Brief items

Security

Gettys: Mythology about security

Jim Gettys refutes the claim that the early designers of Internet software were not concerned about security. "Government export controls crippled Internet security and the design of Internet protocols from the very beginning: we continue to pay the price to this day".

Comments (51 posted)

Important Etherpad release

Several security vulnerabilities were found in Etherpad and version 1.6.4 has been released with fixes. The vulnerabilities include arbitrary code execution and information disclosure. Site admins are urged to update Etherpad to 1.6.4 as soon as possible.

Comments (3 posted)

Security quote of the week

I finally realized that this email is to james.hfisher@gmail.com. I normally use jameshfisher@gmail.com, with no dots. You might think this email should have bounced, but instead it reached my inbox, because "dots don't matter in Gmail addresses":

If someone accidentally adds dots to your address when emailing you, you’ll still get that email. For example, if your email is johnsmith@gmail.com, you own all dotted versions of your address:

john.smith@gmail.com
jo.hn.sm.ith@gmail.com
j.o.h.n.s.m.i.t.h@gmail.com

Netflix does not know about this Gmail "feature". Externally, jameshfisher@gmail.com and james.hfisher@gmail.com are different identities, and should have their own Netflix accounts. I signed up for Netflix account N1 backed by jameshfisher@gmail.com in 2013. But in September 2017, someone, let's call her "Eve", created a new Netflix account N2, backed by james.hfisher@gmail.com.

— Jim Fisher almost paid for Eve's Netflix account

Comments (5 posted)

Kernel development

Kernel release status

The 4.17 merge window is still open; it can be expected to close on April 15.

Stable updates: 4.16.1, 4.15.16, 4.14.33, 4.9.93, 4.4.127, and 3.18.103 were all released on April 8. 3.18.104 followed on April 10 to fix a build error.

The 4.16.2, 4.15.17, and 4.14.34, updates are in the review process; they are due on April 12. 4.9.94, 4.4.218, and 3.18.105 should follow one day later.

Comments (none posted)

Distributions

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 is out

Red Hat has announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5. This version features enhanced hybrid cloud security and compliance, improved storage performance and efficiency, simplified management, and production-ready Linux containers. RHEL 7.5 is available for x86, IBM Power, IBM z Systems, and 64-bit Arm. This release also brings support for single-host KVM virtualization and Open Container Initiative (OCI)-formatted runtime environment and base image to IBM z Systems.

Comments (19 posted)

Distribution quote of the week

Which reminds me of the situation that some people *still* think Debian releases are unpredictable and [infrequent] while in reality for the last 14 years we've released every 22 months or so, with a variation of 2 months.

— Holger Levsen

Comments (1 posted)

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