- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

High-severity vulnerabilities affect a wide range of Asus router models
by Peter Reutemann 18 Jun '24

18 Jun '24

'Hardware manufacturer Asus has released updates patching multiple critical vulnerabilities that allow hackers to remotely take control of a range of router models with no authentication or interaction required of end users. The most critical vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-3080 is an authentication bypass flaw that can allow remote attackers to log into a device without authentication. The vulnerability, according to the Taiwan Computer Emergency Response Team / Coordination Center (TWCERT/CC), carries a severity rating of 9.8 out of 10. [...] A second vulnerability tracked as CVE-2024-3079 affects the same router models. It stems from a buffer overflow flaw and allows remote hackers who have already obtained administrative access to an affected router to execute commands. TWCERT/CC is warning of a third vulnerability affecting various Asus router models. It’s tracked as CVE-2024-3912 and can allow remote hackers to execute commands with no user authentication required.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/06/high-severity-vulnerabilities-affe… The article lists affected routers and links to their respective bios/firmware pages. Cheers, Peter

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The Ladybird browser project
by Peter Reutemann 17 Jun '24

17 Jun '24

Just stumbled across a browser project on my mastodon feed that I hadn't heard of before: Ladybird Browser -- source: https://tech.lgbt/@nina_kali_nina/111932702661268627 -- project page: https://ladybird.dev/ -- code: https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird Anybody ever tried that? Cheers, Peter

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Ransomware attackers quickly weaponize PHP vulnerability with 9.8 severity rating
by Peter Reutemann 17 Jun '24

17 Jun '24

'Ransomware criminals have quickly weaponized an easy-to-exploit vulnerability in the PHP programming language that executes malicious code on web servers, security researchers said. As of Thursday, Internet scans performed by security firm Censys had detected 1,000 servers infected by a ransomware strain known as TellYouThePass, down from 1,800 detected on Monday. The servers, primarily located in China, no longer display their usual content; instead, many list the site’s file directory, which shows all files have been given a .locked extension, indicating they have been encrypted. An accompanying ransom note demands roughly $6,500 in exchange for the decryption key. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-4577 and carrying a severity rating of 9.8 out of 10, stems from errors in the way PHP converts Unicode characters into ASCII. A feature built into Windows known as Best Fit allows attackers to use a technique known as argument injection to convert user-supplied input into characters that pass malicious commands to the main PHP application. Exploits allow attackers to bypass CVE-2012-1823, a critical code execution vulnerability patched in PHP in 2012. CVE-2024-4577 affects PHP only when it runs in a mode known as CGI, in which a web server parses HTTP requests and passes them to a PHP script for processing. Even when PHP isn’t set to CGI mode, however, the vulnerability may still be exploitable when PHP executables such as php.exe and php-cgi.exe are in directories that are accessible by the web server. This configuration is extremely rare, with the exception of the XAMPP platform, which uses it by default. An additional requirement appears to be that the Windows locale—used to personalize the OS to the local language of the user—must be set to either Chinese or Japanese.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/06/thousands-of-servers-infected-with… Cheers, Peter

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Raspberry Pi is Now a Public Company
by Peter Reutemann 12 Jun '24

12 Jun '24

'Who would have thought that Raspberry Pi, the maker of the tiny, cheap, single-board computers, would become a public company? Yet, this is exactly what's happening: Raspberry Pi priced its IPO on the London Stock Exchange on Tuesday morning at $3.56 per share, valuing it at $689 million. Shortly after that, the company's shares jumped a nice 32% to $4.70. It means that Raspberry Pi could end up raising more than $200 million during its IPO process. Raspberry Pi has sold 60 million units since its inception. In 2023 alone, Raspberry Pi generated $266 million in revenue and $66 million in gross profit. Raspberry Pi Ltd, the public company, is the commercial subsidiary of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The Foundation says it wants to make it easier for people to learn coding through a low-cost, programmable computer. It also remains the main shareholder of Raspberry Pi Ltd.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/06/11/144251 Cheers, Peter

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One-Line Patch For Intel Meteor Lake Yields Up To 72% Better Performance
by Peter Reutemann 11 Jun '24

