The H Roundup - Linux 3.7, Samba 4 and more WhatsApp

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

Mobile messaging service WhatsApp once again had to fix security problems with its application, but back at the desktop it also appears that Windows 8 applications are inherently unprotected against tampering, allowing users to gain all kinds of perks without having to pay for them. Meanwhile, on Android, researchers discovered that very little malware actually gets caught by the safeguards built into Android 4.2.

• WhatsApp closes hole again, but not in all versions
• Apps for Windows 8 easily hacked
• Only 15% of known malware caught by Android 4.2's verifier

After grappling with some bugs for longer than anticipated, Linus Torvalds released the latest version of the Linux kernel. He will also have to permanently retire the machine he first started to write Linux on (assuming he hasn't done so already, of course) as support for the i386 architecture in the Linux kernel is to permanently go away. Samba 4 was released, including support for Microsoft's Active Directory, and a first beta of LibreOffice 4.0 has also hit.

• Linux 3.7 arrives
• Linux will no longer work on the i386
• Samba 4 delivers free software Active Directory support
• LibreOffice 4.0 Beta released ready for a marathon test

Ubuntu Community Manager Jono Bacon apologised for calling free software luminary Richard Stallman "childish", Google and Facebook united to fight software patents, and a cunning botnet hides the communications with its C&C servers among the different layers of The Onion Router.

• Ubuntu Community Manager apologises to Stallman
• Google and Facebook join forces against software patents
• Botnet hidden in the Tor network

Featured Articles

With the release of the new version of Linux, Thorsten Leemhuis looks in detail at the features of the new kernel.

• What's new in Linux 3.7

Open Source Releases

This week saw the releases of SparkleShare 1.0, JBoss Tools 4 and JBoss Developer Studio 6, Blender 2.65, Slax 7.0, WordPress 3.5, version 1.0 of the Firefox OS Simulator, Couchbase Server 2.0, Univention Corporate Server 3.1, version 3.2 of the Spring Framework, and Suricata 1.4.

• Collaborative synchronisation service SparkleShare hits 1.0
• JBoss tools for Eclipse get a Juno refresh
• Smoke brings fire to Blender 2.65
• Slax is revived after three years of silence
• WordPress 3.5 brings new theme and media workflow
• Mozilla improves private browsing, releases FirefoxOS Simulator 1.0
• Couchbase Server 2.0 combines memcached and CouchDB
• Univention Corporate Server 3.1 with Active Directory functionality
• Spring Framework 3.2 released
• Suricata 1.4 improves performance and adds experimental features

On the development front, the first development milestone of Eclipse Orion 2.0 was released and the first open source release of the REBOL language appeared.

• First Orion 2.0 Milestone rises
• REBOL 3 open source code arrives

Security Alerts

• Microsoft's patch package includes critical Word fix
• Joomla sites misused to deploy malware
• Adobe updates Flash Player and Cold Fusion
  

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.

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