, quite a few things have happened, including:

  • We had honestly thought that donations would drop to zero (they were already close) once the announcement went out. Instead, they shot through the ceiling; as of this writing, we have received over $25,000 in new donations and advertising! Many came with notes saying "back payment for the last four years," or "use this to throw a big party."

    It is still difficult to express our surprise and gratitude for this unbelievable show of generosity on the part of our readers. You people are the best.

  • A number of companies, or people with contacts in companies, have approached us with the possibility of some sort of sponsorship for LWN. Many of these contacts, frankly, were self-serving and would turn LWN into something that would be rather less appealing to our readers. But a few seem serious. It will take some time, however, before we know if there is any funding to be had in that direction or not.

These developments have caused us to rethink our plans in a way we honestly had not expected. Here is a summary of where we are at.

$25,000 is a nice pile of cash for a little company to have in the bank, but it is important to keep in mind that it is not enough to keep us going for all that long. Running LWN currently involves five people (Jonathan Corbet: front and Kernel pages, site code, "executive editor"; Forrest Cook: Development and Press pages, system administration; Rebecca Sobol: Distributions and Commerce pages; Dennis Tenney: Security page and corporate bureaucracy; Dave Whitinger: business development, ad sales and delivery), all of whom are experienced software engineers. These people have children and mortgages, and most work full time producing LWN. They can not be expected to do it for free, even though that is exactly what they have been doing for some months now.

So the LWN staff needs things like salaries and health insurance. A minimal amount of money to provide these for the current staff is about $15,000 per month - and that level will still likely lead to loss of staff eventually. But it is a starting figure to aim for.

All of our estimates on possible subscription revenue fell far below that amount. The numbers came out of gnumeric, after all, they had to be true... and besides, none of our projected numbers have ever turned out to be too conservative in the past. It was on this basis that we decided it was time to pull the plug.

From the donations and feedback we have gotten, we have concluded that maybe our numbers were a little too conservative, that maybe subscriptions could bring in more than we thought. As a result, we are now thinking through plans for the implementation of a subscription-based LWN. Here, in bullet form, is the core of what we are thinking:

  • Initially, the Weekly Edition would be the content that lives behind the subscription gate. Subscribers would have immediate access to the Weekly Edition when it comes out Wednesday evening; free access would be opened up later, perhaps the following Monday. We would, however, immediately start work on expanding the content available to subscribers; we have a lot of fun ideas for things we could do.

  • The rest of our current content, including the "daily updates" which now make up the front page, would remain free.

  • Certain other new features would be available to subscribers only. At the top of the list is the long-requested email delivery option for the Weekly Edition. Content in PDF format and perhaps even an option for delivery of a print version, are on the list, though they would have to come later. We are also considering setting aside a percentage of our text ad exposures for subscribers who have something to broadcast.

  • We are still working on pricing. People who have donated to LWN would be able to use their donation to obtain a subscription.

The decision to go to subscriptions is hard; restricted content is a difficult fit in the world of free software. We will certainly lose a great many readers by imposing subscriptions. But...if we go off the air, we lose all of our readers. It is also still not clear to us that subscriptions are sufficient to cover our costs. The thinking at the moment is that some sort of stable base of (presumably corporate) sponsorship will be required, along with whatever advertising revenue we can come up with. Without that base, it will be hard for us to proceed.

The end result is that we are going to take next week away from the production of LWN to think long and hard about what we are going to do, to pursue sponsorship contacts, and to hack madly on the site code to actually implement a subscription scheme. The LWN Weekly Edition will not be published next week, though a subset may be available. At the end of the week, we hope to have a plan in place that will let us move forward, and which will stop trying the patience of our many loyal readers who have been waiting for us to get our act together.

Thank you all for your overwhelming support.

Comments (65 posted)

A 'Statement of Assurance' on SELinux patents

The June 13, 2002 LWN Weekly Edition looked at the "type enforcement" patents held by Secure Computing Corporation, and how those patents could threaten the distribution and use of the NSA SELinux distribution. Now SCC has issued a new statement with regard to those patents:

...it is the policy of Secure Computing to retain and enforce its rights in all of its patents and other intellectual property. In this case, we have decided to make an exception to that policy, and to support the reasonable expectations of the open source community

SCC has also posted on its website a "statement of assurance" (in PDF format) with the details of its policy toward SELinux. This statement is worth a close look; many users may find it rather less than assuring.

Here is the core of what SCC promises:

Subject to the limitations described in this Statement of Assurance, Secure Computing will not assert the Subject Patent Rights with respect to any use, modification, or distribution of SELinux software that is permitted by, and is in compliance with, the terms and conditions of Version 2 of the GNU General Public License.

In case that isn't clear enough, consider this other paragraph from the Statement:

No license is granted in this Statement of Assurance with respect to the Subject Patents, or any other patent or other intellectual property right, or software or other product.

Other companies which have tried to make software patents work with free software (i.e. FSMLabs, Red Hat) have licensed the patent(s) for the uses they permit. SCC has done no such thing; they just say they won't come after you if you meet the requirements. You're still legally infringing the patent, SCC just agrees to look the other way.

If you were thinking about using SELinux in a product, or as part of a larger service offering, you should already be pretty nervous about a "statement of assurance" that does not actually grant the right to use the relevant patents. There is more, though. For example:

Secure Computing reserves the right to assert the Subject Patent Rights with respect to VPN gateways, perimeter and distributed firewalls, URL filtering, authentication and authorization for applications, hosts, and devices, and other products, features and functions that are beyond the scope of the Assurance. The use or distribution of such products, features, or functions with SELinux will not make the Assurance applicable to them.

Translated into English, this phrase is telling us that the "statement of assurance" only applies if you're not actually doing anything related to security. Or anything else, for that matter: what Linux system doesn't handle "authorization for devices"?

There are a few other details that jump out when one reads this "statement of assurance":

  • It only applies to SELinux; no other free software may use the patents. Neither can "software that merely interoperates with SELinux." The obvious next question is: what, exactly, is SELinux, and what "merely interoperates" with SELinux? Just about any application could be excluded by this language.

  • SCC reserves the right to sell its patents to somebody else without requiring them to uphold what few guarantees this statement provides. When SCC gets tired of SELinux, it need only sell the patents to a subsidiary and it's all over.

  • SCC states that it may have "other patents," and that those patents are not covered by the statement.

And, of course, if you still feel that this statement is sufficiently assuring, bear in mind that it's not a contract, it's just another transient promise hosted on a web site. SCC's previous web-hosted statement, remember, was:

We plan to provide the security enhancements made to Linux under this project to the community without restriction in full compliance with the letter and spirit of the GPL.... There will be no restrictions on the use of TE [type enforcement] by the Linux open source community. We believe that leveraging the resources of the Linux community is the best way to develop robust security for Linux.