11 Jun '24

'Michael Larabel reports via Phoronix: Covered last week on Phoronix was a new patch from Intel that with tuning to the P-State CPU frequency scaling driver was showing big wins for Intel Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" performance and power efficiency. I was curious with the Intel claims posted for a couple benchmarks and thus over the weekend set out to run many Intel Meteor Lake benchmarks on this one-line kernel patch... The results are great for boosting the Linux performance of Intel Core ultra laptops with as much as 72% better performance. [...] When looking at the CPU power consumption overall, for the wide variety of workloads tested it was just a slight uptick in power use and thus overall leading to slightly better power efficiency too. See all the data here. So this is quite a nice one-line Linux kernel patch for Meteor Lake and will hopefully be mainlined to the Linux kernel for Linux 6.11 if not squeezing it in as a "fix" for the current Linux 6.10 cycle. It's just too bad though that it took six months after launch for this tuned EPP value to be determined. Fresh benchmarks between Intel Core Ultra and AMD Ryzen on the latest Linux software will be coming up soon on Phoronix.' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/06/10/2031256 Cheers, Peter

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Nasty Linux Bug, CVE-2024-1086, is on the loose
by Peter Reutemann 05 Jun '24

05 Jun '24

'A few months back, CVE-2024-1086, a nasty use-after-free vulnerability in the Linux kernel's netfilter, was revealed. With a Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) score of 7.8, this bug, with the foundation for most Linux network firewall and Network Address Translation (NAT) programs, was a nasty little security hole. With it, Netfliter's table component could be exploited to achieve local privilege escalation. Worse still, you didn't need to be terribly clever to use it, so a local attacker could escalate privileges from a regular user to root in no time flat. Adding insult to injury, this vulnerability was present in pretty much all the major Linux distributions, including Debian, Fedora, Red Hat, and Ubuntu. In short, pretty much any Linux distribution using any kernel version between 5.14 and 6.6.14 could be hacked. Ouch! But, the fix has been in place since January 2024, when the flaw was patched. So, if we've been good little system administrators, we shouldn't have anything to worry about, right? Right!? Wrong. The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has flagged it and added it to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. It turns out that it's being actively exploited in the wild.' -- source: https://opensourcewatch.beehiiv.com/p/nasty-linux-bug-cve20241086-loose Cheers, Peter

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The Raspberry Pi 5 Gets an AI Upgrade
by Peter Reutemann 05 Jun '24

05 Jun '24

'Today, Raspberry Pi introduced a new kit that adds AI functionality to the Raspberry Pi 5. ZDNet reports: The Raspberry Pi AI kit combines an M.2-format Hailo 8L AI accelerator with the Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+ to create a powerful yet power-efficient solution. The Hailo-8L NPU (Neural Processing Unit) chip, capable of 13 trillion operations per second (TOPS), is built into an M.2 2242 form factor module that attaches to the M.2 HAT+. When connected to a Raspberry Pi 5 board running the latest Raspberry Pi OS, the NPU is automatically available for AI computing tasks. The AI module also has direct access to the Raspberry Pi's camera software stack and works with both first-party and third-party cameras. The NPU allows the Raspberry Pi 5 to perform AI tasks such as object and facial recognition, human pose analysis, and more. Using an NPU frees up the Raspberry Pi 5's CPU, allowing it to focus on other tasks, making your projects more efficient and powerful. The Raspberry Pi AI kit is also compatible with the Raspberry Pi Active Cooler, ensuring optimal performance without overheating. Additionally, you can purchase a clear protective layer to prevent damage to the board, giving you peace of mind while working on your projects. The AI kit is priced at $70. It's available from Raspberry Pi Approved Resellers, including PiHut, PiShop.us, and CanaKit. ' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/06/04/2037238 Cheers, Peter

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CentOS 7’s Final Countdown: 30 Days Left Until Support Ends
by Peter Reutemann 04 Jun '24

