The H Roundup - Java vulnerability, Fedora 18 and Red October
Welcome to The H Roundup, your rapid review of the week with the most read news on The H, the security alerts and open source releases, and the essential feature articles – all in one quick-to-scan news item.
Top News
In a week filled with news about Java's security or lack thereof, Mozilla and Apple blocked all versions of the plugin in their browsers, before Oracle later released a patch for the critical vulnerability that was plaguing them. It's far from over for Oracle though – the patch looks to be incomplete and new vulnerabilities may already be being exploited. Oracle also released 86 other fixes for several of their products as part of their regular patch cycle.
- Java plugins unplugged by Mozilla and Apple - Update
- Fix for critical Java hole released
- Another Java zero-day vulnerability apparently available
- Oracle announces 86 fixes including 18 for MySQL
This week, Fedora 18 was finally released and LibreOffice gained the ability to use Firefox themes in a release candidate. The latest version of the Kolab groupware debuted with a redesigned user interface and the Independent JPEG Group released a new version of their JPEG compression library.
- Fedora 18 released with a brand new installer
- LibreOffice 4.0 RC1 supports Firefox-compatible themes
- Kolab 3 debuts new user interface
- Libjpeg 9 improves lossless JPEG compression
Nokia admitted to performing man-in-the-middle interception on users' HTTPS connections but have said said it is by design and secure. Meanwhile, Kaspersky has been revealing information on a widespread cyber-espionage operation it discovered and named after the novel and film "The Hunt For Red October", and a report revealed how power utility companies in the US have come under attack from virus infections.
- Nokia: Yes, we decrypt HTTPS - but we don't spy
- Operation Red October - large-scale cyber-espionage uncovered
- ICS-CERT reports virus infections at US power utilities
Featured Articles
With the release of Fedora 18, Thorsten Leemhuis looks at the new features in the long-awaited version of the distribution. Glyn Moody, meanwhile, explained how Linux has had its revenge for being pushed out of the netbook market by Microsoft.
Open Source Releases
New open source releases this week included a new version of the web analytics server Piwik and a new release of jQuery. The Flex platform became an Apache top-level project.
- Flex: Flash app platform becomes Apache top-level project
- Apache Hive goes fully native on Windows
- Starling 1.3 takes to the air
- Piwik 1.10 introduces statistics overlay
- 64-bit Window version of Scribus open source DTP program available
- jQuery 1.9 prepares developers for the dropping of old IE support
Development releases included a beta of openSUSE 12.3, Chrome 25 and the appearance of a new GNOME 2 fork from the SolusOS developers.
- First and final beta of openSUSE 12.3 brings Linux 3.7
- Chrome 25 Beta brings Shadow DOM and Speech Recognition
- Gnuaccounting 0.8.2 improves its document management
- Consort Desktop Environment fork of GNOME Classic announced
Security Alerts
While Oracle addressed the vulnerabilities in Java, Adobe fixed a critical problem in its ColdFusion framework.
For everything The H has published in the last week, check out the last seven days of news. 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.
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