The H Week - Chrome 12, Fedora goes Btrfs, RSA replacements, LulzSec hacks

Chrome 12 arrived with Unity support and security fixes, the Fedora project confirmed plans to use Btrfs as the default file system in Fedora 16 and The H published the first part of the "Coming in 3.0" Kernel Log series. RSA promised to replace SecurID tokens, and there were more LulzSec hacks.

Featured

The H asked Richard Hillesley to look at what Novell has left behind for open source and at the future for SUSE. With the help of c't Digital Photography, The H looked at Linux photo tools and, with the assistance of Thorsten Leemhuis, examined what is coming in Linux 3.0's networking in the "Coming in 3.0" mini-series.

• Novell's open source legacy – wake up, little SuSE
• Linux photo tools
• Kernel Log: Coming in 3.0 (Part 1) - Networking

Security

RSA admitted that some information about SecurID was used in the Lockheed Martin attack, started replacing hardware tokens and appointed a Chief Security Officer. Mozilla turned off cross domain WebGL textures in Firefox 5 and a Windows Worm was found to be using a built-in DHCP server to spread across local networks.

• RSA replaces SecurID tokens after hack
• RSA appoints its first Chief Security Officer
  
• Mozilla disables Firefox 5 WebGL's cross domain textures
• Worm uses built-in DHCP server to spread

This week's hacking saw LulzSec extract data from an FBI liaison group, a security firm and the UK's National Health Service (NHS), and Citibank owned up to customer data having been stolen. It was reported that the FBI already had a deep informant network in the hacking scene and Allied Telesis denied there were any backdoors in their hardware.

• LulzSec hacks FBI liaison and security firm
• NHS administrator passwords captured by LulzSec
• Customer data stolen from Citibank
• FBI infiltrates US hacker scene
• Allied Telesis – no backdoor in devices

Security Alerts

• Flash Player update closes zero-day
• VLC Media Player 1.1.10 fixes vulnerabilities
• Oracle patches critical Java security vulnerabilities
• Chrome 12 arrives – "safer and snazzier"

Open Source

The Fedora project set out their plan to use the "next-generation" Btrfs file system in the next Fedora release, and Canonical looked to the community to create a new "Ubuntu Friendly" hardware certificate. Google released Chrome 12 with added Ubuntu Unity support, but closed their specialised Linux and BSD search pages.

• Fedora 16 with Btrfs as standard file system
• Google discontinues specialised Linux and BSD search pages
• Chrome 12 arrives – "safer and snazzier"
• Chrome 12 includes support for Ubuntu's Unity global menu
• Ubuntu Friendly: community sourced hardware validation

A court battle that saw the EFF siding with Microsoft to lower patent invalidation standards came to an end with Microsoft losing. Java SE 7's specification was passed by the JCP Executive Committee but even the "yes" voters were not happy, Oracle opened up and announced that OpenJDK would become the reference implementation for Java 7, and VMWare's Cloud Foundry got support for the Java-VM-based Scala language.

• XML patent: US Supreme Court upholds decision against Microsoft
• Java SE 7 is passed to a chorus of protest
• OpenJDK will be a reference implementation for Java 7
• Cloud Foundry to support Scala

The openSUSE project called on its members to approve its plans for the future and started looking for sponsors for its upcoming conference. A new alliance of companies want to make help desks talk to CRM systems and for them to talk to bug trackers. Meanwhile, one hacker is using his CD-ROM drive and a small Linux computer to water plants.

• openSUSE calls on members to vote on strategy
• openSUSE Conference 2011 seeking sponsors
• New initiative to improve customer service through open APIs
• Hack-Factor: CD drive waters your plants

Open Source Releases

Updates were released for SystemRescueCD, Cassandra and CouchDB, older Pythons, VLC Media Player, CSS standards, Lucene and Solr, Pidgin and Wireshark.

• SystemRescueCd 2.2.0 brings updated kernels
• NoSQL database Cassandra version 0.8.0 arrives
• Python 2.6.7 security-only fix released
• Native SSL support comes to CouchDB 1.1.0
• Stylesheets reloaded: W3C releases CSS 2.1 after 13 years
• VLC Media Player 1.1.10 fixes vulnerabilities
• Apache Lucene/Solr 3.2 released
• Pidgin IM client updated to 2.8.0
• Wireshark network monitor updated to 1.6.0

Development

• Apache Lucene-like Lucy gets first incubator release
• Webian Shell brings full screen browsing
• Piwik 1.5 nears with release candidate
• Samba 3.6.0 approaching: second release candidate now available

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)