While the “pirates” faction recently suffered a setback with the unfortunate conviction of the Pirate Bay founders in Sweden, they also suffered a surge in membership of the pirate party. Then there’s the news that the judge had conflicting interests so not only will they have their new membership numbers they may also have their leaders back!

But fear not ninjas, we have a new ally on our side : Google!

While updating my Google Mobile App I found great news in the update notes:

Suck on that Pirates!

Not too many releases this week, but we do have the big Jaunty release that resulted in quite a few other releases.

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I got pretty busy this past week and missed quite a few big linux stories that I wanted to post about so I decided to do this post to as a mini-roundup with short summaries for each post. Sorry for the lapse in posting, I’ll try to get back to more regular posts next week.

• GCC 4.4.0 Released – GCC 4.4 incorporates the Graphite branch which is a new framework for loop optimizations, better support for the C++0X standard, and a new register allocator. Full changes can be read here.
• Ubuntu 9.04 “Jaunty Jackalope” Released – The next Ubuntu release in the LTS cycle hit its target release date on April 23. There are tons of changes that range from performance improvements to package updates. Boot time has been significantly improved, GNOME 2.26, X.org 1.6, ext4 support, Wacom tablet hotplugging support, Linux kernel 2.6.28, and many more. The Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Mythbuntu, etc. Ubuntu-based distributions also saw releases with the same upgrades in addition to their specific desktop environment upgrades.
• Firefox 3.5b4 Benchmarks – The TuxRadar guys posted some very interesting benchmarks for Firefox 3.5b4. There are significant JavaScript performance improvements that appear to be coming in the next version.
• Ubuntu 9.04: 32-bit vs. 64-bit Benchmarks Another interesting benchmark article from the guys at TuxRadar. They benchmark the default 32-bit and 64-bit Ubuntu distros for boot time, archive decompression, kernel compilation time, ogg encoding, Adobe Flash, Google V8 JavaScript Benchmark for Firefox, and Blender rendering. From their results they show that the 64-bit version does indeed come away ahead in performance as expected.

I have speculated previously about what would have happened to Sun’s projects if IBM bought them, but had never considered Oracle a serious contender for acquisition. Well, they surprised me and they have acquired Sun for $7 billion. This appears to be not great news for MySQL as Oracle’s main product is their database. I’ll be following this story closely over the next few days as more details come out and we get a better idea of what Oracle plans to do with Sun’s properties. Hopefully this works out well for both sides and no massive layoffs / project cancellations come of it…

Round up time again, and this week we’ve got some of the usual suspects, but some fresh faces to mix it up as well.

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So, if you’re like me and have voided the warranties of all the other electronics in your house, but have yet to sink your teeth into your poor little Western Digital MyBook World – likely cowering in the corner pleading for you to put down the screwdriver – here are some helpful resources on getting the most out this handy little NAS box that just so happens to be running BusyBox linux.

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Anthony Lineberry is presenting a new linux kernel rootkit technique at the BlackHat conference in Amsterdam. From the article:

This offers rootkit developers a new way to hide files or processes, or interfere with network traffic. The trick is that, without requiring extensive rights, libmemrk uses the /dev/mem device driver to write arbitrary code from userspace into main memory. /dev/mem is an interface that enables use of the physically addressable memory. For example XServer and DOSEmu, both use it. Lineberry says introducing rootkits via /dev/mem is also less obvious than the established route via loadable kernel modules (LKMs).

….

Lineberry also gives some tips on how the Linux world can protect itself against rootkits of this kind. He believes it should be enough to modify the memory driver so that it doesn’t allow the write/read pointer lseek to look for more than 16 kilobytes in the memory area. Current versions of Red Hat and Fedora are inherently secure, because their kernel already incorporates the features of SELinux (Security Enhanced Linux).

Lineberry says there are also corresponding improvements in version 2.6.26 of the mainline kernel. For that purpose, the kernel was given two new functions: range_is_allowed() and devmem_is_allowed(). But this protection, he says, won’t be effective unless the preprocessor directive CONFIG_STRICT_DEVMEM has been enabled when the kernel is compiled. Otherwise, range_is_allowed() always gives returns success. Lineberry says that the kernel configuration setting STRICT_DEVMEM, which sets CONFIG_STRICT_DEVMEM, is not activated by default during kernel compilation. He was unable to say when libmemrk would be available for downloading, as he was still engaged in eliminating its last weaknesses.

Using /dev/mem was previously theorized in a  Phrack article about using /dev/kmem, but Lineberry is the first to implement this technique.

Time to start recompiling my gentoo kernels!

Johnny Long has launched his new site and initiative Hackers for Charity. Johnny is the author of  security books (including Google Hacking for Penetration Testers), security conference presenter (including my personal favorites “Hacking Hollywood” and “No-Tech Hacking“), creator and maintainer of the Google Hacking Database (GHDB) and an all around great guy.

Johnny documented the leadup to the launch of the new site and his charity work in Africa on his twitter feed for @ihackstuff and a longer form version is available on his site here. His goal is to get hackers to donate their time and money for things like food programs for children in East Africa, help with technology-related “microprojects” to help charities that cannot afford it and also donating hardware to help in building technology training centers in Africa. He and his family are planning to move to Uganda in June for a year to spearhead charity and humanitarian efforts and can use any support that you can give. Johnny has also discussed this initiative on the Pauldotcom Security Weekly Podcast Episode 139 and the Pauldotcom crew also did a special edition interview where he discusses why he got into security and how he became who he is today that can be directly downloaded here.

Johnny has been a great source of knowledge for me with his constant reminders to look at things from all angles whether it be crafting queries on google or someone leaving useful information prominently displayed on the seat of their car, and I applaud his efforts to give back in a really meaningful way. If you can help Johnny out at all (and it’s entirely possible that you cannot in tough times like these) with even a few dollars for his trip or donating your time to help charities or money to help buy food I’m sure he will be extremely thankful.

My short article cannot do Johnny’s intiative justice so please go over to his site to read more and do anything that you can, even if that is just spreading the word to more people.

Links:

• Hackers for Charitiy Forums Where to go to find out how you can help
• Hackers for Charity Store Buy awesome shirts and stickers to help out, I just put my order in
• Google Hacking for Penetration Testers, Volume 2 by Johnny Long on Amazon.com

• No Tech Hacking: A Guide to Social Engineering, Dumpster Diving, and Shoulder Surfing by Johnny Long on Amazon.com
  

We have a few distros that are new to our list and quite a few familiar faces this week. Read on for the full list.

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The Amarok team announced the availability of Amarok 2.1 Beta 1 codenamed “Nuliajuk”  yesterday. The changelog since the 2.0.2 release is absolutely massive and the longest changelog they’ve had in their history. Notable new features include a completely configurable user playlist that supports drag and drop, cue sheet support, and a new management method for applets in context view. Congrats to the Amarok team on what looks to be a very promising upcoming release!