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Submission + - GNOME Merge Requests Opened to Drop X11 Session (phoronix.com)

Submitted by motang
motang writes: A set of merge requests were opened to drop X.ORG (X11) from GNOME desktop.
"This is the first step towards deprecating the x11 session, the systemd targets are removed, but the x11 functionality is still there in so you can restore the x11 session by installing the targets in the appropriate place on your own.

X11 has been receiving less and less testing. We have been defaulting to the wayland session since 2016 and it's about time we drop the x11 session completely.

Let's remove the targets this cycle and maybe carry on with removing rest of the x11 session code next cycle."

Submission + - Barracuda Urges Replacing, Not Patching, Its Email Security Gateways (krebsonsecurity.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It’s not often that a zero-day vulnerability causes a network security vendor to urge customers to physically remove and decommission an entire line of affected hardware — as opposed to just applying software updates. But experts say that is exactly what transpired this week with Barracuda Networks, as the company struggled to combat a sprawling malware threat which appears to have undermined its email security appliances in such a fundamental way that they can no longer be safely updated with software fixes.

Campbell, Calif. based Barracuda said it hired incident response firm Mandiant on May 18 after receiving reports about unusual traffic originating from its Email Security Gateway (ESG) devices, which are designed to sit at the edge of an organization’s network and scan all incoming and outgoing email for malware. On May 19, Barracuda identified that the malicious traffic was taking advantage of a previously unknown vulnerability in its ESG appliances, and on May 20 the company pushed a patch for the flaw to all affected appliances (CVE-2023-2868).

In its security advisory, Barracuda said the vulnerability existed in the Barracuda software component responsible for screening attachments for malware. More alarmingly, the company said it appears attackers first started exploiting the flaw in October 2022. But on June 6, Barracuda suddenly began urging its ESG customers to wholesale rip out and replace — not patch — affected appliances. “Impacted ESG appliances must be immediately replaced regardless of patch version level,” the company’s advisory warned. “Barracuda’s recommendation at this time is full replacement of the impacted ESG." [...] In addition to replacing devices, Barracuda says ESG customers should also rotate any credentials connected to the appliance(s), and check for signs of compromise dating back to at least October 2022 using the network and endpoint indicators the company has released publicly.

Submission + - Smart TV Industry Rocked By Alleged Patent Conspiracy From Chipmaker (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: During the pandemic, the demand for smart TVs dwindled as the supply chain for critical TV components became unreliable and consumers began tightening up on frivolous spending. Amid this smart TV demand slump, one of the world's top TV chipmakers, Taiwan-based Realtek, was hit with multiple meritless lawsuits by an alleged patent troll, Future Link Systems. These actions, Realtek said, drained its resources, made Realtek appear unreliable as a TV-chip supplier, and created "the harmful illusion of supply chain uncertainties in an already constrained industry." Determined to defend its reputation and maintain its dominant place in the market, Realtek filed a lawsuit this week in a US district court in California. In it, the TV chipmaker alleged that Future Link launched "an unprecedented and unseemly conspiracy" with the world's leading TV-chip supplier, Taiwan-based MediaTek, and was allegedly paid a "bounty" to file frivolous patent infringement claims intended to drive Realtek out of the TV-chip market.

The scheme allegedly worked like this: Future Link "intentionally and knowingly" asked a US district court in Texas and the US International Trade Commission "for injunctions prohibiting importation of Realtek TV Chips and devices containing the same into the United States," Realtek alleged. This allowed MediaTek to reap the benefits of diminished competition in that market, Realtek claimed. Today, Reuters reported that MediaTek has officially responded to Realtek's allegations, vowing to defend itself against the lawsuit and claiming that MediaTek will supply evidence to dispute Realtek's claims.

Realtek's lawsuit seeks a jury trial to fight back against MediaTek and Future Link, as well as IPValue Management, which the complaint said owns and operates Future Link. The TV chipmaker alleged that defendants violated unfair competition laws in California, as well as federal laws. Any damages won from the lawsuit will be donated to charity, Realtek said. Realtek's complaint likens MediaTek to "robber barons of the Industrial Age," allegedly seeking to destroy competition and secure a monopoly in the TV-chip market. "With this action, Realtek seeks to stop a modern robber baron and its hired henchmen, protect itself from ongoing injury, and guard against the destruction of competition in the critical semiconductor industry by holding defendants accountable for their conspiracy," the complaint said.

Submission + - Twitter ad sales plunge 59% (arstechnica.com) 7

Submitted by smooth wombat
smooth wombat writes: The ongoing saga of Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter continues. Originally purchased for $44 billion in October, the company may now be worth only 1/3 of that figure, according to Fidelity. Even worse, ad sales have plunged precipitously as the amount of bots and hate speech has ramped up since Musk took control. According to an internal presentation obtained by The New York Times, advertising revenue has plunged 59% year over year.

Twitter "has regularly fallen short of its US weekly sales projections, sometimes by as much as 30 percent," and that "performance is unlikely to improve anytime soon, according to the documents and seven current and former Twitter employees," the NYT reported. "Twitter's ad sales staff is concerned that advertisers may be spooked by a rise in hate speech and pornography on the social network, as well as more ads featuring online gambling and marijuana products, the people said."

The NYT also said it talked to six ad agency executives who "said their clients continued to limit spending on the platform. They cited confusion over Mr. Musk's changes to the service, inconsistent support from Twitter, and concerns about the persistent presence of misleading and toxic content on the platform."

One of the incidents cited by ad executives was the spread of an AI-generated image that falsely suggested there had been a large explosion at the Pentagon.

Submission + - Ubuntu Core as an Immutable OS (ubuntu.com) 1

Submitted by motang
motang writes: Canonical, the sponsor of widely popular Ubuntu Linux plans on shipping the next LTS in two versions. One traditional deb version and another immutable version based on snapd technology for enthusiasts to play with and give feedback. I for one am looking forward, as I am sure immutable is future of Linux distros.

Comment Time to move ...again (Score 1) 44

by motang (#63375455) Attached to: T-Mobile Is Buying Mint Mobile For $1.35 Billion
Not very happy with this. I was a Sprint customer from 2008 to 2016. Even though I was not a customers of Sprint for well over 4 years, I was still part of the hack on TMobile. Why the f* would you keep my sensitive into in you damn database, and not have them properly secured? Now the shit comes out, been happy Mint customer for over year, guess time to move to something else.

Submission + - KDE Plasma 5.27 Released (kde.org)

Submitted by jrepin
jrepin writes: Plasma is a popular desktop environment, which is also powering the desktop mode on the Steam Deck hand-held gaming console. Today, KDE Community announced release of KDE Plasma 5.27 , a Long Term Support (LTS) release and the final release in the Plasma 5 series which is based on Qt 5. This release brings a welcome wizard, which will guide you through setting up the desktop, and a new tiling system for KWin window manager, allowing you to set up custom tile layouts and resize adjacent tiled windows simultaneously. The settings for touch-enabled devices such as touchscreens and drawing tablets have been improved and expanded. For those lucky owners of Valve's Steam Deck gaming console, Discover can now perform system updates from within the desktop. Digital Clock desktop widget can now show the Hebrew calendar in its calendar view, and the Media Player widget is now touch-sensitive. The Bluetooth widget shows the battery status of connected devices when you hover the cursor over it. Those of you who use multiple monitors should benefit greatly from a major overhaul of how Plasma handles them. KDE Plasma now comes with Flatpak permissions settings integrated into the System Settings app. For details and other new features and improvements be sure to check out the full announcement.

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