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Debian

Submission + - Fedora 8 officially released (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by Cat in the Hat
Cat in the Hat writes: Fedora 8 has been officially released. Ars Technica has a run-down of what's new in Fedora 8, including the PulseAudio sound daemon, Nodoka visual style, and a new authentication system. 'Another major change in Fedora 8 is the new PolicyKit authentication system that makes authority escalation more secure. Instead of providing root access to an entire program when it needs higher privileges, PolicyKit makes it possible to isolate individual operations that require higher privileges and put them into system services that can be accessed through D-Bus. Another advantage of PolicyKit is that it will give administrators more control over which users and programs have access to individual operations that use escalated privileges.'
Linux Business

Submission + - How would you refocus linux development?

Submitted by buddyglass
buddyglass writes: The majority of Slashdot users are no doubt appreciative of linux in the general sense, but I suspect we all have some application or aspect of the platform that we wish was more stable, performant, feature-rich, etc. So my question is a hypothetical one: if you were able to devote a "significant" number of resources (read: high-quality developers) to a particular app or area of the kernel, and were able to set the focus for those resources (stability, performance, new features, etc.), what application or kernel area would you attempt to improve, and what would you focus on improving?
Operating Systems

Submission + - Linus Torvalds speaks out on future of Linux (apcmag.com)

Submitted by
SlinkySausage
SlinkySausage writes: "Linus Torvalds has laid out his plans for the future of Linux, including the 3.0 kernel [there probably won't be one], problems with the Linux release cycles and which distro he personally runs on his home PC. "'Compile everything by hand' ones simply weren't interesting to me," Torvalds says. And there was that time he was bitten by a ferocious real-life penguin. The interview on APCMag.com is interesting reading."
Security

Submission + - OpenBSD's Systrace broken by Cambridge researcher (lightbluetouchpaper.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: University of Cambridge researcher Robert Watson has published a paper at the First USENIX Workshop On Offensive Technology (WOOT07) in which he describes serious vulnerabilities in OpenBSD's Systrace, Sudo, Sysjail, the TIS GSWTK framework, and CerbNG, and that the technique is also effective against many commercially available anti-virus systems. His slides include sample exploit code that bypasses access control, virtualization, and intrusion detection in under 20 lines of C code consisting solely of memcpy() and fork(). Sysjail has now withdrawn their software recommending against any use, and NetBSD has disabled Systrace by default in their upcoming release.
Security

Submission + - The Physical Hacks at DefCon (physorg.com)

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "As we all know, DefCon is occurring in Vegas this weekend but Saturday held a room that focused on possibly the oldest form of hacking — lockpicking. That's right, as software security becomes better and better, the focus may instead shift towards simple hacking tips like looking over someone's shoulder for their password, faking employment or just picking the locks to gain access to the building where machines are left on overnight. This is nothing to sneeze at, "Medeco deadbolt locks relied on worldwide at embassies, banks and other tempting targets for thieves, spies or terrorists can be opened in seconds with a strip of metal and a thin screw driver, Marc Tobias of Security.org demonstrated for AFP ... Tobias says he refuses to publish details of 'defeating' the locks because they are used in places ranging from homes, banks and jewelers to the White House and the Pentagon. He asked AFP not to disclose how it is done." I'm sure all Slashdot readers are savvy enough to use firewall(s) but do you know and trust what locks 'physically' protect your data from hacks like these?"
Microsoft

Submission + - Survey: Windows loses ground with developers (infoworld.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: InfoWorld is running an article that Linux is gaining share as the number of developers targeting Windows falls 12 percent, according to an Evans Data survey of North American developers. The arrival of Windows Vista likely only kept the numbers from being even worse.
Operating Systems

Submission + - Sun CEO reveals ZFS will be OSX default filesystem

Submitted by Fjan11
Fjan11 writes: Sun's Jonathan Schwartz announced that "Apple would be making ZFS "the file system" in Mac OS 10.5 Leopard". It seems likely that Leopad's Time Machine feature will require ZFS to run, because ZFS has back-up and snapshots build right in to the filesystem as well as a host of other features, such as built in Raid. Jobs is probably not happy about his thunder being stolen right before for the June 11th keynote...
The Internet

Submission + - Wikipedia May Require Proof of Credentials

Submitted by
narramissic
narramissic writes: "According to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, a new policy is currently under discussion by the community of users who regularly write and maintain Wikipedia that would require contributors to the site who claim certain credentials to prove they really have them. The new policy comes after one of Wikipedia's most prolific and respected editors, who went by the pseudonym 'Essjay,' was found not to be the 'tenured professor of theology' he claimed to be but a run-of-the-mill 24 year-old from Kentucky. Said Wales, 'To discover that someone had been deceiving the community for a long time really was a bit of a blow to our trust. Wikipedia is built on the idea of trusting other people and people being honest and we find that in the most part everyone is, so it was a real disappointment.'"

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