The H Week - OpenOffice, LibreOffice and yet more hacker attacks

OpenOffice.org was accepted into the Apache Incubator as LibreOffice was updated, UK government commitment to open standards slipped, CSS Lint offered to "hurt your feelings" and a release candidate appeared for Firefox 5. The IMF was hacked and LulzSec attacked the US Senate and CIA, Citibank credit card accounts were compromised, $500,000 worth of Bitcoin stolen, and Microsoft's patch day fixed 34 holes.

Featured

In The H this week, Glyn Moody asked if we still need the FSF, GNU and GPL, and Thorsten Leemhuis previewed the next version of Powertop, brought the latest Linux news in a new edition of the Kernel Log, and looked at how Xen has let KVM take the virtualisation lead.

• Do we still need the FSF, GNU and GPL?
• Powertop 2.0: saving power under Linux
• Kernel Log: Llano support, union filesystems
• Xen lets KVM overtake
  

Open Source

A big week for OpenOffice.org as the project was accepted into the Apache Software Foundation's Incubator. The FSF supported LibreOffice and, with a newly appointed advisory board, The Document Foundation released an update to LibreOffice 3.3.

• FSF backs LibreOffice while Apache votes
• OpenOffice.org accepted into Apache Incubator
• The Document Foundation appoints Advisory Board
• LibreOffice 3.3.3 now available

The EKOPath 4 compiler suite was open sourced, Python 2.7 and 3.1 got maintenance updates and Ada developers got Adacore's latest GPL release of the GNAT development environment.

• EKOPath 4 Compiler Suite open sourced
• Python 2.7.2 and 3.1.4 arrive
• GNAT GPL 2011 released for Ada developers and Lego fans

The UK Cabinet Office appears to have backtracked on commitments made to adopt open standards, Adobe stopped porting AIR to desktop Linux citing poor take-up, a new CSS checking tool set out to "hurt your feelings", the latest Airtime radio station software was released and Fedora 13 headed towards its end of life.

• UK open standards commitment cut back
• Adobe stops porting AIR to desktop Linux
• Style check: CSS Lint released
• Airtime: open source software for radio stations
• Fedora 13 approaches end of life

Open Source Releases

New releases for SeaMonkey, KDE, Tiki, Apache Traffic Server, Titanium Studio, FreeNAS, Parted Magic, Tiny Core Linux, MariaDB, Native Linux KVM Tool and Horde Groupware.

• Mozilla releases SeaMonkey 2.1
• KDE SC 4.6.4 released alongside new Kontact Suite
• Tiki 7.0 drops support for IE6
• Apache Traffic Server 3.0.0 goes 64 bit
• Appcelerator launches Titanium Studio
• FreeNAS 0.7.2 adds virtual machine guest support
• Parted Magic 6.2 released
• Tiny Core Linux 3.7 brings "multi-Core" ISOs
• MariaDB now ships with HeidiSQL
• Linux 3.1 with new KVM tool?
• Horde Groupware 4.0 released

In development

• Firefox 5 nears with release candidate
• New project scans for WordPress holes
• WordPress 3.2 approaches with release candidate

Security

Breaches all round this week as the International Monetary Fund admitted it had been attacked, games companies found themselves in the hackers' sights, LulzSec took on the US Senate and CIA web sites, 360,000 credit card accounts were compromised at Citibank with a simple URL manipulation and the Turkish authorities said they'd arrested people in connection with Anonymous attacks on government systems.

• IMF attack "a very major breach"
• Games companies under attack
• LulzSec hacks US Senate's web site
• LulzSec takes down the CIA web site
• Hackers breached Citibank security using simple URL manipulation - Update
• Turkish police announce Anonymous attack arrests

Nissan LEAF electric cars were discovered to be oversharing their location and speed with RSS feeds. A screenshot stealing hole was found in Firefox 4's WebGL and malware took advantage of a permissions flaw on devices with custom Android ROMs. A report claimed that $500,000 worth of Bitcoin had gone astray, and a trojan that targets Bitcoins wallets surfaced. Metasploit offered a bounty for creating exploits.

• Hole found in Firefox 4 WebGL implementation
• Malware targets custom Android ROMs
  
• Nissan LEAF cars leak speed, position, destination to RSS feeds
• Metasploit offers bounty for exploits
• Bitcoin theft: half a million dollars gone?
• Trojan targets Bitcoin wallets

Security Alerts

It was Patch Tuesday this week and Microsoft and Adobe released lots of patches for their products.

• Microsoft patch day sees release of 16 patches, fixing 34 vulnerabilities
• Adobe patches Flash, Reader and more

For all last week's news see The H's last seven days of news and, 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.

(crve)