Purism Progress Report, Spectre Mitigation for Ubuntu, Malicious Chrome Extensions and More

News briefs for January 18, 2018.

Purism, the group behind the security and privacy-focused Librem 5 phone just recently published a progress report highlighting the latest developments and design decisions to its crowdfunded project. Changes include an even faster processor.

Canonical has made Spectre Variant One and Spectre Variant Two mitigation availble in Ubuntu Proposed with updated kernels for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, 16.04 LTS and 17.10. Those kernels will be in the stable release updates starting January 22, 2018. See ubuntu insights for more information.

Icebrg's Security Research Team reports that more than 500,000 users and businesses may be at risk from downloading malicious Chrome extensions. Icebrg warns that "removal of the malicious extension from the Chrome Web Store may not remove it from the impacted hosts. Additionally, the use of third-party Chrome extension repositories may still allow the installation of the extensions."

Due to the popularity of running Azure instances on Linux, The Linux Foundation has announced a new training course, Administering Linux on Azure (LFS205), which will be taught by Sander van Vugt (former LJ writer!).

The Unity game engine will be improving its graphics capabilities this year. See today's post on the Unity Blog for more information.

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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