04 Jun '24

'In just 30 days, we’ll witness the end of an era for Linux with the cessation of support for CentOS 7—the last supported version of this once-dominant server operating system still receiving updates. Let’s take a quick look back at its journey. Ten years ago, on July 7, 2014, CentOS 7 was released as a fully compatible fork of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7. Since its initial CentOS 2 version in 2004, the distribution has become extremely popular, establishing itself as the go-to server operating system over the last decade. After nine minor version updates, the latest being CentOS 7.9, in November 2020, Red Hat made a significant announcement. It marked the end of CentOS as a server operating system and transitioned it to CentOS Stream—a rolling release distro and upstream public development branch for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). To complicate things further, CentOS 8, expected to receive updates until 2029, was prematurely retired at the end of December 2021. This leaves only CentOS 7 as the only version to complete its entire maintenance period, which ends in just 30 days on June 30, 2024. So, consider this as a final reminder if you’re still using CentOS 7 and haven’t yet migrated your system. Time is running out, and here are some alternative options to switch to a RHEL-compatible and supported replacement.' -- source: https://linuxiac.com/centos-7-has-30-days-left-until-support-ends/ Cheers, Peter

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Fun With The du Command
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 29 May '24

29 May '24

Looking at the space taken up by my copy of the Blender source code: ldo(a)theon:projects> du -ks blender 1444272 blender Most of that is in the commit history: ldo(a)theon:projects> du -ks blender/.git 1139640 blender/.git So how much isn’t? ldo(a)theon:projects> du -ks blender/.git blender 1139640 blender/.git 304632 blender Do you see what happened there? If you specify a directory, and then its containing directory on the same command, du will subtract the usage of the former from the latter. This gives you an easy way of determining the space taken up by a directory, not including particular subdirectories. This can be broken down even more: ldo(a)theon:projects> du -ks blender/.git blender/extern blender/intern blender/source blender 1139640 blender/.git 40536 blender/extern 15712 blender/intern 105188 blender/source 143196 blender Here, “extern” is various open-source libraries from other sources, that have been copied into the Blender source tree, while “intern” is code that originated from Blender itself, that has been organized into its own libraries. And as you can see, there is still a whole bunch left in other subdirectories. Does this work recursively? ldo(a)theon:projects> du -ks blender/.git blender/intern/cycles blender/intern blender 1139640 blender/.git 8880 blender/intern/cycles 6832 blender/intern 288920 blender Yes it does. Here we can see that the Cycles renderer makes up a bit over half the contents of “intern”.

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datamash - basic numeric, textual and statistical operations
by Peter Reutemann 28 May '24

28 May '24

Hi everyone I quite often need to do some quick and dirty statistical calculations on the command-line and I typically use cat and sed to extract the data that I need from text files. In the past, I've then switched to LibreOffice Calc for some basic statistics like mean/stdev. Today, I finally spent a bit more time having a look around what else I can use directly on the command-line and came across the following that fits the bill perfectly: datamash - https://www.gnu.org/software/datamash/ With that tool, I can finally apply a single command-line to textual output for generating a quick mean/stdev: ... | datamash mean 1 sstdev 1 --header-out mean(field-1) sstdev(field-1) 577.62815533981 128.99238940453 Cheers, Peter

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Memory Sealing 'mseal' System Call Merged For Linux 6.10
by Peter Reutemann 27 May '24

27 May '24

'"Merged this Friday evening into the Linux 6.10 kernel is the new mseal() system call for memory sealing," reports Phoronix: The mseal system call was led by Jeff Xu of Google's Chrome team. The goal with memory sealing is to also protect the memory mapping itself against modification. The new mseal Linux documentation explains: "Modern CPUs support memory permissions such as RW and NX bits. The memory permission feature improves security stance on memory corruption bugs, i.e. the attacker can't just write to arbitrary memory and point the code to it, the memory has to be marked with X bit, or else an exception will happen. Memory sealing additionally protects the mapping itself against modifications. This is useful to mitigate memory corruption issues where a corrupted pointer is passed to a memory management system... Memory sealing can automatically be applied by the runtime loader to seal .text and .rodata pages and applications can additionally seal security-critical data at runtime. A similar feature already exists in the XNU kernel with the VM_FLAGS_PERMANENT flag and on OpenBSD with the mimmutable syscall." The mseal system call is designed to be used by the likes of the GNU C Library "glibc" while loading ELF executables to seal non-writable memory segments or by the Google Chrome web browser and other browsers for protecting security sensitive data structures.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/24/05/26/2117251 Cheers, Peter

