Keep Smart Assistants from Spying on You with Alias, Security Advisory for Old scp Clients, Major Metasploit Framework Release, Mozilla Working on a New Browser for Android and VirtualBox 6.0.2 Is Out
News briefs for January 16, 2019.
A new open-source hardware project called Alias will keep Amazon and Google smart assistants from spying on you. According to the project's GitHub page, "Alias is a teachable 'parasite' that is designed to give users more control over their smart assistants, both when it comes to customisation and privacy. Through a simple app the user can train Alias to react on a custom wake-word/sound, and once trained, Alias can take control over your home assistant by activating it for you."
A security advisory from Harry Sintonen was issued this week concerning the scp clients in OpenSSH, PuTTY and more. LWN quotes the advisory: "Many scp clients fail to verify if the objects returned by the scp server match those it asked for. This issue dates back to 1983 and rcp, on which scp is based. A separate flaw in the client allows the target directory attributes to be changed arbitrarily. Finally, two vulnerabilities in clients may allow server to spoof the client output."
A new major release of the open-source Metasploit Framework is now available. According to the Rapid7 blog post, version 5.0 of the penetration-testing tool is the first milestone update since version 4.0 came out in 2011. Along with a new release cadence, "Metasploit's new database and automation APIs, evasion modules and libraries, expanded language support, improved performance, and ease-of-use lay the groundwork for better teamwork capabilities, tool integration, and exploitation at scale."
Mozilla is working on a new Android browser called Fenix. According to ZDNet, this "new non-Firefox browser for Android is apparently targeted at younger people, with Mozilla developers on GitHub tagging the description, 'Fenix is not your parents' Android browser'." In addition, mockups suggest that Fenix developers are "currently toying with the idea of putting the URL bar and home button down at the bottom of user interface."
VirtualBox 6.0.2 was released yesterday, the first maintenance release of the 6.0 series. This release fixed a conflict between Debian and oracle build desktop files, fixed building drivers on SLES 12.4, fixed building shared folder driver with older kernels and much more. See the changelog for all the details.
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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