lwn.net

The OpenSSH 7.9 release is out. It (finally) allows the use of symbolic service names rather than port numbers, adds support for sending signals over the SSH protocol, bans the use of DSA keys for certificate authorities, and more.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (drupal7 and libssh), openSUSE (binutils, ImageMagick, and java-11-openjdk), Oracle (java-1.8.0-openjdk), Scientific Linux (java-1.8.0-openjdk), and SUSE (apache2, bash, binutils, clamav, curl, dovecot22, firefox, ghostscript, git, glibc, gnutls, gpg2, icu, java-1_7_0-openjdk, java-1_7_1-ibm, java-1_8_0-ibm, java-1_8_0-openjdk, kernel, kernel-firmware, libvirt, libzypp, zypper, mariadb, nagios, ntp, openslp, openssh, openssl, perl, postgresql10, qemu, qpdf, samba, shadow, smt, yast2-smt, ucode-intel, wireshark, xen, yast2-smt, and zziplib).

OpenBSD 6.4 has been released. This release features improved hardware support, adding a number of new drivers. Notable security improvements include the new unveil() system call to restrict file system access.

Ubuntu has announced the release of its latest version, 18.10 (or "Cosmic Cuttlefish"). It has lots of updated packages and such, and is available in both a desktop and server version; there are also multiple flavors that were released as well. More information can be found in the release notes. "The Ubuntu kernel has been updated to the 4.18 based Linux kernel, our default toolchain has moved to gcc 8.2 with glibc 2.28, and we've also updated to openssl 1.1.1 and gnutls 3.6.4 with TLS1.3 support. Ubuntu Desktop 18.04 LTS brings a fresh look with the community-driven Yaru theme replacing our long-serving Ambiance and Radiance themes. We are shipping the latest GNOME 3.30, Firefox 63, LibreOffice 6.1.2, and many others. Ubuntu Server 18.10 includes the Rocky release of OpenStack including the clustering enabled LXD 3.0, new network configuration via netplan.io, and iteration on the next-generation fast server installer. Ubuntu Server brings major updates to industry standard packages available on private clouds, public clouds, containers or bare metal in your datacentre."

The PostgreSQL 11 release is out. "PostgreSQL 11 provides users with improvements to overall performance of the database system, with specific enhancements associated with very large databases and high computational workloads. Further, PostgreSQL 11 makes significant improvements to the table partitioning system, adds support for stored procedures capable of transaction management, improves query parallelism and adds parallelized data definition capabilities, and introduces just-in-time (JIT) compilation for accelerating the execution of expressions in queries." See this article for a detailed overview of what is in this release.

For some years now, one has not had to look far to find articles proclaiming the demise of the GNU General Public License. That license, we are told, is too frightening for many businesses, which prefer to use software under the far weaker permissive class of license. But there is a business model that is based on the allegedly scary nature of the GPL, and there are those who would like to make it more lucrative; the only problem is that the GPL isn't quite scary enough yet.

Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 4.18.15, 4.14.77, and 4.9.134 stable kernels. As usual, there are important fixes throughout the tree and users should upgrade.

Security updates have been issued by Arch Linux (chromium, libssh, and net-snmp), Debian (libssh and xen), Fedora (audiofile), openSUSE (axis, GraphicsMagick, ImageMagick, kernel, libssh, samba, and texlive), Oracle (java-1.8.0-openjdk), Red Hat (java-1.8.0-openjdk, rh-nodejs6-nodejs, and rh-nodejs8-nodejs), SUSE (binutils and fuse), and Ubuntu (paramiko).

The LWN.net Weekly Edition for October 18, 2018 is available.

Graphical applications are always pushing the limits of what the hardware can do and recent developments in the graphics world have caused Intel to rethink its 3D graphics driver. In particular, the lower CPU overhead that the Vulkan driver on Intel hardware can provide is becoming more attractive for OpenGL as well. At the 2018 X.Org Developers Conference Kenneth Graunke talked about an experimental re-architecting of the i965 driver using Gallium3D—a development that came as something of a surprise to many, including him.