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Ubuntu 24.04 Now Runs on the Nintendo Switch (Unofficially)
by Peter Reutemann 27 May '24

27 May '24

'"The fact it's possible at all is a credit to the ingenuity of the open-source community," writes the blog OMG Ubuntu: Switchroot is an open-source project that allows Android and Linux-based distros like Ubuntu to run on the Nintendo Switch — absolutely not something Nintendo approves of much less supports, endorses, or encourages, etc! I covered the loophole that made this possible back in 2018. Back then the NVIDIA Tegra X1-powered Nintendo Switch was still new and Linux support for much of the console's internal hardware in a formative state (a polite way to say 'not everything worked'). But as the popularity of Nintendo's handheld console ballooned (to understate it) so the 'alternative OS' Switch scene grew, and before long Linux support for Switch hardware was in full bloom... A number of Linux for Switchroot (L4S) distributions have since been released, designated as Linux for Tegra (L4T) builds. As these can boot from a microSD card it's even possible to dualboot the Switch OS with Linux, which is neat! Recently, a fresh set of L4T Ubuntu images were released based on the newest Ubuntu 24.04 LTS release. These builds work on all Switch versions, from the OG (exploit-friendly) unit through to newer, patched models (where a modchip is required)... I'm told all of the Nintendo Switch internal hardware now works under Linux, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, sleep mode, accelerated graphics, the official dock... Everything, basically. And despite being a 7 year old ARM device the performance is said to remain decent. "Upstream snafus have delayed the release of builds with GNOME Shell..."' -- source: https://games.slashdot.org/story/24/05/26/035202 Cheers, Peter

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Disabling Google Search (Mis)Features
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 26 May '24

26 May '24

This article <https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/google-searchs-udm14-trick-lets-you…> explains how you can add an option to a Google search URL to turn off the new AI functionality. Another option lets you specify that you want a verbatim search on what you typed, rather than a “fuzzy” search. It also describes how you can configure your browser for more convenient invocation of these options.

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Sovereign Tech Fund Backs FFmpeg Project with a €157K Infusion
by Peter Reutemann 24 May '24

24 May '24

'Sovereign Tech Fund, a funding pot supported financially by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, has once again shown itself to be one of Open Source’s great friends and supporters. After providing €1 million in financial support to GNOME at the end of last year and investing more than €200K in the GStreamer project earlier this year, the company is continuing its support for multimedia projects by funding FFmpeg. In light of this, last week, FFmpeg announced its first governmental sponsorship, Germany’s Sovereign Tech Fund, which has stepped forward to support the maintenance and sustainability of FFmpeg, a cornerstone software in the multimedia industry, by investing €157K in the project.' -- source: https://linuxiac.com/sovereign-tech-fund-backs-ffmpeg-project/ Cheers, Peter

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RISC-V Now Supports Rust In the Linux Kernel
by Peter Reutemann 24 May '24

24 May '24

'Michael Larabel reports via Phoronix: The latest RISC-V port updates have been merged for the in-development Linux 6.10 kernel. Most notable with today's RISC-V merge to Linux 6.10 is now supporting the Rust programming language within the Linux kernel. RISC-V joins the likes of x86_64, LoongArch, and ARM64 already supporting the use of the in-kernel Rust language support. The use of Rust within the mainline Linux kernel is still rather limited with just a few basic drivers so far and a lot of infrastructure work taking place, but there are a number of new drivers and other subsystem support on the horizon. RISC-V now supporting Rust within the Linux kernel will become more important moving forward. The RISC-V updates for Linux 6.10 also add byte/half-word compare-and-exchange, support for Zihintpause within hwprobe, a PR_RISCV_SET_ICACHE_FLUSH_CTX prctl(), and support for lockless lockrefs. More details on these RISC-V updates for Linux 6.10 via this Git merge. ' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/24/05/22/2337254 Cheers, Peter

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A Root-Server at the Internet's Core Lost Touch With Its Peers. We Still Don't Know Why.
by Peter Reutemann 24 May '24

