Canonical Announces the Availability of Xibo as a Snap, Chrome 76 Released, Viruses Discovered in LibreOffice, Pop!_OS 18.10 Reaches End of Life, and Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security Warns of Microsoft Office Online Privacy Risks

News briefs for August 1, 2019.

Canonical yesterday announced the availability of the Xibo open-source digital signage platform as a snap. From the announcement: "Xibo provides a comprehensive suite of digital signage products, with its Content Management System (CMS) at the heart of this experience-led offering. Xibo for Linux is completely free and natively built for the Xibo CMS, which can be installed on servers or combined with Xibo cloud hosting." You can download the Xibo snap here.

The Chrome team has promoted Chrome 76 to the stable channel for Windows, Mac and Linux. According to Softpedia News, "Highlights of the Chrome 76 release include Flash plugin blocked by default, Dark Mode support for websites, more improvements to the Payments API to allow merchant websites or web apps to respond when a user changes payment instruments, better support for PWAs (Progressive Web Apps), and the ability to control the 'Add to Home' screen mini-infobar."

Silent macro viruses have been discovered in LibreOffice. The Register reports that there's an "issue where documents can be configured to run macros silently on opening". The vulnerability was reported by Nils Emmerich and assigned CVE-2019-9848. According to The Register, "It appears that the supposedly fixed 6.2.5 is still vulnerable—confirmed by us." There is an updated bug report here. To fix it, "disable LibreLogo immediately if it is present and enabled in your build of LibreOffice."

System76 announces that Pop!_OS 18.10 has reached end of life and will no longer receive security updates. To keep your system secure and up to date, upgrade your OS to version 19.04.

Due to security and privacy risks, the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security is warning government institutions not to use Microsoft Office online or mobile apps. According to The Register, "A report from Privacy Company, which was commissioned by the ministry, found that Office Online and the Office mobile apps should be banned from government work. The report found the apps were not in compliance with a set of privacy measures Redmond has agreed to with the Dutch government."

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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