Linux News for Aug 26, 2003

• Washington Post: Microsoft Windows: Insecure by Design (Aug 26, 2003, 23:30)
  "Between the Blaster worm and the Sobig virus, it's been a long two weeks for Windows users. But nobody with a Mac or a Linux PC has had to lose a moment of sleep over these outbreaks--just like in earlier 'malware' epidemics..."


• SuSE Linux Advisory: sendmail (Aug 26, 2003, 23:29)
  "The well known and widely used MTA sendmail is vulnerable to a remote denial-of-service attack in version 8.12.8 and earlier..."


• Debian GNU/Linux Advisory: libpam-smb (Aug 26, 2003, 23:29)
  "If a long password is supplied, this can cause a buffer overflow which could be exploited to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the process which invokes PAM services..."


• Tonight Live: Mars (The Planet) & PureMessage on The Linux Show (Aug 26, 2003, 22:00)
  "Tonight on the news: SCO, Microsoft, ESR as 'war chief...'"


• GovExec.com: 'Open Source' Software Trend Faces Barriers (Aug 26, 2003, 20:30)
  "Barriers to growth include continued flaws in the ever-improving open-source technologies--which is being used more for computer servers than applications--and opposition by Microsoft, the world's dominant software player and thus the one with the most at stake if governments turn to open-source products..."


• CNET Asia: Don't Stop Using Linux: Japan Gov't (Aug 26, 2003, 19:00)
  "The Japanese government has acted to reassure companies jittery about the use of the Linux operating system in their products, saying that avoiding the platform would 'hurt the lives of the people...'"


• Red Hat Linux Advisory: pam_smb (Aug 26, 2003, 18:59)
  "Updated pam_smb packages are now available which fix a security vulnerability (buffer overflow)..."


• The Salt Lake Tribune: Embattled SCO Group's Web Site Hit with a 'Denial of Service' Strike (Aug 26, 2003, 18:00)
  A recap of this weekend's DoS attack on sco.com, with reactions from SCO and open source advocates.


• dot.KDE: Kastle 2003: What to Expect From Qt 4 (Aug 26, 2003, 17:00)
  "Qt 4 is expected to be released in 2004 and promises to deliver increased performance, both at startup and runtime, more flexibility and productivity and changes to ease the learning process..."


• Mandrake Linux Advisory: sendmail (Aug 26, 2003, 16:59)
  "A vulnerability was discovered in all 8.12.x versions of sendmail up to and including 8.12.8..."


• CommentWire: SCO: To Pay or Not to Pay (Aug 26, 2003, 16:00)
  "...[M]any companies will want to know exactly what they are getting for their money. The answer is not a lot, apart from protection against being sued by SCO..."


• Debian GNU/Linux Advisory: unzip (Aug 26, 2003, 15:59)
  "A directory traversal vulnerability in UnZip 5.50 allows attackers to bypass a check for relative pathnames..."


• OpenSource.org: Halloween IX: It Ain't Necessarily SCO (Aug 26, 2003, 15:00)
  "SCO, having willingly made itself a sock puppet for the boys in Redmond, therefore becomes the first company other than Microsoft to have its utterances admitted to the gallery of infamy that is the Halloween Documents..."


• Slackware Linux Advisory: unzip (Aug 26, 2003, 14:59)
  "These fix a security issue where a specially crafted archive may overwrite files (including system files anywhere on the filesystem) upon extraction by a user with sufficient permissions..."


• The Register: California Supremes Issue DVD Crack Setback (Aug 26, 2003, 14:00)
  "In California it has just got harder to post cracks which allow copies of DVDs to be made to be posted the Internet..."


• NewsForge: Open Asia: Open Source in Afghanistan and Bangladesh (Aug 26, 2003, 13:00)
  "This week we begin a country-by-country survey of the availability of open source software across individual Asian countries at the top of the alphabet, with Afghanistan and Bangladesh..."


• The Inquirer: How to Muzzle SCO (Aug 26, 2003, 11:00)
  "SCO's complaints shift, twist, and change shape like schizoid illusions or the tortured, restless dreams of drug induced hallucinations..."


• ONLamp: Postfix: A Secure and Easy-to-Use MTA (Aug 26, 2003, 09:00)
  "Sendmail has a long history of security holes, most of which have been thoroughly documented on security sites around the world. Why do people continue to run Sendmail...?"


• developerWorks: A Visual Tour of OGSA : Grid Computing (Aug 26, 2003, 07:00)
  "You can find many definitions of Grid computing, but the essence of the grid is the federation of computing resources to accelerate application processing, plus the virtualization of these resources..."


• Release Digest: KDE, August 25, 2003 (Aug 26, 2003, 05:00)
  Today's KDE apps: Slibo 0.4.1, KAvi2svcd 0.7, QT MySQL Budget 0.02, Platero 0.2, KMuddy 0.5.1, KPreg 1.4, Kern 0.15, cuckooo 0.2, and Attal 0.7.1.


• Release Digest: GNOME, August 25, 2003 (Aug 26, 2003, 05:00)
  Today's GNOME apps: gFTP 2.0.15, Isabella GPL Font 1.0, Workrave 1.4.0, Epiphany 0.9.2, gnome-pkgview 1.0.2, gcalctool 4.3.2, coriander-0.99.3, and Proxy-applet 0.2.3.


• NewsForge: What's New in GnuCash (Aug 26, 2003, 04:00)
  "You may not have noticed, given the thick layer of SCO news the past week, but the GnuCash.org project has recently announced both a new release of the application and a new release of its documentation..."


• siliconvalley.internet.com: Q&A: JBoss CEO Marc Fleury (Aug 26, 2003, 02:30)
  "Perhaps no other Web server software company has had such an impact on the industry in such a short amount of time as JBoss Group..."


• Red Hat Linux Advisory: iptables (Aug 26, 2003, 02:29)
  "Updated iptables packages which are fully compatible with recent kernel updates are now available..."


• CMPnetAsia: Linux Invasion Takes Off in Corporate India (Aug 26, 2003, 01:00)
  "Corporate India is slowly warming up to Linux. The reactions of CIOs spans a wide spectrum--from bold implementation to cautious adoption and from outright rejection to whole-hog switchover..."


• ZDNet: The Patent Nuclear Weapon (Aug 26, 2003, 00:00)
  "However, the fact that IBM is fully justified in defending itself doesn't change the fact that software developers should feel a bit queasy about the tactics it has chosen to use..."