24 May '24

'A server maintained by Cogent Communications, one of the 13 root servers crucial to the Internet's domain name system, fell out of sync with its peers for over four days due to an unexplained glitch. This issue, which could have caused worldwide stability and security problems, was resolved on Wednesday. The root servers store cryptographic keys necessary for authenticating intermediate servers under the DNSSEC mechanism. Inconsistencies in these keys across the 13 servers could lead to an increased risk of attacks such as DNS cache poisoning. Engineers postponed planned updates to the .gov and .int domain name servers' DNSSEC to use ECDSA cryptographic keys until the situation stabilized. Cogent stated that it became aware of the issue on Tuesday and resolved it within 25 hours. ArsTechnica, which has a great writeup about the incident, adds: Initially, some people speculated that the depeering of Tata Communications, the c-root site outage, and the update errors to the c-root itself were all connected somehow. Given the vagueness of the statement, the relation of those events still isn't entirely clear.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/05/23/1745246 Cheers, Peter

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Mozilla Says It's Concerned About Windows Recall
by Peter Reutemann 23 May '24

23 May '24

'Microsoft's Windows Recall feature is attracting controversy before even venturing out of preview. From a report: The principle is simple. Windows takes a snapshot of a user's active screen every few seconds and dumps it to disk. The user can then scroll through the snapshots and, when something is selected, the user is given options to interact with the content. Mozilla's Chief Product Officer, Steve Teixeira, told The Register: "Mozilla is concerned about Windows Recall. From a browser perspective, some data should be saved, and some shouldn't. Recall stores not just browser history, but also data that users type into the browser with only very coarse control over what gets stored. While the data is stored in encrypted format, this stored data represents a new vector of attack for cybercriminals and a new privacy worry for shared computers. "Microsoft is also once again playing gatekeeper and picking which browsers get to win and lose on Windows -- favoring, of course, Microsoft Edge. Microsoft's Edge allows users to block specific websites and private browsing activity from being seen by Recall. Other Chromium-based browsers can filter out private browsing activity but lose the ability to block sensitive websites (such as financial sites) from Recall. "Right now, there's no documentation on how a non-Chromium based, third-party browser, such as Firefox, can protect user privacy from Recall. Microsoft did not engage our cooperation on Recall, but we would have loved for that to be the case, which would have enabled us to partner on giving users true agency over their privacy, regardless of the browser they choose."' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/05/22/1939244 Cheers, Peter

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Linux 6.10 Honors One Last Request By Hans Reiser
by Peter Reutemann 22 May '24

22 May '24

'Phoronix: ReiserFS lead developer and convicted murderer Hans Reiser a few months back wrote letters to be made public apologizing for his social mistakes and other commentary. In his written communications he also made a last request for ReiserFS in the Linux kernel: "Assuming that the decision is to remove [ReiserFS] V3 from the kernel, I have just one request: that for one last release the README be edited to add Mikhail Gilula, Konstantin Shvachko, and Anatoly Pinchuk to the credits, and to delete anything in there I might have said about why they were not credited. It is time to let go." Hans credits his improved social and communication skills learned in prison among other details shared in the public letters. Per the indirect request by Hans Reiser, SUSE's Jan Kara has now altered the ReiserFS README file with the changes going in today to the Linux 6.10 kernel. The negative language was removed and instead acknowledging their contributions.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/24/05/21/217228 Cheers, Peter

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New Windows AI feature records everything you’ve done on your PC
by Peter Reutemann 22 May '24