That promise vanished from SCC's site in June, though it can still be found via the web archive project; it has been replaced by something that, by any account, is not "without restriction." What reason is there for anybody to believe that this "statement of assurance" will be any less ephemeral?

It seems that SCC is trying to create the appearance of working with the free software community without actually giving anything away. Instead, the company has used U.S. taxpayer's money to embed its own proprietary technology into what was a free system. SELinux brought a lot of energy to the secure Linux development process; among other things, it was one of the driving forces behind the development of the Linux Security Module patches, which are currently being integrated into the 2.5 kernel. SELinux itself, however, will have a hard time recovering from its patent problems. The secure Linux that we use in the future may have to based on some other technology.

Comments (5 posted)

No letters to the editor

We did not receive much in the way of letters to the editor this week, so there is no letters page. We did, however, get a great deal of reader feedback, much of which is well worth reading. It can be found in the comments to last week's "The End" announcement, and our first and second updates posted over the last week.

Comments (3 posted)

Page editor: Jonathan Corbet

Security

Thanks for reading

As we journey into an unknown future for LWN, I wanted to take this opportunity to say "Thank You" to everyone who has read the security page in 2002. It has been my pleasure to assemble information for you each week that has, I sincerely hope, been of real value.

Safe Travels,
Dennis Tenney, LWN.net Security Page Editor

Comments (5 posted)

Security news

Security warning draws DMCA threat (News.com)

Here's a News.com article about a new attempt to use the DMCA to suppress security vulnerability information. This time the DMCA is being wielded by HP. "In a letter sent on Monday, an HP vice president warned SnoSoft, a loosely organized research collective, that its members 'could be fined up to $500,000 and imprisoned for up to five years' for its role in publishing information on a bug that lets an intruder take over a Tru64 Unix system." (Thanks to Christof Damian).

Comments (6 posted)

Copyright as Cudgel (Chronicle)

The Chronicle of Higher Education takes a look at the DMCA. "Since 1998, the DMCA has revealed itself to be a failure. It has not been effective at preventing piracy in cyberspace, yet it has managed to stifle harmless and even beneficial uses of material for research and teaching."

Comments (1 posted)

Security reports

Firewall circumvention possible with Mozilla

This XWT Foundation Security Advisory warns that a security flaw in JavaScript's "Same Origin Policy" (SOP) allows any JavaScript-enabled web browser, including Mozilla, to be used by an attacker to retrieve content from any server behind a firewall. The exploit depends on getting a client browser behind the firewall to visit a maliciously crafted web page.

Full Story (comments: none)

Slackware security updates

We don't have advisories from Slackware, but the latest changelog notice shows updates to mod_ssl, libmm, the DNS resolver libraries, OpenSSL, and PHP.

Comments (2 posted)

Fake Identd - remote root exploit vulnerability

Tomi Ollila's Fake Identd is reported to have a remote root exploit vulnerability.

"Fake Identd is a small standalone ident server with static replies. It is designed to be suitable for firewalls, IP masquerading hosts, etc."

Full Story (comments: none)

sendform.cgi Form Mailer v1.45 fixes directory traversal vulnerability

Version 1.45 of Rod Clark's sendform.cgi Form Mailer fixes this directory transversal vulnerability reported by Steve Christey with credits to Brian Caswell and Erik Tayler.

Full Story (comments: none)

ezContents multiple vulnerabilities

Ulf Harnhammar reports multiple vulnerabilities in ezContents.

ezContents is an Open-Source website content management system based on PHP and MySQL. Features include maintaining menus and sub-menus, adding authors that write contents, permissions, workflow, and layout possibilities for the entire look of the site by simple use of settings.

Full Story (comments: 1)

php dotProject by pass authentication vulnerability

dotProject Beta version 0.2.1.5 is reported to have a anthentication bypass vulnerability which allows anyone to login as Admin.

dotproject is a PHP+MySQL beta level web based project management tool that dotmarketing started in Dec. 2000 then left fallow for about 10 months. It is about 50% there (there being a very high quality product, not some half-baked simple form-into-db pages). With a little open source love, dotproject could be an MS Project killer. While dotproject was specifically designed for dotmarketing's needs, it could probably be extremely useful for any sort of service agency that requires the ability to track a project to completion.

Full Story (comments: none)

Uninets StatsPlus 1.25 script injection vulnerabilities

Brain Rawt reports script injection vulnerabilities in Uninets StatsPlus version 1.25. StatsPlus "provides a convient way to get indepth statistics about visitors to your site" which doesn't appear to have been updated since 1998.

Full Story (comments: none)

(Proprietary product) W3Mail remote access and download vulnerabilities

Tim Brown reports a "medium security hole" in W3Mail from CascadeSoft.

Full Story (comments: none)

New vulnerabilities

HylaFAX 4.1.3 fixes multiple vulnerabilities

Package(s):hylafax CVE #(s):CAN-2001-1034
Created:July 30, 2002 Updated:October 9, 2002
Description: The HylaFAX team has released version 4.1.3 fixing denial of service, elevated system privilege and possible remote code execution vulnerabilities.

HylaFAX is a mature (est. 1991) enterprise-class open-source software package for sending and receiving facsimiles as well as for sending alpha-numeric pages. It runs on a wide variety of UNIX-like platforms including Linux, BSD (including Mac OS X), SunOS and Solaris, SCO, IRIX, AIX, and HP-UX.
Alerts:
SuSE SuSE-SA:2002:035 2002-10-04
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:055 2002-08-28
Debian DSA-148-1 2002-08-12

Comments (none posted)

OpenSSL remotely-exploitable buffer overflow vulnerabilities

Package(s):OpenSSL CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0655 CAN-2002-0656 CAN-2002-0657 CAN-2002-0659
Created:July 30, 2002 Updated:September 24, 2002
Description: Four remotely-exploitable buffer overflows were found in OpenSSL versions 0.9.7 and 0.9.6d and earlier by a DARPA sponsored security audit. Both client and server applications are affected. The vulnerabilities are described in this security alert from the OpenSSL team.

A nasty exploit for one of the vulnerabilities is described in CERT Advisory CA-2002-27 Apache/mod_ssl Worm.

Compromise by the Apache/mod_ssl worm indicates that a remote attacker can execute arbitrary code as the apache user on the victim system. It may be possible for an attacker to subsequently leverage a local privilege escalation exploit in order to gain root access to the victim system. Furthermore, the DDoS capabilities included in the Apache/mod_ssl worm allow victim systems to be used as platforms to attack other systems.

If you haven't already, applying an update is a very good thing to do today.

Mitel Networks has an update available which closes this vulnerabilty for their SME Server software.

