Linux 4.15 Kernel, GCC, LinuxBoot Project and More Cryptojacking

on January 29, 2018

News briefs for January 29, 2018.

The good: the Linux 4.15 kernel officially has been released. View the diff here, and also see the Linux Kernel Archives for more info.

The bad: more work needs to be done to handle Spectre/Meltdown security vulnerabilities. Linus makes it clear that compiler updates will need to work alongside the kernel ones to help mitigate these issues.

The ugly: unless you are running GCC 7.3 or later, you are still not in the clear.

The Linux Foundation recently announced the new LinuxBoot Project, which "looks to improve system boot performance and reliability by replacing some firmware functionality with a Linux kernel and runtime."

YouTube recently was caught serving ads with cryptojacking malware, as reported by Ars Technica and others.

Thanks to Petros Koutoupis for his contributions to this article.

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.