Items tagged with patches
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. Now, one of the biggest developers of the Linux kernel has banned UMN from submitting patches after becoming fed up with the “research.” Earlier this year, two researchers from the University of Minnesota published a research paper around the premise of sneaking malicious code into open source software (OSS). The paper specifically targeted the Linux kernel, one of the...
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No Man’s Sky has received some less than stellar reviews, especially from PC players. Hello Games,however, has been releasing a steady stream of patches to improve the gaming experience. They have received support request not only from their email, but from Steam, GoG, and Reddit. Hello Games remarked, “Right now the team is fully focused on categorising and fixing support issues in order of priority, based on the number of people they are affecting. The information and crash dumps you’ve posted have been indispensable in helping us track down and fix these issues.” The first patch was issued shortly after the game’s release and focused on crashes and weird glitches. The second patch is...
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Planning to call in sick to school or work tomorrow so that you can play Evolve all day long? Brace yourself, a 3GB patch is coming. Developer Turtle Rock Studios says you'll need to download and apply the massive patch before jumping into online play. By applying the update, you'll benefit from improved load times, better matchmaking, and network bandwidth optimizations, to name a few of the fixes. “What can you really add to Evolve at this point? It’s already gone gold!," Turtle Rock Studios stated in a blog post. "This question came up a lot over the course of the Open Beta weekend in January. Truth is, that long weekend was a big learning experience for us. As a result, on day one – before...
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You can make a fair bit of coin diving into code and rooting out vulnerabilities. In some instances, Microsoft will pay up to $100,000 for a single bug report, and Google's Vulnerability Reward Program routinely pays out thousands of dollars. It's a win-win situation, except when dealing with services that have only a small team of developers. With that in mind, Google is trying something new. Going beyond vulnerability rewards, Google said it will start providing financial incentives for "down-to-earth, proactive improvements" that extend past simply fixing a known security bug for "key third-party software" that's key to the Internet's health. This could entail switching to a more secure allocator,...
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Microsoft plans to fix a "browse-and-get-owned" vulnerability in its Video ActiveX Control when it releases software patches next week. The company acknowledged the vulnerability last week and is moving with uncharacteristic speed in issuing a fix for the problem. A second and similar vulnerability with Microsoft’s DirectShow was disclosed in May. It too will be fixed with Tuesday’s patches. According to Microsoft, both of the flaws affect older versions of Windows; Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 users are not affected.In an advanced summary of its upcoming July 14 security patch, Microsoft said it plans to release six security bulletins on Tuesday. Three of these will be listed as critical...
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Just when you thought it was safe to turn on your computer ... Microsoft and Adobe inform their users they have all sorts of security flaws and even Mac users are affected.First, Adobe: Not only do the "critical vulnerabilities" in Adobe Reader 9.1.1 and Acrobat 9.1.1 "and earlier versions" cause the applications to crash, but they also can make your computer vulnerable to an "attacker." So this is the deal:Adobe recommends users of Adobe Reader 9 and Acrobat 9 and earlier versions update to Adobe Reader 9.1.2 and Acrobat 9.1.2. Adobe recommends users of Acrobat 8 update to Acrobat 8.1.6, and users of Acrobat 7 update to Acrobat 7.1.3. For Adobe Reader users who can’t update to Adobe Reader 9.1.2,...
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As many T-Mobile G1 users are waiting for the RC29 update that started rolling out a few days ago to hit their phones, Google is already in the process of releasing another update.Generally speaking, people welcome updates with open arms, hoping that the update will improve their phone’s functionality. This update has a few people upset, however. You see, last week, a tinkerer realized that it was possible to “jailbreak” the phone and gain root access by using telnetd. This jailbreak gives you full admin abilities, right down to the core of the handset’s file system. This access allows for both good and bad modifications. Given that root access lets you do stuff you probably shouldn’t without...
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The security vulnerabilities already discovered in Chrome appear to have been patched by Google. Of course, Google (much like Apple) hasn't provided any release notes, so discovering what's been fixed isn't that easy. Google said, in a group post: We're planning to do release notes. 149.29 is a security update and we released it as fast as we could. We would've liked more time to prepare things, but some of the vulnerabilities were made public without giving us a chance to respond, update, and protect our users first. Thanks for being patient as we work out the kinks in all of our processes, Mark Larson Program Manager for Google Chrome It seems that the "carpet bombing" flaw created by using...
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Apple patched QuickTime not once, but an amazing eleven times on Wednesday. Some of the patches were to improve stability and compatibility, but there were also some exploits which were found and patched.“It's at least the sixth time Apple has patched QuickTime since October, as researchers and hackers have been closely examining media players for vulnerabilities. As operating systems have become more secure, vulnerabilities in applications have become a favored route to break into a PC.”Apple is notoriously coy with information regarding the specific exploits, but the running rumor is that most of the exploits patched were actually found by Apple themselves....
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A number of Blogger users, ourselves included, have noticed a series of publishing and saving glitches on Blogger lately. There was even an outage this week, though that may have been the result of patches that Google performed to fix the issue. Additionally, on Friday, Google added direct video upload services to Blogger. An undetermined number of Blogger publishers had trouble performing various editing and posting operations on Monday and Tuesday, but by Wednesday the problem had been solved.After marking the eighth 'birthday' of this free blogging service on Thursday, Google announced the video upload feature on Friday. "This feature allows you to upload videos and create...
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There has been much speculation recently about Windows Vista SP1 Beta, and even rumors and sightings around the web. There was also a "leak" of some pre-Beta patches a week or so ago. Microsoft has now officially released them. Microsoft still isn't commenting on when a beta of Service Pack 1 for Vista will be officially released (our money is on November), but the company has posted two updates that are expected to be part of that final package: the "performance and reliability" update and the "compatibility and reliability" update. These are official releases.The "standalone updates" have been posted to Microsoft's support site, and users will need to validate their Vista installs...
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Informationweek has an article about Adobe deciding that they're not going to lift a finger to alter existing products to make them more compatible with Windows Vista. Some might be quick to point out that Adobe and MS have had issues over Vista & Office 2007 features, but do keep in mind that Adobe had a similar policy when they announced that they weren't going to make an OS X Universal Binary version of CS2. "Users of Adobe Systems' digital publishing products, including Photoshop, InDesign, and Dreamweaver, will have to shell out for new versions of the software if they want to run them without glitches on Microsoft's new Windows...
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It's autumn, and that means that it's time for Microsoft security flaws to turn red and fall from your computer. Phishers and scammers and hackers are worried that you'll become bored with assaults on Microsoft Internet Explorer and phony Paypal notifications, so they're attacking Microsoft Word and Powerpoint programs, among other methods this time: Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday released six patches to fix software flaws that carry its highest threat rating, including three for defects that attackers were already trying to exploit. The company said all six of the critical flaws could allow an attacker to obtain some access to other...
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