gPodder – podcast client written in Python

gPodder is an open source tool that downloads and manages free audio and video content (“podcasts”) for you. The software is written in Python and sports a simple GTK interface. The software package also includes a command-line interface which is called gpo. It lets you listen to podcasts on your computer or on mobile devices. The software is very mature; it’s been in development since 2005.

FOSS Project Spotlight: Run Remote Tasks on Linux and Windows with Puppet Bolt

Puppet, the company that makes automation software for managing systems and delivering software, has introduced Puppet Bolt, an open-source, agentless multiplatform tool for running commands, scripts, tasks and orchestrated workflows on remote Linux and Windows systems.

The tool, which is freely available as a Linux package, Ruby gem and macOS or Windows installer, is ideal for sysadmins and others who want to perform a wide range of automation tasks on remote bare-metal servers, VMs or cloud instances without the need for any prerequisites. Puppet Bolt doesn't require any previous Puppet know-how. Nor does it require a Puppet agent or Puppet master. It uses only SSH and WinRM (or can piggyback Puppet transports) to communicate and execute tasks on remote nodes.

Despite its simplicity, Puppet Bolt can execute all your existing scripts written in Bash, PowerShell, Python or any other language, stop and start Linux or Windows services, gather information about packages and system facts, or deploy procedural orchestrated workflows, otherwise known as plans. You can do all this right from your workstation or laptop.

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Amazon Alexa Security Risk Allows Hackers to Take Over Voice Commands, Steal Private Information

The world is changing and in the modern era, we are becoming reliant on our Internet of Things devices by the day. But this reliances could cost us everything, it could allow someone to steal our identity, bank information, medical history, and what not.

Amazon Alexa has been criticised for having a number of security flaws but Amazon has been quick to deal with them. However, this new security flaw may not have a fix at all. And this could be the most dangerous security threat yet.

According to research conducted by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), Amazon Alexa’s idiosyncrasies can be exploited through voice-commands to route users to malicious websites. Hackers are targeting the loopholes in machine learning algorithms to access private information.

Researchers show Alexa “skill squatting” could hijack voice commands

The success of Internet of Things devices such as Amazon's Echo and Google Home have created an opportunity for developers to build voice-activated applications that connect ever deeper—into customers' homes and personal lives. And—according to research by a team from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)—the potential to exploit some of the idiosyncrasies of voice-recognition machine-learning systems for malicious purposes has grown as well.

Called "skill squatting," the attack method (described in a paper presented at USENIX Security Symposium in Baltimore this month) is currently limited to the Amazon Alexa platform—but it reveals a weakness that other voice platforms will have to resolve as they widen support for third-party applications. Ars met with the UIUC team (which is comprised of Deepak Kumar, Riccardo Paccagnella, Paul Murley, Eric Hennenfent, Joshua Mason, Assistant Professor Adam Bates, and Professor Michael Bailey) at USENIX Security. We talked about their research and the potential for other threats posed by voice-based input to information systems.

The Linux Foundation Set to Improve Open-Source Code Security

CII is now working on further trying to identify which projects matter to the security of the internet as a whole, rather than taking a broader approach of looking at every single open-source project, he said. In his view, by prioritizing the projects that are the most critical to the operation of the internet and modern IT infrastructure, the CII can be more effective in improving security.

"You'll see in the next three months or so, additional activity coming out of CII," Zemlin said.

Among the new activities coming from the CII, will be additional human resources as well as new funding. The Linux Foundation had raised $5.8 million from contributors to help fund CII efforts, which Zemlin said has now all been spent. Zemlin that CII's money was used to fund development work for OpenSSL, NTP (Network Time Protocol) and conducting audits.

Apache Struts 2.3.25 and 2.5.17 resolve Cryptojacking Exploit Vulnerability

Information regarding a severe vulnerability found in Apache Struts was revealed last week. A proof of concept of the vulnerability was also published publicly along with the vulnerability’s details. Since then, it seems that malicious attackers have set out to repeatedly exploit the vulnerability to remotely install a cryptocurrency mining software on users’ devices and steal cryptocurrency through the exploit. The vulnerability has been allotted the CVE identification label CVE-2018-11776.

This behavior was first spotted by the security and data protection IT company, Volexity, and since its discovery, the rate of exploits has been increasing rapidly, drawing attention to the critical severity of the Apache Struts vulnerability. The company released the following statement on the issue: “Volexity has observed at least one threat actor attempting to exploit CVE-2018-11776 en masse in order to install the CNRig cryptocurrency miner. The initial observed scanning originated from the Russian and French IP addresses 95.161.225.94 and 167.114.171.27.”

Colourful comedy adventure '3 Minutes to Midnight' planned to release for Linux

Scarecrow Studio [Official Site] have officially announced that their colourful comedy adventure 3 Minutes to Midnight with a trailer and it's coming to Linux.

RAZED will bring lightning-fast platformer racing to Linux on September 14th

Soaked in some vibrant colours, lightning-fast platformer RAZED will requiring a good pair of running shoes when it releases with Linux support on September 14th.

Developed by Warpfish Games with a sprinkle of publishing from PQube Limited, RAZED is promising an exciting speedrunning experience across the 60 levels being included at release. These levels are spreadout across six different worlds, each of them having their own unique flavour. Each world will also come with an ability to unlock, along with a boss battle.

XCOM 2 to possibly get another expansion with 'TLE'

There's rumours circling around about XCOM 2 getting a new expansion and it seems whatever it turns out to be that Linux support should be there.

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