CERT Advisory CA-2002-23 Multiple Vulnerabilities In OpenSSL

Alerts:
SuSE SuSE-SA:2002:033 2002-09-19
Debian DSA-136-2 2002-09-15
Yellow Dog YDU-20020810-1 2002-08-10
Conectiva CLA-2002:516 2002-08-08
EnGarde ESA-20020807-020 2002-08-07
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:046-1 2002-08-06
Red Hat RHSA-2002:160-21 2002-08-05
Eridani ERISA-2002:034 2002-08-06
Yellow Dog YDU-20020801-3 2002-08-01
SCO Group CSSA-2002-033.0 2002-07-31
Gentoo openssl-20020730 2002-07-30
Eridani ERISA-2002:033 2002-07-30
SuSE SuSE-SA:2002:027 2002-07-30
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:046 2002-07-30
Conectiva CLA-2002:513 2002-07-31
Red Hat RHSA-2002:155-11 2002-07-29
Trustix 2002-0063 2002-07-29
OpenPKG OpenPKG-SA-2002.008 2002-07-30
EnGarde ESA-20020730-019 2002-07-30
Debian DSA-136-1 2002-07-30

Comments (none posted)

Local root vulnerability in chfn

Package(s):util-linux CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0638
Created:July 29, 2002 Updated:October 30, 2002
Description: chfn (change finger information) is one of the utilities in the util-linux package. The BindView RAZOR Team has discovered a local root vulnerability in chfn which is described in the Bindview Advisory.

Under certain conditions, "a carefully crafted attack sequence can be performed to exploit a complex file locking and modification race present in this utility, and, as a result, alter /etc/passwd to escalate privileges in the system." The conditions include a password file, /etc/passwd, over 4 kilobytes and locating the attacker's account record in any but the last 4 kB chunk of the file.

CERT/CC Vulnerability Note VU#405955 util-linux package vulnerable to privilege escalation when "ptmptmp" file is not removed properly when using "chfn" utility

Alerts:
SCO Group CSSA-2002-043.0 2002-10-29
Conectiva CLA-2002:523 2002-09-12
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:047 2002-08-08
Yellow Dog YDU-20020801-4 2002-08-01
Trustix 2002-0064 2002-07-30
Red Hat RHSA-2002:132-14 2002-07-29
Eridani ERISA-2002:032 2002-07-29

Comments (none posted)

Temporary file vulnerability in mm library

Package(s):mm CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0658
Created:July 30, 2002 Updated:August 14, 2002
Description: The OSSP mm library (libmm) is frequently used in Apache setups using mod_ssl and/or mod_php. A temporary file vulnerabiity in OSSP mm library (libmm) before version 1.2.0 permits a local Apache user to gain privileges. It can be exploited to obtain root privilege in some circumstances.

Upgrading sooner, rather than later, is recommended.

Alerts:
Yellow Dog YDU-20020810-2 2002-08-10
Red Hat RHSA-2002:156-04 2002-08-05
SuSE SuSE-SA:2002:028 2002-07-31
Debian DSA-137-1 2002-07-30
SCO Group CSSA-2002-032.0 2002-07-30
Red Hat RHSA-2002:153-07 2002-07-30
OpenPKG OpenPKG-SA-2002.007 2002-07-30
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:045 2002-07-29

Comments (none posted)

Updated vulnerabilities

Heap corruption vulnerability in at

Package(s):at at, sudo, xchat CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0004
Created:May 20, 2002 Updated:May 15, 2003
Description: The at command has a potentially exploitable heap corruption bug. (First LWN report:  January 17th).
Alerts:
EnGarde ESA-20030515-015 2003-05-15
Yellow Dog YDU-20020127-9 2002-01-27
SuSE SuSE-SA:2002:003 2001-01-16
Slackware sl-1011706104 2002-01-22
Red Hat RHSA-2002:015-15 2002-02-07
Red Hat RHSA-2002:015-13 2002-01-22
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:007 2002-01-18
Debian DSA-102-2 2002-01-18
Debian DSA-102-1 2002-01-16

Comments (none posted)

Denial of service vulnerability in version 9 of BIND

Package(s):bind CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0400
Created:June 5, 2002 Updated:August 19, 2002
Description: Here is an advisory from the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) regarding the denial of service vulnerability in version 9 of the BIND nameserver, up to 9.2.1. An attacker can send a properly crafted packet which triggers a check within BIND and causes it to shut down. The vulnerability can not be exploited for any purpose beyond denial of service, but that is bad enough; if you are running BIND 9, an upgrade is probably a good idea.

Note that many or most systems out there will still be running BIND 8, and thus will not be vulnerable.

News articles on the vulnerability appear in the Register and Network World Fusion News.

Alerts:
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:038-1 2002-08-15
Yellow Dog YDU-20020606-6 2002-06-06
Conectiva CLA-2002:494 2002-06-06
SuSE SuSE-SA:2002:021 2002-06-06
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:038 2002-06-04
Red Hat RHSA-2002:105-09 2002-06-04

Comments (none posted)

bind buffer overflow vulnerability in DNS resolver libraries

Package(s):bind glibc CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0651 CAN-2002-0684
Created:July 8, 2002 Updated:September 30, 2003
Description: The BIND 4.9.8-OW2 patch and BIND 4.9.9 release (and thus 4.9.9-OW1) include fixes for a libc related vulnerability which does not affect Linux. Updates from the Internet Software Consortium (ISC) are available from here.

No release or branch of Openwall GNU/*/Linux (Owl) is known to be affected, due to Olaf Kirch's fixes for this problem getting into the GNU C library more than two years ago.

Unfortunatly that does not mean that Linux systems are not vulnerable. Similar code, without Olaf Firch's fixes, is in the glibc getnetbyXXX functions. These functions are described in the SuSE alert as " used by very few applications only, such as ifconfig and ifuser, which makes exploits less likely."

CERT Advisory: CA-2002-19 Buffer Overflow in Multiple DNS Resolver Libraries

CAN-2002-0651
CAN-2002-0684

Alerts:
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:050 2002-08-13
Yellow Dog YDU-20020810-3 2002-08-10
Eridani ERISA-2002:035 2002-08-09
Red Hat RHSA-2002:133-13 2002-08-08
SCO Group CSSA-2002-034.0 2002-08-05
Yellow Dog YDU-20020801-2 2002-08-01
Eridani ERISA-2002:028 2002-07-25
Red Hat RHSA-2002:139-10 2002-07-22
EnGarde ESA-20020724-018 2002-07-24
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:043 2002-07-16
Trustix 2002-0061 2002-07-15
Gentoo glibc-20020713 2002-07-13
Conectiva CLA-2002:507 2002-07-11
SuSE SuSE-SA:2002:026 2002-07-09
OpenPKG OpenPKG-SA-2002.006 2002-07-04

Comments (1 posted)

Ethereal buffer overflow, infinite loop and memory management vulnerabilities

Package(s):ethereal CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0012 CAN-2002-0013 CAN-2002-0353 CAN-2002-0401 CAN-2002-0402 CAN-2002-0403 CAN-2002-0404
Created:June 12, 2002 Updated:October 27, 2002
Description: Ethereal 0.9.4 was released on May 19, 2002 fixing four potential security issues in Ethereal 0.9.3:
  • The SMB dissector could potentially dereference a NULL pointer in two cases.
  • The X11 dissector could potentially overflow a buffer while parsing keysyms.
  • The DNS dissector could go into an infinite loop while reading a malformed packet.
  • The GIOP dissector could potentially allocate large amounts of memory.