Trusted Computing has not had the best reputation over the years — Richard Stallman dubbing it "Treacherous Computing" probably hasn't helped — though those fears of taking away users' control of their computers have not proven to be founded, at least yet. But the Trusted Platform Module, or TPM, inside your computer can do more than just potentially enable lockdown. In our second report from Kernel Recipes 2018, we look at a talk from James Bottomley about how the TPM works, how to talk to it, and how he's using it to improve his key handling.

Security updates have been issued by CentOS (tomcat), Debian (asterisk, graphicsmagick, and libpdfbox-java), openSUSE (apache2 and git), Oracle (tomcat), Red Hat (kernel and Satellite 6.4), Slackware (libssh), SUSE (binutils, ImageMagick, and libssh), and Ubuntu (clamav, libssh, moin, and paramiko).

The free-software community was built on email, a distributed technology that allows people worldwide to communicate regardless of their particular software environment. While email remains at the core of many projects' workflow, others are increasingly trying to move away from it. A couple of recent examples show what is driving this move and where it may be headed.

The Bro network security monitoring project has announced a name change to "Zeek". "On the Leadership Team of the Bro Project, we heard clear concerns from the Bro community that the name 'Bro' has taken on strongly negative connotations, such as 'Bro culture'. These send a sharp, anti-inclusive - and wholly unintended and undesirable - message to those who might use Bro. The problems were significant enough that during BroCon community sessions, several people have mentioned substantial difficulties in getting their upper management to even consider using open-source software with such a seemingly ill-chosen, off-putting name."

The Software Freedom Law Center has announced the availability of a whitepaper [PDF] about automotive software and copyleft, written by Mark Shuttleworth and Eben Moglen. At its core, it's an advertisement for Ubuntu and Snap, but it does look at some of the issues involved.

The fine grain of interface access rights provided by the snapd governance agent can thus provide further isolation and security when it is running user-modified code, guaranteed under the snap packaging paradigm to cause no other program code to be modified, to break, or to perform differently because of the presence of the user-modified program. Such a structure of modification permission can be operated by the OEM consistent with the requirements of GPLv3. The OEM can publish an authenticated record of the installation permission issued, indexed by the Vehicle Identification Number—without publishing the car owner’s personal information—so that public and private parties can be assured that no surreptitious modification of vehicle software occurs.

Security updates have been issued by CentOS (ghostscript and spamassassin), Debian (moin, spice, and tomcat8), Fedora (kernel-headers, kernel-tools, and libgit2), Oracle (ghostscript and tomcat), Red Hat (ghostscript and tomcat), Scientific Linux (ghostscript and tomcat), SUSE (git, kernel, python, and samba), and Ubuntu (net-snmp and thunderbird).

One of the more difficult aspects of the Spectre hardware vulnerability is finding all of the locations in the code that might be exploitable. There are many locations that look vulnerable that aren't, and others that are exploitable without being obvious. It has long been clear that finding all of the exploitable spots is a long-term task, and keeping new ones from being introduced will not be easy. But there may be a simple technique that can block a large subset of the possible exploits with a minimal cost.

Security updates have been issued by Arch Linux (wireshark-cli), Debian (imagemagick, otrs2, tomcat7, and wireshark), Fedora (ca-certificates, dislocker, dolphin-emu, kernel-headers, kernel-tools, libgit2, mbedtls, mingw-openjpeg2, nekovm, openjpeg2, patch, strongswan, and thunderbird), Mageia (firefox, git, nextcloud, and texlive), Oracle (kernel and openssl), Scientific Linux (spamassassin), SUSE (libtirpc), and Ubuntu (requests).

As expected, the 4.19 development cycle has gone to 4.19-rc8. "Please go and test and ensure that all works well for you. Hopefully this should be the last -rc release."

The 4.18.14, 4.14.76, 4.9.133, 4.4.161, and 3.18.124 stable kernels have all been released; each contains another pile of important fixes and updates.