Internet News Section
A critical vulnerability (CVE-2021-3781) has been identified in Ghostscript, a toolset for processing, converting, and generating documents in PostScript and PDF formats. This vulnerability allows arbitrary code execution when processing specially crafted files. Emil Lerner initially pointed out the issue, discussing the vulnerability on August 25 at the ZeroNights X conference in St. Petersburg (his presentation covered how Emil […]
Google has released version 2.14 of the Dart programming language, continuing the development of the radically revamped Dart 2 branch. This version differs from the original Dart language by implementing strong static typing (types can be inferred automatically, so specifying types is not mandatory; however, dynamic typing is no longer used, and the originally computed type is fixed to the variable with strict enforcement thereafter […]
Version 0.3.35 of the PipeWire project has been released, developing a next-generation multimedia server that replaces PulseAudio. PipeWire offers enhanced features compared to PulseAudio for handling video streams, the ability to process audio with minimal latency, and a new security model for managing access at the level of individual devices and streams. The project is supported in GNOME and is already used by default […]
The GNU Project has released the first test version of GNU Anastasis, a protocol and applications for securely backing up encryption keys and access codes. The project is being developed by the creators of the GNU Taler payment system in response to the need for a tool to recover keys lost due to storage system failures or forgotten passwords used to encrypt the key.
The Norwegian proprietary browser Vivaldi, developed by the team behind Opera Presto, has become the default browser in the Linux distribution Manjaro with the Cinnamon desktop. The Vivaldi browser will also be available in other editions of the Manjaro distribution through the project's official repositories. To enhance integration with the distribution, a new theme adapted to the Manjaro Cinnamon design has been added to the browser.
GitHub has revealed details about seven vulnerabilities in the tar and @npmcli/arborist packages, which provide functions for working with tar archives and calculating dependency trees in Node.js. The vulnerabilities allow specially crafted archives to overwrite files outside of the root directory during extraction, as permitted by current access rights. These issues could enable arbitrary code execution.
The release of the main branch nginx 1.21.3 has been formed, continuing the development of new features (only critical bug fixes and vulnerabilities are addressed in the concurrently supported stable branch 1.20). Major changes include optimization of request body reading when using the HTTP/2 protocol. Bugs in the internal API for processing the request body that occur when using the HTTP/2 protocol have been fixed.
The release of the specialized distribution Tails 4.22 (The Amnesic Incognito Live System), based on the Debian package base and intended for anonymous internet access, has been published. Anonymous access in Tails is provided by the Tor system. By default, all connections except for traffic through the Tor network are blocked by a packet filter. For storing user data in persistence mode between sessions, a dedicated storage mechanism is used.
The release of Chrome OS 93 has been published, based on the Linux kernel, the upstart system manager, the ebuild/portage build toolchain, open components, and web browser Chrome 93. The user environment of Chrome OS is limited to the web browser, utilizing web applications instead of standard programs; however, Chrome OS includes a full multi-window interface, desktop, and taskbar. The build of Chrome OS 93 […]
The release of the desktop-oriented distribution GhostBSD 21.09.06 has been presented, built on FreeBSD and offering the MATE user environment. By default, GhostBSD uses the ZFS file system. It supports both live mode operation and installation on a hard disk (using its own ginstall installer written in Python). Boot images are created for the x86_64 architecture (2.6 GB). In the new version: To launch […]
After three years of development and 19 test releases, the library OpenSSL 3.0.0 has been released, implementing SSL/TLS protocols and various encryption algorithms. The new branch includes changes that break backward compatibility at the API and ABI levels, but these changes will not affect the operation of most applications, as recompilation from OpenSSL 1.1.1 is often sufficient. Support for the previous branch OpenSSL 1.1.1 will […]
The release of the Whonix 16 distribution, aimed at providing guaranteed anonymity, security, and privacy protection, has occurred. Whonix boot images are designed to run under the KVM hypervisor. Builds for VirtualBox and for use in the Qubes operating system are delayed (while test builds of Whonix 16 continue to be provided). The project developments are distributed under the GPLv3 license. The distribution is based on Debian GNU/Linux and […]