Items tagged with Kernel
There are a great many advantages to working with free and open-source software (FOSS), and your author here is an outspoken supporter of such source-sharing ways. We probably don't need to explain the advantages, but suffice to say that software developed as a community effort can end up more secure and much more...
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Accurate timers are critical to the function of the low-level parts of the underlying code that drives the user-facing software we actually use in our daily lives. Fortunately, x86-64 PCs include numerous timers. Actually selecting which of those timers to use in a given scenario, however, can be a headache due to...
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In April, we first reported on Linux Kernel dev and maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman banned submissions from the University of Minnesota due to new concerning patches. It has also come to light that UMN has done questionable research on the Linux kernel team, and people were already wary. Now, the Linux Technical...
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Last week, we reported on a Linux Kernel developer banned The University of Minnesota for some ethically questionable research. Since then, UMN issued an apology and started an investigation into how this all happened, but some people are having none of it. This week in the Linux Kernel security saga, Greg...
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Yesterday we reported on a Linux kernel developer "banning" the University of Minnesota from providing patches to the kernel. However, this did not come out of the blue as some faculty and students had performed questionable research that wasted Linux kernel maintainers’ time and effort. It appears staff at UMN are...
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When independent or academic research is carried out, ethics is a primary concern if you have anything to do with people outside the research group. With that in mind, the University of Minnesota has seemingly been performing ethically questionable research on the Linux kernel by submitting useless or vulnerable code...
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All major Linux kernel releases carry a handful of special updates, but there are some that are still a lot more notable than others. Linux 4.12 is one of those kernels, with even Linus Torvalds stating that it's one of the "bigger releases historically". A big reason for that? Well, for starters, it include...
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Whether you use Linux at home or manage a Linux server, you'll want to waste no time in making sure your OS is completely up-to-date. An exploit called "Dirty COW" has now been revealed, and while it's not the most dangerous one ever released, the fact that it's been around for nine years is causing some serious alarm...
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If you're a Linux fan, then you should know that this week is a very special one. On August 25, 1991 - 25 years ago - Linus Torvalds shot out a simple message to a Minix usergroup which stated that he was working on a Minix replacement. Within, he famously said that his creation wouldn't "be big and professional like GNU".
Not even Linus
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One of the coolest aspects of Linux is its ability to support hardware long before other OSes - and even well before consumers can even get their hands on the hardware. Take USB 3.0, for example, which hit the kernel months before the first products hit the market, in September of 2009. And then there's the SSD command TRIM, which was first...
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When pimping Windows Vista prior to its release, Microsoft called it "the most secure OS ever." Of course, software is just software, and there are bugs in anything. And on Friday, security firm Phion AG announced they had discovered a TCP/IP stack buffer overflow. As researcher Thomas Unterleitner indicated: Since this buffer overflow overwrites...
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Well, if you can hold out for three years, maybe you can skip Windows Vista altogether. Windows 7 is due out in 2010 (snicker). Microsoft is working on a stripped down operating system kernel they're calling MinWin as part of it, aimed at being small enough to work on the exploding number of devices that can run an OS; but geez, not that OS."A...
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