No known exploits exist "in the wild" at the present time for any of these issues.

Ethereal 0.9.2 has several packet handling vulnerabilities that are best avoided by upgrading to 0.9.4. The PROTOS test suite found some flaws in SNMP and LDAP protocols support. Malformed packets could also crash ethereal 0.9.2 due to a ASN.1 zero-length g_malloc problem. The zlib "double free" vulnerability was addressed by the updates for that bug from many distributors.
Alerts:
SCO Group CSSA-2002-037.0 2002-10-24
Conectiva CLA-2002:505 2002-07-04
Yellow Dog YDU-20020606-7 2002-06-06
Red Hat RHSA-2002:088-06 2002-06-04
Eridani ERISA-2002:023 2002-06-06

Comments (none posted)

GNU fileutils race condition

Package(s):fileutils ucdsnmp CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0435
Created:May 20, 2002 Updated:May 16, 2003
Description: A race condition in rm may cause the root user to delete the whole filesystem. The problem exists in the version of rm in fileutils 4.1 stable and 4.1.6 development version. A patch is available. (First LWN report: May 2).
Alerts:
Immunix IMNX-2003-7+-010-01 2003-05-16
Red Hat RHSA-2003:015-05 2003-02-12
Trustix 2002-0052 2002-06-06
SuSE SuSE-SA:2002:012 2002-04-08
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:031 2002-05-16
SCO Group CSSA-2002-018.1 2002-05-13

Comments (none posted)

Buffer overflow in groff

Package(s):groff CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0003
Created:May 20, 2002 Updated:December 9, 2002
Description: The groff package has a buffer overflow vulnerability; if it is used with the print system, it is conceivably exploitable remotely.
Alerts:
SCO Group CSSA-2002-057.0 2002-12-06
Gentoo groff-20021019 2002-10-19
Yellow Dog YDU-20020127-11 2002-01-27
Trustix 2002-0020 2002-01-18
Red Hat RHSA-2002:004-06 2002-01-14
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:012 2002-02-07

Comments (none posted)

UW imapd remotely exploitable buffer overflow

Package(s):imap CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0379
Created:June 5, 2002 Updated:December 20, 2002
Description: UW imapd versions 2000c and prior allow remote authenticated users to execute code via a buffer overflow. A malicious user can craft a request to run commands on the server under their UID and GID. (First LWN report: May 23).
Alerts:
SuSE SuSE-SA:2002:048 2002-12-20
Trustix 2002-0054 2002-06-06
EnGarde ESA-20020607-013 2002-06-07
Yellow Dog YDU-20020606-1 2002-06-06
Red Hat RHSA-2002:092-11 2002-05-22
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:034 2002-05-27
Eridani ERISA-2002:018 2002-05-25
Conectiva CLA-2002:487 2002-05-24
SCO Group CSSA-2002-021.0 2002-05-15

Comments (2 posted)

Apache mod_ssl off-by-one local code execution and DoS vulnerability

Package(s):libapache-mod-ssl mod_ssl CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0653
Created:July 2, 2002 Updated:August 14, 2002
Description: Mod-ssl provides strong cryptography for the Apache webserver via the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). A maliciously-crafted .htaccess file, may be used by an attacker to execute arbitrary commands as the httpd user or launch a denial of service attack. The problem is fixed in mod_ssl 2.8.10 which is available from here.

For more information see the announcement.

Alerts:
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:048 2002-08-08
Yellow Dog YDU-20020801-1 2002-08-01
Eridani ERISA-2002:029 2002-07-25
SCO Group CSSA-2002-031.0 2002-07-16
Red Hat RHSA-2002:134-12 2002-07-16
EnGarde ESA-20020702-017 2002-07-02
Conectiva CLA-2002:504 2002-07-02
Debian DSA-135-1 2002-07-02

Comments (none posted)

libpng buffer overflow vulnerability

Package(s):libpng libpng2 libpng3 CVE #(s):
Created:July 17, 2002 Updated:August 19, 2002
Description: Versions of libpng prior to 1.2.4 and 1.0.14 have a buffer overflow vulnerability that could lead to remote code execution. Since libpng is used by programs that talk to the outside world (i.e. mozilla), it is worth upgrading.

libpng is the official PNG reference library. It supports almost all PNG features, is extensible, and has been extensively tested for over five years.
Alerts:
Eridani ERISA-2002:030 2002-07-25
Conectiva CLA-2002:512 2002-07-17

Comments (2 posted)

LPRng accepts jobs from any host.

Package(s):LPRng CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0378
Created:June 12, 2002 Updated:October 31, 2002
Description: Matthew Caron pointed out that LPRng's default configuration accepts job submissions from any host.

This could be an especially annoying vulnerability for adminstrators with systems exposed to the general public.

Alerts:
SuSE SuSE-SA:2002:040 2002-10-31
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:042 2002-07-04
Red Hat RHSA-2002:089-07 2002-06-09

Comments (none posted)

Mailman 2.0.11 fixes two cross-site scripting vulnerabilities

Package(s):mailman CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0388
Created:June 5, 2002 Updated:August 28, 2002
Description: Barry A. Warsaw announced the release of Mailman 2.0.11 "which fixes two cross-site scripting exploits, one reported by "office" in the admin login page, and another reported by Tristan Roddis in the Pipermail index summaries. It is recommended that all sites upgrade their 2.0.x systems to this version."
Alerts:
Debian DSA-147-2 2002-08-26
Debian DSA-147-1 2002-08-08
Red Hat RHSA-2002:101-06 2002-06-27
Red Hat RHSA-2002:099-04 2002-06-06
Red Hat RHSA-2002:100-03 2002-06-06
Conectiva CLA-2002:489 2002-05-24

Comments (none posted)

PHP Remote Compromise/DOS Vulnerability

Package(s):mod_php4 CVE #(s):
Created:July 22, 2002 Updated:February 18, 2003
Description: PHP 4.2.0 and 4.2.1 have an error in the handling of POST requests which can lead to the corruption of memory, and the usual bad consequences. According to this alert, the vulnerability can only be used for denial of service on x86 systems - there is no way to get it to run exploit code. SPARC/Solaris systems are apparently vulnerable to full remote compromise.

According to the CERT Advisory, almost every Linux distributor, it seems, ships older (and thus not vulnerable) versions of PHP.