22 May '24

'At a Build conference event on Monday, Microsoft revealed a new AI-powered feature called "Recall" for Copilot+ PCs that will allow Windows 11 users to search and retrieve their past activities on their PC. To make it work, Recall records everything users do on their PC, including activities in apps, communications in live meetings, and websites visited for research. Despite encryption and local storage, the new feature raises privacy concerns for certain Windows users. "Recall uses Copilot+ PC advanced processing capabilities to take images of your active screen every few seconds," Microsoft says on its website. "The snapshots are encrypted and saved on your PC’s hard drive. You can use Recall to locate the content you have viewed on your PC using search or on a timeline bar that allows you to scroll through your snapshots." By performing a Recall action, users can access a snapshot from a specific time period, providing context for the event or moment they are searching for. It also allows users to search through teleconference meetings they've participated in and videos watched using an AI-powered feature that transcribes and translates speech. At first glance, the Recall feature seems like it may set the stage for potential gross violations of user privacy. Despite reassurances from Microsoft, that impression persists for second and third glances as well. For example, someone with access to your Windows account could potentially use Recall to see everything you've been doing recently on your PC, which might extend beyond the embarrassing implications of pornography viewing and actually threaten the lives of journalists or perceived enemies of the state. Despite the privacy concerns, Microsoft says that the Recall index remains local and private on-device, encrypted in a way that is linked to a particular user's account. "Recall screenshots are only linked to a specific user profile and Recall does not share them with other users, make them available for Microsoft to view, or use them for targeting advertisements. Screenshots are only available to the person whose profile was used to sign in to the device," Microsoft says. Users can pause, stop, or delete captured content and can exclude specific apps or websites. Recall won't take snapshots of InPrivate web browsing sessions in Microsoft Edge or DRM-protected content. However, Recall won't actively hide sensitive information like passwords and financial account numbers that appear on-screen.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/microsofts-new-recall-feature-will-… Talking about intrusive OS... I wonder whether there will be an ad-supported, cheap version of Windows in the future where the user can't turn Recall off, giving Microsoft a large pool of free training data... Cheers, Peter

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Ubuntu 24.10 to Default to Wayland for NVIDIA Users
by Peter Reutemann 20 May '24

20 May '24

'OMG Ubuntu: Ubuntu first switched to using Wayland as its default display server in 2017 before reverting the following year. It tried again in 2021 and has stuck with it since. But while Wayland is what most of us now log into after installing Ubuntu, anyone doing so on a PC or laptop with an NVIDIA graphics card present instead logs into an Xorg/X11 session. This is because NVIDIA's proprietary graphics drivers (which many, especially gamers, opt for to get the best performance, access to full hardware capabilities, etc) have not supported Wayland as well as as they could've. Past tense as, thankfully, things have changed in the past few years. NVIDIA's warmed up to Wayland (partly as it has no choice given that Wayland is now standard and a 'maybe one day' solution, and partly because it wants to: opportunities/benefits/security). With the NVIDIA + Wayland sitch' now in a better state than before — but not perfect — Canonical's engineers say they feel confident enough in the experience to make the Ubuntu Wayland session default for NVIDIA graphics card users in Ubuntu 24.10.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/05/20/013218 Cheers, Peter

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Linux Foundation Announces Launch of 'High Performance Software Foundation'
by Peter Reutemann 20 May '24

20 May '24

'This week the nonprofit Linux Foundation announced the launch of the High Performance Software Foundation, which "aims to build, promote, and advance a portable core software stack for high performance computing" (or HPC) by "increasing adoption, lowering barriers to contribution, and supporting development efforts." It promises initiatives focused on "continuously built, turnkey software stacks," as well as other initiatives including architecture support and performance regression testing. Its first open source technical projects are: - Spack: the HPC package manager. - Kokkos: a performance-portable programming model for writing modern C++ applications in a hardware-agnostic way. - Viskores (formerly VTK-m): a toolkit of scientific visualization algorithms for accelerator architectures. - HPCToolkit: performance measurement and analysis tools for computers ranging from desktop systems to GPU-accelerated supercomputers. - Apptainer: Formerly known as Singularity, Apptainer is a Linux Foundation project providing a high performance, full featured HPC and computing optimized container subsystem. - E4S: a curated, hardened distribution of scientific software packages. As use of HPC becomes ubiquitous in scientific computing and digital engineering, and AI use cases multiply, more and more data centers deploy GPUs and other compute accelerators. The High Performance Software Foundation will provide a neutral space for pivotal projects in the high performance computing ecosystem, enabling industry, academia, and government entities to collaborate on the scientific software. The High Performance Software Foundation benefits from strong support across the HPC landscape, including Premier Members Amazon Web Services (AWS), Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories; General Members AMD, Argonne National Laboratory, Intel, Kitware, Los Alamos National Laboratory, NVIDIA, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory; and Associate Members University of Maryland, University of Oregon, and Centre for Development of Advanced Computing. In a statement, an AMD vice president said that by joining "we are using our collective hardware and software expertise to help develop a portable, open-source software stack for high-performance computing across industry, academia, and government." And an AWS executive said the high-performance computing community "has a long history of innovation being driven by open source projects. AWS is thrilled to join the High Performance Software Foundation to build on this work. In particular, AWS has been deeply involved in contributing upstream to Spack, and we're looking forward to working with the HPSF to sustain and accelerate the growth of key HPC projects so everyone can benefit." The new foundation will "set up a technical advisory committee to manage working groups tackling a variety of HPC topics," according to the announcement, following a governance model based on the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/05/19/2234254 Cheers, Peter

