04 June 2011, 12:24

The H Week - Ubuntu 11.04 Alpha 1, Thunderbird 5 Beta, Mac malware, more Sony hacks

In the past week, The H reported on Linux becoming 3.0, Mageia turning 1.0, the first alpha release of Ubuntu 11.10 and a first beta release of Thunderbird 5.0. The second major release of LibreOffice arrived and Oracle proposed that OpenOffice become an Apache project. Hackers attacked Lockheed Martin, PBS, and, again, Sony. Mac Defender malware fought back against Apple's defences.

Featured

Thorsten Leemhuis' Kernel Log looked at the problems that have cropped up as Linux switches from a three digit to two digit version number with the switch to Linux 3.0, and how hardware manufacturers have made rebooting a PC a messy experience for any operating system.

Kernel Log: Hardware and "3.0" difficulties

Open Source

A week of beginnings as the first release candidate for Linux version 3.0, the first alpha version of Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot", the 1.0 release of the Mandriva fork Mageia and the first beta of the version number skipping Thunderbird 5.0 arrive. And a week with two endings as the milestone that was Ubuntu's 6.06 LTS Server reached the end of its five year life and Fedora's blogging service was closed due to lack of use.

This week saw the second major release of LibreOffice, 3.4.0, aimed at community members and power users. Having stopped commercial development, Oracle proposed that OpenOffice.org should become a project of the Apache Software Foundation. Google open sourced its WebRTC software for real time video and audio communications on the web.

Linux on Intel-based netbooks took off with Canonical announcing that Ubuntu will be pre-loaded on some ASUS Eee PC netbooks, though not on its new Eee PC X101, a sub $200 lightweight netbook that runs MeeGo. The UK Intellectual Property Office established a seven month Peer to Patent pilot project for community reviews of patent applications and the PHP developers published the final draft for a PHP release process.

Open Source Releases

Development Releases

Security

Hackers reportedly broke into the networks of arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin and other US military contractors. Honda Canada told its customers that it had been the victim of an attack two months ago in which 283,000 customer records were stolen. Google described a spear phishing campaign originating in China against high profile users in the US and Asia. The LulzSec group hacked the web site of US broadcaster PBS and raised Tupac from the dead and, in another attack, compromised the customer records of more than a million Sony Pictures customers.

Apple released a security update to take on the Mac Defender malware and within hours a new version of Mac Defender appeared, which was then stopped by Apple's new automatically updating blacklist. Skype's auto-update function started installing software without consent and a freelance researcher claimed to be reverse engineering the Skype protocol "to make skype open source".

More apps were removed from the Android Market after they were found to contain the Droid Dream Light malware, the Chrome Web Store has the same security problems as the Android Market, and TweetDeck's browser-based client, ChromeDeck, was executing JavaScript embedded in Twitter messages.

The CTO of Sourcefire, Marty Roesch, talked to The H about Razorback, the next generation of malware detection from Sourcefire. Security expert Marc Heuse gave a presentation on the security problems associated with IPv6 and Harald Welte explained the basics behind Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA) and presented some open source software that can be used to receive, record, and decode it.

Security Alerts

Critical vulnerability in open source Eucalyptus clouds

For all last week's news see The H's last seven days of news and to keep up with The H, subscribe to the RSS feed, or follow honlinenews on Twitter. You can follow The H's own tweeting on Twitter as honline.

(crve)

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