Note that, sometimes, systems thought to be safe from remote compromise turn out to be vulnerable to a modified attack, so x86 users should not relax too much. The solution, for those systems with PHP 4.2.0 or 4.2.1 installed, is to upgrade to PHP 4.2.2.

For more information see the alert from the discover of the vulnerability, Stefan Esser of e-matters GmbH, or the security advisory from the php team.

CERT Advisory: CA-2002-21 Vulnerability in PHP

Alerts:
SuSE SuSE-SA:2003:0009 2003-02-18

Comments (1 posted)

Mozilla XMLHttpRequest file disclosure vulnerability

Package(s):mozilla CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0354
Created:May 20, 2002 Updated:October 18, 2002
Description: This XMLHttpRequest security bug impacts all Mozilla-based browsers. "The bug is found in versions of Mozilla from 0.9.7 to 0.9.9 on various operating system platforms, and in Netscape versions 6.1 and higher." (First LWN report: May 2).
Alerts:
Red Hat RHSA-2002:192-13 2002-10-09
Red Hat RHSA-2002:079-13 2002-05-13
Conectiva CLA-2002:490 2002-05-29

Comments (none posted)

String format bug in pam_ldap logging

Package(s):nss_ldap CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0374
Created:June 5, 2002 Updated:October 29, 2002
Description: The nss_ldap package includes the pam_ldap module for authenticating a user with an LDAP database. Pam_ldap versions prior to 144 have a string format bug in the logging mechanism.
Alerts:
SCO Group CSSA-2002-041.0 2002-10-28
Yellow Dog YDU-20020606-2 2002-06-06
Red Hat RHSA-2002:084-17 2002-05-26
Eridani ERISA-2002:019 2002-05-28

Comments (none posted)

Remotely exploitable vulnerability in pine

Package(s):pine CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0014
Created:May 20, 2002 Updated:November 27, 2002
Description: Pine has an unpleasant vulnerability in URL handling vulnerability which can lead to command execution by remote attackers. (First LWN report:  January 17th).

This vulnerability is remotely exploitable; updating is a good idea.

Note: If an update isn't yet available for your distribution, setting enable-msg-view-urls to "off" in pine's setup will avoid the vulnerability. (Thanks to Greg Herlein).

Alerts:
SuSE SuSE-SA:2002:046 2002-11-25
Yellow Dog YDU-20020127-8 2002-01-27
Slackware sl-1010936849 2002-01-13
Red Hat RHSA-2002:009-06 2002-01-14
EnGarde ESA-20020114-002 2002-01-14
Conectiva CLA-2002:460 2002-01-31

Comments (none posted)

Sharutils potential privilege escalation using uudecode

Package(s):sharutils CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0178
Created:May 20, 2002 Updated:October 30, 2002
Description: According to the CVE entry, "uudecode, as available in the sharutils package before 4.2.1, does not check whether the filename of the uudecoded file is a pipe or symbolic link, which could allow attackers to overwrite files or execute commands." (First LWN report: May 16).
Alerts:
Gentoo 200210-012 2002-10-30
SCO Group CSSA-2002-040.0 2002-10-28
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:052 2002-08-14
Yellow Dog YDU-20020522-4 2002-05-22
Red Hat RHSA-2002:065-13 2002-05-14
Eridani ERISA-2002:014 2002-05-16

Comments (none posted)

Multiple vulnerabilities fixed in Squid-2.4.STABLE7

Package(s):squid CVE #(s):
Created:July 8, 2002 Updated:November 15, 2002
Description: Here is the security advisory for the Squid proxy server reporting several vulnerabilities in versions up to and including 2.4.STABLE7. Several of the bugs are believed to allow remote code execution.

The security advisory lists the following changes:

  • Several bugfixes and cleanup of the Gopher client, both to correct some security issues and to make Squid properly render certain Gopher menus.
  • Security fixes in how Squid parses FTP directory listings into HTML
  • FTP data channels are now sanity checked to match the address of the requested FTP server. This to prevent theft or injection of data. See the new ftp_sanitycheck directive if this sanity check is not desired.
  • The MSNT auth helper has been updated to v2.0.3+fixes for buffer overflow security issues found in this helper.
  • A security issue in how Squid forwards proxy authentication credentials has been fixed
Alerts:
SCO Group CSSA-2002-046.0 2002-11-14
Eridani ERISA-2002:031 2002-07-26
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:044 2002-07-17
Trustix 2002-0062 2002-07-15
SuSE SuSE-SA:2002:025 2002-07-09
Conectiva CLA-2002:506 2002-07-05

Comments (none posted)

Malformed NFS packet buffer overflow vulnerability in tcpdump

Package(s):tcpdump CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0380
Created:June 5, 2002 Updated:October 9, 2002
Description: A buffer overflow in tcpdump can be triggered by a bad NFS packet when tracing the network. Unmodified tcpdump versions 3.6.2 and earlier are vulnerable.
Alerts:
Red Hat RHSA-2002:094-16 2002-10-04
Yellow Dog YDU-20020606-3 2002-06-06
Trustix 2002-0055 2002-06-05
SCO Group CSSA-2002-025.0 2002-06-04
Conectiva CLA-2002:491 2002-06-05
Red Hat RHSA-2002:094-08 2002-05-29
Eridani ERISA-2002:020 2002-05-30

Comments (none posted)

Multiple vendor telnetd vulnerability

Package(s):telnet Telnet netkit-telnet-ssl kerberos telnetd netkit-telnet nkitb/nkitserv/telnetd krb5 CVE #(s):
Created:May 20, 2002 Updated:October 5, 2004
Description: This vulnerability, originally thought to be confined to BSD-derived systems, was first covered in the July 26th Security Summary. It is now known that Linux telnet daemons are vulnerable as well.
Alerts:
Gentoo 200410-03 2004-10-05
Yellow Dog YDU-20010810-2 2001-08-10
Yellow Dog YDU-20010810-1 2001-08-10
SuSE SuSE-SA:2001:029 2001-09-03
Slackware sl-997726350 2001-08-09
Red Hat RHSA-2001:100-02 2001-08-09
Red Hat RHSA-2001:099-09 2002-02-07
Red Hat RHSA-2001:099-06 2001-08-09
Progeny PROGENY-SA-2001-27 2001-08-14
Mandrake MDKSA-2001:093 2001-12-17
Mandrake MDKSA-2001:068 2001-08-13
HP HPSBTL0202-023 2002-02-12
Debian DSA-075-2 2001-08-14
Debian DSA-075-1 2001-08-14
Conectiva CLA-2001:413 2001-08-24
SCO Group CSSA-2001-030.0 2001-08-10

Comments (none posted)