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Why a 'Frozen' Distribution Linux Kernel Isn't the Safest Choice for Security
by Peter Reutemann 20 May '24

20 May '24

'Jeremy Allison — Sam (Slashdot reader #8,157) is a Distinguished Engineer at Rocky Linux creator CIQ. This week he published a blog post responding to promises of Linux distros "carefully selecting only the most polished and pristine open source patches from the raw upstream open source Linux kernel in order to create the secure distribution kernel you depend on in your business." But do carefully curated software patches (applied to a known "frozen" Linux kernel) really bring greater security? "After a lot of hard work and data analysis by my CIQ kernel engineering colleagues Ronnie Sahlberg and Jonathan Maple, we finally have an answer to this question. It's no." The data shows that "frozen" vendor Linux kernels, created by branching off a release point and then using a team of engineers to select specific patches to back-port to that branch, are buggier than the upstream "stable" Linux kernel created by Greg Kroah-Hartman. How can this be? If you want the full details the link to the white paper is here. But the results of the analysis couldn't be clearer. - A "frozen" vendor kernel is an insecure kernel. A vendor kernel released later in the release schedule is doubly so. - The number of known bugs in a "frozen" vendor kernel grows over time. The growth in the number of bugs even accelerates over time. - There are too many open bugs in these kernels for it to be feasible to analyze or even classify them.... [T]hinking that you're making a more secure choice by using a "frozen" vendor kernel isn't a luxury we can still afford to believe. As Greg Kroah-Hartman explicitly said in his talk "Demystifying the Linux Kernel Security Process": "If you are not using the latest stable / longterm kernel, your system is insecure." CIQ describes its report as "a count of all the known bugs from an upstream kernel that were introduced, but never fixed in RHEL 8." For the most recent RHEL 8 kernels, at the time of writing, these counts are: RHEL 8.6 : 5034 RHEL 8.7 : 4767 RHEL 8.8 : 4594 In RHEL 8.8 we have a total of 4594 known bugs with fixes that exist upstream, but for which known fixes have not been back-ported to RHEL 8.8. The situation is worse for RHEL 8.6 and RHEL 8.7 as they cut off back-porting earlier than RHEL 8.8 but of course that did not prevent new bugs from being discovered and fixed upstream.... This whitepaper is not meant as a criticism of the engineers working at any Linux vendors who are dedicated to producing high quality work in their products on behalf of their customers. This problem is extremely difficult to solve. We know this is an open secret amongst many in the industry and would like to put concrete numbers describing the problem to encourage discussion. Our hope is for Linux vendors and the community as a whole to rally behind the kernel.org stable kernels as the best long term supported solution. As engineers, we would prefer this to allow us to spend more time fixing customer specific bugs and submitting feature improvements upstream, rather than the endless grind of backporting upstream changes into vendor kernels, a practice which can introduce more bugs than it fixes. ZDNet calls it "an open secret in the Linux community." It's not enough to use a long-term support release. You must use the most up-to-date release to be as secure as possible. Unfortunately, almost no one does that. Nevertheless, as Google Linux kernel engineer Kees Cook explained, "So what is a vendor to do? The answer is simple: if painful: Continuously update to the latest kernel release, either major or stable." Why? As Kroah-Hartman explained, "Any bug has the potential of being a security issue at the kernel level...." Although [CIQ's] programmers examined RHEL 8.8 specifically, this is a general problem. They would have found the same results if they had examined SUSE, Ubuntu, or Debian Linux. Rolling-release Linux distros such as Arch, Gentoo, and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed constantly release the latest updates, but they're not used in businesses.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/24/05/19/0030248 Cheers, Peter

