Linux Kernel 4.10 Comes with New Security Features

Linus Torvalds has released Linux kernel 4.10, code-named Anniversary Edition, which brings many new features, including support for new hardware. One of the most significant improvements is support for virtual GPU. "This release adds support for Intel GVT-g for KVM (a.k.a. KVMGT), a full GPU virtualization solution with mediated pass-through, starting from 4th generation Intel Core (Haswell) processors with Intel Graphics," according to Kernelnewbies, "The capability of running native graphics driver inside a VM, without hypervisor intervention in performance critical paths, achieves a good balance among performance, feature, and sharing capability."

The Linux kernel supports many filesystems, and with this release, it has improved support for some of these filesystems, including ext4, F2FS, XFS, OverlayFS, NFS, CIFS, UBIFS, BeFS, and LogFS.

The release has also improved support for ARM-powered devices, including Huawei Nexus 6P (Angler), LG Nexus 5X (Bullhead), Nexbox A1 and A95X Android TV boxes, the Pine64 development board based on Allwinner A64, the Globalscale Marvell ESPRESSOBin community board based on Armada 3700, and the Renesas "R-Car Starter Kit Pro" (M3ULCB) low-cost automotive board.

Announcing the release, Torvalds wrote on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML): "On the whole, 4.10 didn't end up as small as it initially looked. After the huge release that was 4.9, I expected things to be pretty quiet, but it ended up very much a fairly average release by modern kernel standards. So we have about 13,000 commits (not counting merges – that would be another 1200+ commits if you count those)."

It's a big release, so it's not possible to list all of the new features here. Please refer to the Kernelnewbies writeup for detailed information.

OpenStack Day Program Announced

Several well-known speakers have committed to speak at OpenStack Day. Experts such as Alexander Stellwag and Kurt Garloff from T-Systems will speak about performance problems and the deployment model at OpenStack; Diederich Wermser will explain network automation in the OpenStack environment using SDN; and Wolfgang Ries and Carsten Duch will address the operation of an OpenStack installation. The complete program can be found online.

The day will end with a panel discussion moderated by Linux-Magazin author Udo Seidel. Following the question "Quo vadis OpenStack?", well-known cloud experts will discuss the future of OpenStack.

The event is run by Computec Media GmbH, the publisher of Linux-Magazin, the German sister magazine of Linux Pro Magazine, in cooperation with event organizer Pluspol and Deutsche Messe AG. The main sponsor of the OpenStack Day is Telekom Deutschland GmbH.

Google Discloses Serious Security Flaws in Microsoft Products

Google disclosed an unpatched vulnerability in Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge web browsers. After giving Microsoft 90 days to fix the bug, Google researchers have published the details of the vulnerability along with proof-of-concept code. The security hole affects all supported Windows versions, including Windows 7, 8.1, and 10.

According to The Hacker News, "The vulnerability (CVE-2017-0037), discovered and disclosed by Google Project Zero team's researcher Ivan Fratric, is a so-called 'type confusion flaw' in a module in Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer that potentially leads to arbitrary code execution."

Google discovered the vulnerability in November 2016 and reported it to Microsoft on November 25, but for unknown reasons, Microsoft did not fix the problem. Google gave Microsoft three months to patch the security holes, and after that, Google publicly released the information about the vulnerability.

This is not the only security hole plaguing Microsoft's products. Earlier, Google disclosed flaws in Microsoft's GDI library that affects every Windows version all the way back to Windows Vista. Another unpatched flaw affects the SMB protocol, allowing attackers to crash the system.