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During an audit, Ulf Harnhammar discovered a vulnerability in synaesthesia, a program which represents sounds visually. synaesthesia created its configuration file while holding root privileges, allowing a local user to create files owned by root and writable by the user's primary group. This type of vulnerability can usually be easily exploited to execute arbitary code with root privileges by various means.

During an audit, Ulf Harnhammar discovered a vulnerability in lbreakout2, a game, where proper bounds checking was not performed on environment variables. This bug could be exploited by a local attacker to gain the privileges of group "games".

eWeek reviews live Linux distributions, including Knoppix, Gentoo LiveCD and others.

Stronger financial position will help JBoss compete with IBM and BEA in application-server market.

The legal maneuvering between The SCO Group Inc. and IBM took a new twist as IBM on Thursday gave the green light for SCO to amend its complaint, dropping its trade secret claims and replacing them with copyright violations.

The SCO Group's self-imposed 90-day deadline to sue an end user for not paying its Linux tax has come and gone. "You can bet your bottom dollar," writes veteran industry commentator Maureen O'Gara, "that SCO didn't want to do anything to set the magistrate's teeth on edge before she decides whether SCO has given IBM enough proof that it's got a case and decides whether or not IBM should turn over all its various versions of AIX and Dynix to SCO, which claims that's where most of the evidence resides."

Microsoft recently sent out half a million free copies of Microsoft Office, some of which were sent to members of the United States Air Force. Staff Sgt. C. Todd Lopez has informed members of the Air Force that they are obligated to return the software without using it, because of military regulations prohibiting the acceptance of gifts from those with which they do business. Interesting!

Microsoft's legal entanglement with Lindows.com turns focus on possibilities of desktop Linux; Novell and Sun best positioned in enterprise market, says analyst; server Linux penetration could mean opportunity on desktop side.

Skolelinux is an ambitious project that aims to provide schools with a flexible and low-cost IT solution based on Linux and KDE. I interviewed Bart Cornelis (Belgian), Kurt Gramlich (German), Conrad Newton (American) and Knut Yrvin (Norwegian) to learn more about Skolelinux and the role that KDE plays in it.

A variety of issues are addressed in this update.

"I was just sent this photograph, and it made me laugh, so I asked for permission to share it with all of you, so you can enjoy it too. Someone drove by SCO headquarters and took a picture."

The Open Palmtop Integrated Environment (Opie) project to develop a free graphical application environment for Linux handhelds and webpads has released a software develpment kit (SDK) based on the KDevelop3 open source IDE.

"Move to open source frees enterprise communications market from proprietary solutions currently stifling industry innovation and stalling mass-market adoption."

Paul Starzetz identified a new vulnerability in the linux memory management code that can be used by local attackers to obtain root privileges.

Opera board member John Patrick explains why Microsoft's domination of the browser market won't last forever and how Linux will continue to evolve.

MySQL AB's open-source database license has long confused ISVs and others who want to support MySQL but aren't sure whether they need to purchase a license. ... MySQL is open to input.

CVS is a tool to record, manage and distribute different versions of files. In other words, CVS is a version control system. It allows easy collaborative work, as each of the contributors can work in his local copy at the same time, without fear of overriding each other modifications. It allows the recovery of past versions (useful for tracking bugs), the creation of branches (for experimental development or for releases) and more.

Turbolinux Japan announced February 18 that the Department of Computer Science, Waseda University has installed "Turbolinux 10 Desktop" in 300 notebook PCs the department will use in Java programming courses for the new academic year that begins in April.

Lindows.com, Inc. today announced that the Microsoft Corporation has begun legal proceedings in Canada against Lindows.com, Inc. to prohibit the company from using the marks "Lindows", "Lindows.com", and "LindowsOS.

Omar Shahine is one of Microsoft's mail guys. In this blog entry, he discuss IMAP support in Entourage (which he and Mike Fullerton and Steve Friesen designed), Outlook and other clients.