The H Week - patent deals, controversies, losses and a trojan mouse
This week saw Microsoft, but not Google, make patent deals; Mozilla upset some corporates with its rapid releases; an open source JTAG test kit was released; open source user Gradwell won an award and Linus Torvalds explained his controversial views about userspace filesystems. LulzSec disbanded and alledged hacker Cleary was released on bail; Citibank admitted large losses from the URL tampering scam; a trojan mouse was demonstrated and Google started showing more header info to help spot phishing; a new scoring system for vulnerabilities was introduced.
Featured
In this week's feature articles, Simon Bisson looked at how Cisco works with OpenStack, Thorsten Leemhuis reported on the latest kernel news including the discovery of the cause of a power consumption problem, and Glyn Moody looked at how the second rise of HTML shows the power of open standards. There was also July's edition of The H's Community Calendar with events around the UK and Europe for the open source communities.
- Cisco and OpenStack
- Kernel Log: BIOS bugs behind greater power use
- The rise and fall and rise of HTML
- The H Community Calendar - July 2011
Open Source
Patents were topping the news this week, as Microsoft did not one or two, but three Android related patent deals and was one of the consortium members that got their hands on Nortel's patent portfolio (the one Google bid for, aiming to protect Android's ecosystem).
- Microsoft does second Android patent deal in a week
- Microsoft makes third Android patent deal this week
- Consortium takes Nortel's patent armoury
Mozilla found itself on the back foot as the rapid release and rapid end of life of Firefox releases upset enterprises; it has since offered an olive branch to the enterprise deployers and we await developments. Thunderbird 5.0 was also released by Mozilla, as was news of a plan to change how URLs are displayed and of the launch of a new hothouse for open web innovations.
- Firefox update politics become contentious
- Mozilla strikes a conciliatory tone with enterprises
- Mozilla releases Thunderbird 5.0
- "http://" to be dropped from Firefox 7 address bar
- Mozilla's Web FWD: an innovation accelerator
An open source JTAG electronics testing kit was released, UK VOIP supplier and open source user Gradwell walked off with an industry award, Yahoo spun off Hortonworks for Hadoop development and Google's other distributed computing idea, Pregel, got an open source variant in the shape of a GoldenOrb.
- Free test system for electronic components
- Open source based company wins industry award
- Yahoo! creates independent Hadoop company
- GoldenOrb offers open source variant of Google's Pregel
InstantBird leapt to version 1.0 to bring open source IM to all platforms, Linus Torvalds caused controversy over his opinion of userspace filesystems, KDE users on Facebook found their pictures vanishing and the Linux Foundation selected the design for the Linux 20th aniversary T-shirt.
- Cross platform IM client InstantBird goes 1.0
- Torvalds calls userspace filesystems "toys"
- Facebook blocked KDE photo applications
- Linux Foundation announce 20th anniversary T-shirt design winner
Open Source Releases
New releases for LibreOffice, Chrome 12, Pidgin, Debian Squeeze, Zarafa, Marathon, Linguist, PCLinuxOS, Joomla! and MathJax.
- LibreOffice 3.4.1 released, not for enterprises yet
- Pidgin IM client 2.9.0 closes security vulnerability
- Second update for Debian Squeeze
- Zarafa unveils version 7.0 of its collaboration platform
- Bungie open sources the complete Marathon Mac FPS franchise
- GitHub's Linguist open sourced
- PCLinuxOS KDE 2011.6 now available
- VirtualBox 4.0 update brings GNOME 3 fixes
- Joomla! 1.6 update closes security holes
- Chrome 12 update closes "high-risk" holes
- Browser-based formulae and equations with MathJax
Development releases
- Mandriva 2011 RC1 arrives after slight delay
- KDE SC 4.7 release candidate arrives for testing
- VirtualBox 4.1 Beta 1 released for testing
- WordPress 3.2 approaches with RC2 release
- WordPress 3.1.4 and 3.2 RC3 published
Security
LulzSec appears to have called it a day and announced it disbanded, alleged hacker Ryan Cleary was released on bail, Citibank admitted its vulnerability to URL tampering had already cost $2.7M and Microsoft admitted it would comply to US requests for cloud data residing in Europe.
- Last LOL for LulzSec as hackers disband group
- Alleged hacker said to be suffering from Asperger's - Update
- Citibank customers lost $2.7 million in recent attack
- US authorities have access to European cloud data
Researchers showed a trojan mouse as a novel new way of penetrating security, Google offered up more header information to help people spot phish, CWSS launched as a new way to score weaknesses in software and the top 25 list of mistakes, with CWSS scores, was published with SQL injection topping the chart.
- Attack of the computer mouse
- Google Mail wants to help users identify phishing emails
- New scoring system for security weaknesses
- Top 25 most dangerous mistakes in software development
Apple released an update to Mac OS X Java, Wordpress released a hole-closing security update and Avira's Antivir confused users with a new feature which came with an optional toolbar.
- Apple releases Java for Mac OS X security updates
- WordPress 3.1.4 and 3.2 RC3 published
- Service Pack for Antivir confuses users
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)