One of the oft-mentioned weaknesses of Linux, fragmentation, just happens to be one of its greatest strengths. A broad range of choices in an immature market is a good thing. Of course, choice does come at a cost. For example, there may be no standard way to do a particular task. Further, development resources will sometimes be split among two or more projects. However, these are weaknesses in the short term only.One could similarly argue that evolution of species suffers from the same ‘weakness’ of fragmentation. However, in the long term, the survival and consolidation of the best traits results in an improved breed. Eventually, one of the many approaches to some desktop task will rise to dominance and show the market the right way to do it, and, at the same time, reduce the fragmentation problem.

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One of the oft-mentioned weaknesses of Linux, fragmentation, just happens to be one of its greatest strengths. A broad range of choices in an immature market is a good thing. Of course, choice does come at a cost. For example, there may be no standard way to do a particular task. Further, development resources will sometimes be split among two or more projects. However, these are weaknesses in the short term only.One could similarly argue that evolution of species suffers from the same ‘weakness’ of fragmentation. However, in the long term, the survival and consolidation of the best traits results in an improved breed. Eventually, one of the many approaches to some desktop task will rise to dominance and show the market the right way to do it, and, at the same time, reduce the fragmentation problem.

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What could make the Free Software Foundation (FSF), proprietary software companies, and at least one venture capitalist into allies? The End Software Patents (ESP) coalition, a new organization poised to swing into action next month under the leadersh…

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The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) and Monsoon Multimedia announced yesterday that an agreement was reached to dismiss the GNU General Public License (GPL) enforcement lawsuit filed by SFLC on behalf of two principal developers of BusyBox. As this settlement prevents the case from going to court, the SFLC’s defence of the GPL remains untested in a US courtroom.

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One potential way for a user to escalate her privileges on a system is to exploit a vulnerability in an SUID or SGID program. SUID and SGID are legitimately used when programs need special permissions above and beyond those that are available to the user who is running them. Unfortunately, a poorly written SUID or SGID binary can be used to quickly and easily escalate a user’s privileges. This leads us to the need for scanning systems for SUID and SGID binaries. This is a simple process.

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One potential way for a user to escalate her privileges on a system is to exploit a vulnerability in an SUID or SGID program. SUID and SGID are legitimately used when programs need special permissions above and beyond those that are available to the user who is running them. Unfortunately, a poorly written SUID or SGID binary can be used to quickly and easily escalate a user’s privileges. This leads us to the need for scanning systems for SUID and SGID binaries. This is a simple process.

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Secunia Research: McAfee E-Business Server Auth Packet HandlingBuffer Overflow

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Secunia Research: CUPS IPP Tags Memory Corruption Vulnerability

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SEC Consult SA-20071031-0 :: Perdition IMAP Proxy Format StringVulnerability

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Re: Comments re ISC’s announcement on bind9 security

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BackDoor has discovered a vulnerability in vizagfreeads.com, which could be exploited by malicious people to conduct XSS attacks.

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mokoNinja posted a video a few hours ago on YouTube showing the newly created media player application for the OpenMoko. This is a pretty standard feature for all smart phones, and since I am looking to replace the need for a portable media player when I get a Neo1973, it is nice to see that it is coming along nicely with all the standard features one would expect raised when raised in an iPod generation. While it seems to lack the polish of the iPhone interface right now, OpenMoko seems to be shaping up into a decent contender, and once all the basic functionality is covered, we will start seeing some real innovation that makes open source applications so exciting to use.

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mokoNinja posted a video a few hours ago on YouTube showing the newly created media player application for the OpenMoko. This is a pretty standard feature for all smart phones, and since I am looking to replace the need for a portable media player when I get a Neo1973, it is nice to see that it is coming along nicely with all the standard features one would expect raised when raised in an iPod generation. While it seems to lack the polish of the iPhone interface right now, OpenMoko seems to be shaping up into a decent contender, and once all the basic functionality is covered, we will start seeing some real innovation that makes open source applications so exciting to use.

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iDefense Security Advisory 10.30.07 – Local exploitation of an integer underflow vulnerability in the dig program of IBM Corp.’s AIX operating system allows attackers to execute arbitrary code with root privileges. The problem specifically exists within dns_name_fromtext function within the libdns.a library. This function is called when processing the ‘-y’ command line parameter to the dig program. By supplying a specially crafted TSIG key parameter, an attacker is able to cause an integer underflow, resulting in potentially exploitable heap corruption. iDefense has confirmed the existence of this vulnerability within AIX version 5.2. Previous versions are suspected to be vulnerable. AIX 5.3 is not vulnerable since the dig command is no longer installed set-uid root.

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iDefense Security Advisory 10.30.07 – Local exploitation of a stack buffer overflow vulnerability in IBM Corp.’s AIX operating system may allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with root privileges. The vulnerability exists within the parsing of the ‘-p’ command line option. The argument to this option is copied into a fixed size stack buffer using the sprintf() function without properly validating the length. This leads to an exploitable stack buffer overflow. iDefense has confirmed the existence of this vulnerability in AIX version 5.2 and 5.3. Previous versions may also be affected.

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BackDoor has discovered a vulnerability in www.4payeh.net, which could be exploited by malicious people to conduct XSS attacks.

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BackDoor has discovered a vulnerability in mangraovat.net, which could be exploited by malicious people to conduct XSS attacks.

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BackDoor has discovered a vulnerability in www.kitesurfshops.com, which could be exploited by malicious people to conduct XSS attacks.

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eWeek: What Is It Like Migrating Mission Critical Servers from Paid Linux (RHEL) to Free Linux (CentOS)?

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Computer World: Some Leopard upgraders see ‘blue screen of death’

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Reg Hardware: Tool opens iPhone, iPod Touch via web

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The Register: Gatwick reduced to anarchy by ‘computer glitch’ "clocks not going back on Sunday morning"

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BackDoor has discovered a vulnerability in somerbuys.com, which could be exploited by malicious people to conduct XSS attacks.

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BackDoor has discovered a vulnerability in www.vimoo.com, which could be exploited by malicious people to conduct XSS attacks.

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BackDoor has discovered a vulnerability in www.nativeponiesonline.co.uk, which could be exploited by malicious people to conduct XSS attacks.

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BackDoor has discovered a vulnerability in etomotors.com, which could be exploited by malicious people to conduct XSS attacks.

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BackDoor has discovered a vulnerability in etomotors.com, which could be exploited by malicious people to conduct XSS attacks.

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BackDoor has discovered a vulnerability in www.50statesclassifieds.com, which could be exploited by malicious people to conduct XSS attacks.

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BackDoor has discovered a vulnerability in www.50statesclassifieds.com, which could be exploited by malicious people to conduct XSS attacks.

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