Alpine Linux Docker Images Shipped with Unlock Root Accounts, Mozilla Offering a Research Grant to Embed Tor into Firefox, Plasma 5.16 to Get a Rewritten Notification System, Unity 2019.2 Beta Released and Emirates NBD Wins Red Hat's 2019 Innovation Award

News briefs for May 10, 2019.

Alpine Linux Docker images available on Docker Hub shipped for three years with unlocked root accounts. Threatpost reports that "For three years, some Alpine Linux Docker images have shipped with a root account and no password, opening the door for attackers to easily access vulnerable servers and workstations provisioned for the images. Affected versions of Alpine Linux Docker distros include 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6, 3.7, 3.8 and 3.9 Alpine Docker Edge, according to Cisco Talos researchers who discovered the bug, tested each version and released their findings on Wednesday. Vulnerable images of Alpine Linux Dockers were available via the official Docker Hub portal since late 2015."

Mozilla has offered a research grant to find a way to embed Tor into Firefox to create a Super Private Browser mode. According to ZDNet, although Tor does work with Firefox, the integration slows it down, so "a better Tor integration is one of the key points that Mozilla is willing to fund via its Research Grants 2019H1 program that the organization announced last month." The article quotes Mozilla, "'Enabling a large number of additional users to make use of the Tor network requires solving for inefficiencies currently present in Tor so as to make the protocol optimal to deploy at scale.'"

Plasma 5.16 will have a completely rewritten notification system. Notifications will have a new look and feel, a do not disturb mode, revamped progress reporting and more. See Plasma developer Kai Uwe's blog for more information. The 5.16 release is expected sometime in June.

Unity 2019.2 beta is now available. From the announcement: "In this beta, we've included the popular Polybrush tool as a package, added the Unity Distribution Portal to get your games and apps to new global audiences, improved and expanded the toolsets for mobile, lighting, 2D, XR, and more." See the release notes for all the details, and get the beta from here.

Emirates NBD wins Red Hat's 2019 Red Hat Innovation Award. From the press release: "Emirates NBD, a leading banking group in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has built a distributed private cloud platform with Red Hat's hybrid cloud and application programming interface (API) technologies as part of its digital transformation strategy. Its platform provides a common foundation and access to cloud-native services for internal teams, improving integration, collaboration and speed of development. The Red Hat-based cloud helps enable Emirates NBD to better keep pace with its competition, to make banking more available, and to more dynamically offer modern, personalized services to customers."

Jill Franklin is an editorial professional with more than 17 years experience in technical and scientific publishing, both print and digital. As Executive Editor of Linux Journal, she wrangles writers, develops content, manages projects, meets deadlines and makes sentences sparkle. She also was Managing Editor for TUX and Embedded Linux Journal, and the book Linux in the Workplace. Before entering the Linux and open-source realm, she was Managing Editor of several scientific and scholarly journals, including Veterinary Pathology, The Journal of Mammalogy, Toxicologic Pathology and The Journal of Scientific Exploration. In a previous life, she taught English literature and composition, managed a bookstore and tended bar. When she’s not bugging writers about deadlines or editing copy, she throws pots, gardens and reads.

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