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Google patches its fifth zero-day vulnerability of the year in Chrome
by Peter Reutemann 13 May '24

13 May '24

'Google has updated its Chrome browser to patch a high-severity zero-day vulnerability that allows attackers to execute malicious code on end user devices. The fix marks the fifth time this year the company has updated the browser to protect users from an existing malicious exploit. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-4671, is a “use after free,” a class of bug that occurs in C-based programming languages. In these languages, developers must allocate memory space needed to run certain applications or operations. They do this by using “pointers” that store the memory addresses where the required data will reside. Because this space is finite, memory locations should be deallocated once the application or operation no longer needs it. Use-after-free bugs occur when the app or process fails to clear the pointer after freeing the memory location. In some cases, the pointer to the freed memory is used again and points to a new memory location storing malicious shellcode planted by an attacker’s exploit, a condition that will result in the execution of this code. On Thursday, Google said an anonymous source notified it of the vulnerability. The vulnerability carries a severity rating of 8.8 out of 10. In response, Google said, it would be releasing versions 124.0.6367.201/.202 for macOS and Windows and 124.0.6367.201 for Linux in subsequent days. “Google is aware that an exploit for CVE-2024-4671 exists in the wild,” the company said.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/05/google-patches-its-fifth-zero-day-… Cheers, Peter

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AMD Core Performance Boost For Linux Getting Per-CPU Core Controls
by Peter Reutemann 13 May '24

13 May '24

'Phoronix: For the past several months AMD Linux engineers have been working on AMD Core Performance Boost support for their P-State CPU frequency scaling driver. The ninth iteration of these patches were posted on Monday and besides the global enabling/disabling support for Core Performance Boost, it's now possible to selectively toggle the feature on a per-CPU core basis... The new interface is under /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpuX/cpufreq/amd_pstate_boost_cpb for each CPU core. Thus users can tune whether particular CPU cores are boosted above the base frequency.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/24/05/11/229219 Cheers, Peter

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Linux Kernel 6.9 Officially Released
by Peter Reutemann 13 May '24

13 May '24

'"6.9 is now out," Linus Torvalds posted on the Linux kernel mailing list, "and last week has looked quite stable (and the whole release has felt pretty normal)." Phoronix writes that Linux 6.9 "has a number of exciting features and improvements for those habitually updating to the newest version." And Slashdot reader prisoninmate shared this report from 9to5Linux: Highlights of Linux kernel 6.9 include Rust support on AArch64 (ARM64) architectures, support for the Intel FRED (Flexible Return and Event Delivery) mechanism for improved low-level event delivery, support for AMD SNP (Secure Nested Paging) guests, and a new dm-vdo (virtual data optimizer) target in device mapper for inline deduplication, compression, zero-block elimination, and thin provisioning. Linux kernel 6.9 also supports the Named Address Spaces feature in GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) that allows the compiler to better optimize per-CPU data access, adds initial support for FUSE passthrough to allow the kernel to serve files from a user-space FUSE server directly, adds support for the Energy Model to be updated dynamically at run time, and introduces a new LPA2 mode for ARM 64-bit processors... Linux kernel 6.9 will be a short-lived branch supported for only a couple of months. It will be succeeded by Linux kernel 6.10, whose merge window has now been officially opened by Linus Torvalds. Linux kernel 6.10 is expected to be released in mid or late September 2024. "Rust language has been updated to version 1.76.0 in Linux 6.9," according to the article. And Linus Torvalds shared one more details on the Linux kernel mailing list. "I now have a more powerful arm64 machine (thanks to Ampere), so the last week I've been doing almost as many arm64 builds as I have x86-64, and that should obviously continue during the upcoming merge window too."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/24/05/12/2212235 Cheers, Peter

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