Hírolvasó

Eliminating Memory Safety Vulnerabilities at the Source (Google Security Blog)

11 hónap 2 hét óta
Here's a post on the Google Security Blog on how switching to a memory-safe language can quickly reduce vulnerabilities in a project, even if a large body of older code persists.

This leads to two important takeaways:

  • The problem is overwhelmingly with new code, necessitating a fundamental change in how we develop code.
  • Code matures and gets safer with time, exponentially, making the returns on investments like rewrites diminish over time as code gets older.

For example, based on the average vulnerability lifetimes, 5-year-old code has a 3.4x (using lifetimes from the study) to 7.4x (using lifetimes observed in Android and Chromium) lower vulnerability density than new code.

corbet

Vanilla OS 2 - future plans, updates, and next release

11 hónap 2 hét óta

The Vanilla OS project has published a blog post to answer questions that users have raised since the release of Vanilla OS 2. The post has information about the update strategy for the distribution, an enterprise version with support, and plans for an experimental version called Vanilla OS Vision.

We are not planning for a potential Vanilla OS 3 because it is not yet necessary. As previously explained, our focus right now is on bug fixing and making the system as solid as possible, especially in light of collaborations with OEMs. We're all excited about laying the foundation for a third version of Vanilla OS, but we have responsibilities to attend to first.

This does not mean that there will never be one, nor does it mean that Orchid will become stagnant. On the contrary, as previously mentioned, our updates not only bring fixes but also updates to system components, improvements to existing features, and updates to components like GNOME (we are planning the release of GNOME 47 soon, for example).

jzb

[$] What the Nova GPU driver needs

11 hónap 2 hét óta

In March, Danilo Krummrich announced the new Nova GPU driver — a successor to Nouveau for controlling NVIDIA GPUs. At Kangrejos 2024, Krummrich gave a presentation about what it is, why it's needed, and where it's going next. Hearing about the needs of the driver provoked extended discussion on related topics, including what level of safety is reasonable to expect from drivers, given that they must interact with the hardware.

daroc

[$] Linus and Dirk on succession, Rust, and more

11 hónap 2 hét óta
The "Linus and Dirk show" has been a fixture at Open Source Summit for as long as the conference has existed; it started back when the conference was called LinuxCon. Since Linus Torvalds famously does not like to give talks, as he said during this year's edition at Open Source Summit Europe (OSSEU) in Vienna, Austria, he and Dirk Hohndel have been sitting down for an informal chat on a wide range of topics as a keynote session. That way, Torvalds does not need to prepare, but also does not know what topics will be brought up, which makes it "so much more fun for one of us", Hohndel said with a grin. The topics this time ranged from the just-released 6.11 kernel and the upcoming Linux 6.12, through Rust for the kernel, to the recurring topic of succession and the graying of Linux maintainers.
jake

Security updates for Wednesday

11 hónap 2 hét óta
Security updates have been issued by Debian (booth), Gentoo (Xpdf), Oracle (go-toolset:ol8, golang, grafana, grafana-pcp, kernel, libnbd, openssl, pcp, and ruby:3.3), Red Hat (container-tools:rhel8, go-toolset:rhel8, golang, kernel, and kernel-rt), SUSE (apr, cargo-audit, chromium, obs-service-cargo, python311, python36, quagga, traefik, and xen), and Ubuntu (intel-microcode, linux-azure-fde-5.15, and puma).
jzb

Major change to sysupgrade(8) behaviour

11 hónap 2 hét óta

There has been a significant change to the behaviour of sysupgrade(8):

CVSROOT: /cvs Module name: src Changes by: florian@cvs.openbsd.org 2024/09/24 01:33:35 Modified files: usr.sbin/sysupgrade: sysupgrade.8 sysupgrade.sh Log message: Remove -r toggle and generally be less smart. The default is to install the next release. Snapshots are only installed when invoked with -s.

Read more…

[$] KDE sets its goals through 2026

11 hónap 3 hét óta

Almost a decade ago KDE e.V., the non-profit organization that supports KDE, started a process for selecting goals to help the community unite behind a common vision for where the project should go in the near future. KDE recently wrapped up its 2022-2024 cycle and announced the goals for 2024-2026 at Akademy on September 7, in Würzburg, Germany. This time around, KDE will be looking to streamline its application-development experience, improve support for input devices, and bring in new contributors.

jzb

[$] Committing to Rust in the kernel

11 hónap 3 hét óta
The project to enable the writing of kernel code in Rust has been underway for several years, and each kernel release includes more Rust code. Even so, some developers have expressed frustration at the time it takes to get new functionality merged, and an air of uncertainty still hangs over the project. At the 2024 Maintainers Summit, Miguel Ojeda led a discussion on the status of Rust in the kernel and whether the time had come to stop considering it an experimental project. There were not answers to all of the questions, but it seems clear that Rust in the kernel will continue steaming ahead.
corbet