Multiple vulnerabilities in SNMP implementations

Package(s):ucdsnmp ucd-snmp CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0012 CAN-2002-0013
Created:May 20, 2002 Updated:September 17, 2002
Description: Most SNMP implementations out there have a variety of buffer overflow vulnerabilities and should be upgraded at first opportunity. See this CERT advisory for more. (First LWN report: February 14).
Alerts:
Red Hat RHSA-2002:036-26 2002-09-12
Yellow Dog YDU-20020211-1 2002-02-11
Red Hat RHSA-2001:163-20 2002-02-12
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:014 2002-02-15
Debian DSA-111-2 2002-02-28
Debian DSA-111-1 2002-02-14
Conectiva CLA-2002:462 2002-02-14
SCO Group CSSA-2002-004.0 2002-01-22

Comments (none posted)

webalizer: reverse DNS buffer overflow vulnerability

Package(s):webalizer CVE #(s):
Created:May 20, 2002 Updated:January 27, 2003
Description: The cause is a buffer overflow bug. This one sounds nasty. If reverse DNS lookups are enabled in webalizer, "an attacker with control over the victims DNS may spoof responses thus triggering a buffer overflow, potentially leading to a root compromise." Webalizer 2.01-10 "fixes this and a few other buglets that have been discovered in the last month or so". (First LWN report:  April 18th, 2002).
Alerts:
Yellow Dog YDU-20030127-4 2003-01-27
Red Hat RHSA-2002:254-05 2002-12-04
SCO Group CSSA-2002-036.0 2002-10-22
EnGarde ESA-20020423-009 2002-04-23
Conectiva CLA-2002:476 2002-04-26

Comments (none posted)

Webmin/Usermin vulnerabilities

Package(s):webmin CVE #(s):
Created:May 20, 2002 Updated:January 10, 2003
Description: Webmin is a web-based interface for system administration for Unix. Webmin has cross-site scripting and session ID spoofing vulnerabilities which are fixed in the May 6, 2002 release of version 0.970. (First LWN report: May 9).

This one is scary. The session ID spoofing vulnerability allows the "possibility that arbitrary commands may be executed with root privileges." Upgrading is strongly recommended. At a minimum avoid the "preconditions for a successful exploit" by disabling password timeouts under Webmin->Configuration->Authentication.

Alerts:
SCO Group CSSA-2003-002.0 2003-01-09
Yellow Dog YDU-20020522-7 2002-05-22
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:033 2002-05-21

Comments (1 posted)

Problems with libgtop_daemon

Package(s):wuftpd libgtop CVE #(s):
Created:May 20, 2002 Updated:May 7, 2003
Description: The libgtop_daemon package is a GNOME program which makes system information available remotely. LWN reported the remotely exploitable format string and buffer overflow vulnerabilities in that package on December 6th. On November 28th disabling the libgtop_daemon on systems where it is running until an update is available.

Many Linux systems do not run libgtop by default, but applying the update is a good idea anyway.

Alerts:
Debian DSA-301-1 2003-05-07
Mandrake MDKSA-2001:094 2001-12-19
Debian DSA-098-1 2002-01-09
Conectiva CLA-2002:448 2002-01-03

Comments (1 posted)

xchat IC server based dns query vulnerability

Package(s):xchat CVE #(s):CAN-2002-0382
Created:June 5, 2002 Updated:September 24, 2002
Description: A malicious IRC server may return a response to a /dns query that executes arbitrary commands with the privileges of the user running XChat. Versions of XChat prior to 1.8.9 are vulnerable.
Alerts:
Conectiva CLA-2002:526 2002-09-23
Mandrake MDKSA-2002:051 2002-08-14
Yellow Dog YDU-20020606-5 2002-06-06
Eridani ERISA-2002:021 2002-06-05
Red Hat RHSA-2002:097-08 2002-06-04

Comments (none posted)

Resources

Linux Security Week and Advisory Watch

The July 29nd Linux Security Week and July 26th Linux Advisory Watch newsletters from LinuxSecurity.com are available.

Comments (none posted)

LinuxSecurity Magazine Online - First Edition

Readers fluent in Portuguese are encouraged to check out the first issue of Linux Security Magazine from the Brazilian free project LinuxSecurity Brasil.

Full Story (comments: none)

Testing Safety-Critical Software with AdaTEST (Linux Journal)

The Linux Journal looks at the AdaTEST utility. "But how does Ada mix with Linux? In fact, it mixes quite well. The GNU Ada tool chain (GNAT) is an Ada front-end to gcc, tying Ada closely with the operating system. With standard facilities to import C functions, Ada allows for metal-near programming by importing any C functions, including system calls if need be."

Comments (none posted)

Events

Upcoming Security Events

Date Event Location
August 1, 2002Black Hat Briefings 2002(Caesars Palace Hotel and Resort)Las Vegas, NV, USA
August 2 - 4, 2002Defcon(Alexis Park Hotel and Resort)Las Vegas, Nevada
August 5 - 9, 200211th USENIX Security SymposiumSan Francisco, CA, USA
August 6 - 9, 2002CERT Conference 2002Omaha, Nebraska, USA
August 19 - 21, 2002Canadian Security & Intelligence Conference(CSICON)(Hyatt Regency)Calgary, Alberta Canada
August 28 - 30, 2002Workshop on Information Security Applications(WISA 2002)Jeju Island, Korea
September 19 - 20, 2002SEcurity of Communications on the Internet 2002(SECI'02)Tunis, Tunisia
September 23 - 26, 2002New Security Paradigms Workshop 2002(The Chamberlain Hotel)Hampton, Virginia, USA
September 23 - 25, 2002University of Idaho Workshop on Computer Forensics(University of Idaho)Moscow, Idaho, USA
September 26 - 27, 2002HiverCon 2002(Hilton Hotel)Dublin, Ireland
September 27 - 29, 2002ToorCon 2002(San Diego Concourse)San Diego, CA, USA

For additional security-related events, included training courses (which we don't list above) and events further in the future, check out Security Focus' calendar, one of the primary resources we use for building the above list. To submit an event directly to us, please send a plain-text message to lwn@lwn.net.

Comments (none posted)

Page editor: Dennis Tenney

Kernel development

Release status

Current release status

The current development kernel is 2.5.29, which was released on July 26. It includes another set of IDE patches, a new LDM (Windows dynamic disks) driver, a number of driverfs changes, lots of fixups for the new serial driver, and, of course, lots of fixes for things that broke in the big 2.5.28 IRQ handling changes (see the July 25 LWN Kernel Page). The long format changelog is also available.

Linus's BitKeeper tree (for 2.5.30) contains quite a few patches at this point. There is a change to the fork() code which allows things to be done to the child process (i.e. migration to another CPU) before it starts running. Also included is a big pile of IDE updates, more IRQ fixes, some direct I/O changes from Andrew Morton ("This code is wickedly quick"), the "strict overcommit" patch which prevents surprise "out of memory" conditions, some serial driver fixes, and an ARM update. This patch also removes the "khttpd" in-kernel web server.

