The H Roundup - Cracking warnings, database secrecy and hardened bugs

Welcome to The H Roundup, your rapid review of the week with the most read news on The H, the security alerts and open source releases, and the essential feature articles – all in one quick-to-scan news item.

Top News

Microsoft warned users about using PPTP and MS-CHAP without taking extra precautions, Oracle's new habit of dealing with MySQL bugs in private was causing problems and, back with Microsoft again, entries in the HOSTS file on Windows have been disappearing and it's a Microsoft security tool that's doing it.

• Microsoft says don't use PPTP and MS-CHAP
• Oracle secrecy threatens open MySQL development
• Microsoft's security software modifies HOSTS file

The LibreOffice team came up with a new way to focus on those hard-to-fix bugs, Firefox 17 will make add-on data harder to reach, and tampering with the logs of a computer with systemd got a lot harder.

• LibreOffice team to focus on hard bugs
• Firefox 17 to make add-ons more secure
• Systemd to secure system log information against attacks

The MPlayerX developer is getting out of the Mac OS X sandbox after finding it too hard to work around the restrictions, Debian testers are asked to check out a systemd to sysvinit converter that could increase systemd adoption, Adobe's Flash Player got an update and closed a half dozen critical holes, and Apache closed two security holes and fixed a pile of other bugs.

• Sandboxing forces MPlayerX to leave Mac App Store
• Debian testing a systemd-to-sysvinit converter
• Adobe Flash Player update patches six critical holes
• Apache Server 2.4.3 fixes over fifty bugs and two security holes

Featured Articles

This week, there is a Linux kernel flavour to the features with Thorsten Leemhuis pleading with people to make sure that they test new kernels and don't make assumptions that things will keep working. This is followed by the start of his expert dig into what's coming in the Linux kernel 3.6, with a look at filesystems and storage.

• Kernel Comment: Get testing!
• Kernel Log - Coming in 3.6 (Part 1): Filesystems and storage

Open Source Releases

• Multi-channel audio support for Wine
• GDB 7.5 supports Go language
• Version 1.0 of openHAB home automation bus arrives
• PowerTOP 2.1 supports GPUs and more languages
• Webconverger moves away from Firefox ESR
• VirtualBox 4.1 update improves stability
• Google adds Octane to JavaScript benchmark mix
• Rike project management tool open sourced
• Sony's DASH sensor framework for Android opens for collaboration
• Banshee media player improves Mac OS X support
• Audio tag editor Puddletag 1.0 brings AcoustID support
• FlightGear 2.8.0 has a more realistic world
• Apache OpenOffice 3.4.1 adds languages, stability and performance
• Canonical releases Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS
• Release candidate for FreeBSD 9.1 arrives
• Zarafa Collaboration Platform 7.1 released
• JavaServer Faces comes to Liferay portal

For everything The H has published in the last week, check out the last seven days of news. To keep up with The H, subscribe to the RSS feed, or follow honlinenews on Twitter. You can follow The H's own tweeting on Twitter as honline.

(djwm)