There is no current prepatch from Dave Jones; this posting explains why. In short: he has been busy, the current development kernels are too unstable to make patches against, and he has been getting going with BitKeeper.

The current 2.5 status summary from Guillaume Boissiere came out on July 31.

The current stable kernel is 2.4.18; Marcelo tried to catch us by releasing the fourth 2.4.19 release candidate just before this page went to "press," but we've learned to watch out for that kind of manouver. -rc4 contains a relatively small set of fixes for the few remaining problems that have come up; with luck, this one will turn into the real 2.4.19.

The latest prepatch from Alan Cox is 2.4.19-rc3-ac5.

Comments (1 posted)

Kernel development news

The asynchronous I/O core

When Andrea Arcangeli released his 2.4.19-rc3-aa4 tree, he included an old version of Ben LaHaise's asynchronous I/O code. This led to a discussion of some features of the AIO interface, and a note from Linus wondering what had happened to the AIO project:

Note that something needs to get moving on this rsn, I'm not interested in getting aio patches on Oct 30th. The feature freeze may be on Halloween, but if I get some big feature just days before I'm likely to just say "screw it".

Ben responded with a patch implementing the core part of the AIO subsystem. It is far from a full implementation - there are no device driver or filesystem changes in the patch. But it is enough to get a sense for where the AIO development is going.

This patch does not, at this time, make all I/O asynchonous within the kernel (as had been discussed at Kernel Summit). Instead, devices and filesystems must implement the new aio_read, aio_write, and aio_fsync operations in the file_operations structure to be able to support asynchronous operations. This patch can thus, at this point, go into the system without actually breaking anything.

That may change when the rest of the AIO code is posted. This patch provides the mechanism for submitting, tracking, and cancelling asynchronous I/O operations - actually executing those operations will come later. A new io_submit system call provides for the initiation of asynchronous I/O requests; it takes an array of structures describing what is to be done. Whenever an application wants to fire off an asynchronous read or write, it fills in a iocb structure with an "opcode," information on the buffer, etc. and passes it to io_submit. (Of course, the application will likely call a library function like aio_read which handles these details).

io_submit does some validation and bookkeeping, then passes the requests on to the new file_operations methods. For now, they disappear into a cloud of missing code for execution. When the operation has completed, successfully or not, the internal function aio_complete is called with the final status. That status (and associated information) is stored in a circular buffer; applications can extract this information from the buffer with the new io_getevents system call.

Interestingly, some of the structure is there to allow this circular buffer to be mapped into user space. Then applications could obtain their I/O completion information without the need for a system call. The implementation of this feature is not yet complete, however.

Much of the rest of the code posted at this point concerns itself with cancellation of asynchronous I/O requests - either by application request, or when the application exits.

What is missing is the implementation of the AIO operations themselves. Previous versions of this patch provided generic versions of the aio_read and aio_write operations that handled much of the low-level work. They would start by calling the standard read or write operations, but with a twist: those operations were changed to take an extra flags argument. If flags contains F_ATOMIC, the I/O operation must be completed without sleeping, or not at all. In the first case, the operation is done and the application can be notified.

Life is often not that easy, though - usually it is necessary to wait for I/O operations. The application does not want to wait, of course, or it would not be using asynchronous I/O. The older AIO patch would create a kvec structure describing the operation - it contains a pointer to the physical page holding the user buffer, a length, and an offset. Then one of the new kvec_read or kvec_write operations would be called to start the work. These operations also need to be atomic (no sleeping), and must arrange to call aio_complete when the job is done.

This is the part of the patch which breaks everything, of course - even devices and filesystems which have no intention of supporting asynchronous I/O must take the new flags argument on read and write. It will be interesting to see how this part of the AIO patch has changed over the last few months. If the kernel is really going to shift to asynchronous operations as the default way of doing things internally, there could be some fun surprises there.

Comments (none posted)

Organizing the kernel binary interface

The interface between the kernel and user space is a complicated thing. There are over 200 system calls, many of which take task-specific structures or other types as arguments. And then there is ioctl, which can be different for every driver or filesystem, and which, according to many, should be seen as hundreds of independent system calls in its own right.

In the good old days, before glibc, applications included kernel header files directly to get the definitions of the structures needed for system calls. The good old days were not all that good, though; keeping the kernel header files suitable for user space use was not easy, the kernel headers brought in a lot of stuff that applications did not need, and it was not uncommon to encounter mismatches between the headers used to compile an application and the actual kernel it was running under. As a result, the rule with glibc has been to never, ever include kernel header files into application programs.

The problem with this approach is that there is no longer a single definition of the interface between kernel and user space. People working on library interfaces must go hunting for structure definitions through the tangled mess of kernel header files; that is not an easy job.

H. Peter Anvin, as it turns out, is working on a library interface - a small C library for the initramfs mechanism. He has come up with a relatively simple suggestion: create a new include directory (linux/abi/) for include files which encapsulate the interface between the two worlds. These files would be written so that they could be included in either kernel or user space, and they would contain only the minimal declarations needed to define the kernel interface.

The idea makes a lot of sense. It would make life easier for library writers, but it would help on the kernel side as well. It is not always obvious, when editing kernel headers, that a particular structure forms part of the interface with user space. Putting the user space interface into special header files will make it harder to change that interface by mistake. Creating the abi/ directory seems like a logical part of the larger task of cleaning up the kernel's include files.

Comments (2 posted)

Patches and updates

Kernel trees

  • Andrea Arcangeli: 2.4.19rc3aa4. "<span>Merged async-io from Benjamin LaHaise after purifying it from the /proc/libredhat.so mess that made it not binary compatible with 2.5.</span>" (July 30, 2002)

Core kernel code

  • Benjamin LaHaise: aio-core for 2.5.29 . "<span>This drop is untested, but I'd like it if people could provide comments on it.</span>" (July 30, 2002)

Development tools

Device drivers

  • Marcin Dalecki: IDE 104. (July 26, 2002)
  • Marcin Dalecki: IDE 105. (July 30, 2002)
  • Marcin Dalecki: IDE 106. (July 26, 2002)
  • Marcin Dalecki: IDE 107. (July 26, 2002)
  • Russell King: Various updates. (...to the new serial driver...) (July 26, 2002)

Filesystems and block I/O

Memory management

Networking

Architecture-specific

Miscellaneous

Page editor: Jonathan Corbet

Distributions

News and Editorials

Distribution news for August 1, 2002

This has been a relatively slow week for distribution news. Several of the major vendors have released new versions recently, and while development has started on several new branches, these are too new to have much to report. The new Debian installer that will be used in "sarge" is a worth a look. You'll find more information in the Debian Weekly News.

The minor distributions have been more active. There are a number of new releases including ClarkConnect, DemoLinux and Lycoris. There should be something there for everyone, whether you want to run Linux from a CD while at the (non-Linux) office, or want an easy desktop system for Grandma, or you are power-user and want to install everything from source. If your dream Linux system isn't mentioned on this list, then it's in the LWN Distributions list. We have some plans to improve that as well, so stay tuned, and hopefully we'll be back in two weeks.

Comments (none posted)

Distribution News

Debian Weekly News - July 30th, 2002

The Debian Weekly News #29 is now available. Topics this week include funding free software development and free software job opportunities in the UK.

Full Story (comments: none)

Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter

The Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter for July 25 is out. It looks at the first Mandrake Linux 9.0 beta, the latest financial results, and more.

Full Story (comments: none)

NetBSD

NetBSD has released v1.5.3 with minor security fixes.

Comments (none posted)

Red Hat Bug Fix advisory for GCC 2.96-RH

Red Hat has an updated version of GCC 2.96-RH available for RH 7.2 and 7.3, addressing various issues filed in bug reports.

Full Story (comments: 1)

Yellow Dog Linux Bug fix Advisory for qt

Yellow Dog has updated qt packages are available. "The version of the Qt tookit that shipped with Yellow Dog Linux 2.3 contains a small bug which causes the startup time of KDE applications such as Konqueror to be quite slow. The bug also caused general UI slowness in applications such as KMail and broken preview functionality in the KDE Control Center's screensaver module. Installing the updated Qt packages resolves all of these above problems."

Full Story (comments: none)

UnitedLinux Clan To Detail Unified ISV, Channel, Customer Programs At LinuxWorld (CRN)

Here's a CRN article about UnitedLinux. "At LinuxWorld from Aug. 12-15, UnitedLinux--a consortium formed in May by four leading Linux distributors--will demonstrate an alpha version of its uniform UnitedLinux distribution and detail new programs, said Ransom Love, the former president and CEO of Caldera, who became head of Caldera's UnitedLinux operation in June."

Comments (none posted)

Minor distribution updates

2-Disk Xwindow System

The 2-Disk Xwindow System has released v1.4rc078 with some code cleanup.

Comments (none posted)

ClarkConnect

ClarkConnect has released verion 1.1. The software now comes in two versions:
  • The Standard version is free, no support included
  • The Office version includes 30-day install support, along with VPN, wireless, antivirus trialware, content filtering and a few extra features.

Full Story (comments: none)

DemoLinux 3.01pl5 available for download

DemoLinux has released version 3.01p15. "This is the latest (and probably last) version in the 3.0x series of DemoLinux, and surely the last using the old but stable 2.2.18 kernel."

Full Story (comments: none)

KNOPPIX

KNOPPIX has released version 3.0 with major feature enhancements. The KNOPPIX website also announces the release of version 3.1, a Debian-based CD featuring Linux-Kernel 2.4.x, KDE V3.0.2, OpenOffice, and much more

Comments (none posted)

Lycoris Releases Much Anticipated Desktop/LX Update 2

Lycoris has released Desktop/LX Update 2, featuring a new Internet installer, Iris, to browse and install Desktop/LX programs from the Software Gallery.

Full Story (comments: none)

Lycoris Desktop/LX

PCLinuxOnline reports that the Lycoris release of Desktop/LX Update 2 Build 46 has gone gold.

Comments (none posted)

MicroBSD

MicroBSD has released v0.5 with major feature enhancements.

Comments (none posted)

Server optimized Linux

Server optimized Linux (SoL) has released v15.00 with major feature enhancements.

Comments (none posted)

VectorLinux

VectorLinux has an iso image of a new beta, named SOHO. See the announcement on TuxReports.

Comments (none posted)

Webfish Linux (firewall-1)

Webfish Linux has released version 1.1 of its new firewall-1 branch.

Comments (none posted)

Page editor: Rebecca Sobol

Development

Thanks!

With the future of LWN being highly uncertain at this point, I'd like to take the opportunity to say thanks to all of the LWN readers, people who have submitted material to us, and those who were kind enough to shower us with praise and donations over the years. It certainly has been an interesting and educational journey. Hopefully our efforts have helped to move Linux and open-source software forward. This grand experiment is a long way from being over.

Meanwhile, I will personally continue to ponder the discorporate similarities between open-source software, solar and wind energy, homebrew beer brewing, non-commercial music, concert tape trading, and micropower radio. Open-source software will no doubt play a big roll in my future endeavors.

So long and thanks for all of the fiche. (and other forms of media)

-- Forrest Cook

Comments (none posted)

Valgrind memory debugger 1.0.0

Developer Julian Seward has released version 1.0.0 of the Valgrind memory debugger for x86-GNU/Linux with the following inspirational note:

Programmers! Make your software Valgrind-clean. Test it with Valgrind and fix all problems Valgrind reports. This will give you some assurance that your code is free of a broad class of memory management errors. You may well find undiscovered bugs, and your code will probably be more stable as a result. It's good for your code, good for you and especially it's good for the people who use your code.

By intercepting a number of memory related system calls, Valgrind can detect the following problems:

  • The use of uninitialised memory.
  • Reading and writing of freed memory after it has been free'd
  • Reading and writing past the end of malloced memory.
  • Reading and writing of inappropriate areas on the stack.
  • Memory leaks involving lost pointers to malloced blocks.
  • The passing of uninitialized and/or unaddressible memory to system calls.
  • The mismatched use of malloc/new/new and free/delete/delete.
  • Some possible misuses of the POSIX pthreads API.

Valgrind is supposed to be able to check any dynamically-linked ELF x86 executable, without modification or recompilation, and it can fire up GDB when errors are encountered. Valgrind also has built-in cache profiling, which can be useful for enhancing the performance of code.

The current 1.0.0 release has undergone a feature-freeze testing phase and it is considered to be stable code at this point. It has successfully been used to check a number of large applications such as KDE3, Mozilla, OpenOffice, and MySQL, to name a few applications. See the Valgrind user manual for the full documentation. Valgrind has been released under the GPL license.

Comments (3 posted)

System Applications

Electronics

Icarus Verilog snapshot 20020728

A new snapshot of the Icarus Verilog electronic simulation language compiler has been announced. The release notes are not yet available.

Comments (none posted)

Web Site Development

Zope Members' News

The latest Zope Members' News items include announcements for ZWeatherApplet v1.0, the Zediscuss product, ZopeTestCase 0.5.0, SlideShow V0.1, My Zope 0.1, the new TriZPUG: North Carolina Zope/Python user group, and Interbase / Firebird Database Adapters.

Comments (none posted)

Improving mod_perl Sites' Performance: Part 4 (O'Reilly)

Stas Bekman gives some tips on the use of shared memory to improve the performance of mod_perl. "If your OS supports sharing of memory (and most sane systems do), you might save a lot of RAM by sharing it between child processe