This has been an incredible year in the tech industry and tech journalism. Finally, we are seeing more and more physical events, even though they are less crowded after the Covid pandemic. This year, the data center industry has been pushing further for sustainability and green energy. The Linux side is keeping its stability, as usual. However, Steam Deck is released with its custom Linux-based operating system, which will attract gamers and more developers into the Linux ecosystem.
Ransomware, Retbleed, and Dirty Pipe
It was mostly a calm year for cybersecurity, even though many threat actors are doing their best for phishing, ransomware, and double extortion attacks. Thankfully we didn’t have a new vulnerability that could set the tech industry on fire like last year’s Log4j. But we had Dirty Pipe and Retbleed vulnerabilities that caused headaches for IT guys in different ways.
This year was a great one for us too. Cloud7 is getting bigger and stronger with our new colleagues, further improving our capabilities while delivering daily content for our audience. And we are very excited for 2023! We have shared more than 2,000 stories this year, some exciting ones.
Here we gather the most popular articles on Cloud7 for 2022 by categories.
Linux | Linux kernel 6.0 is released. What’s new?
Linux kernel 6.0 has been around for a while; many distributions have adopted this version, and even some are going for 6.1 already. Linux kernel 6.0 brought many new features, which we have gathered in this article. However, the main reason this article became the most popular among the other Linux news is its version number, 6.0. People expected a big step forward when it became “6.0” instead of “5.20”. But it was just because 5.20 would be too big; there was no other reason for transitioning to 6.0.
- Linux kernel 6.0 has been released. What’s new?
- Parrot OS “Electro Ara” has been released; download it now
- Linux Mint 21 “Vanessa” is available for download with three flavors
Cybersecurity | A new Linux kernel vulnerability was found: Dirty Pipe
Dirty Pipe, a Linux kernel vulnerability that has been around since the 5.8 version, was found by Max Kellermann. The vulnerability, which can be tracked as CVE-2022-0847, had a CVSS score of 7.8 and worked in a combination of conditions. When all the conditions were met, the attackers could corrupt files in target systems storage by following a couple of steps. Thankfully it was not a big problem as Log4j, but it still managed to become our top story for this year in cybersecurity.
- A new Linux kernel vulnerability was found: Dirty Pipe
- Synology NAS devices are critically vulnerable
- Spring Core Java framework Spring4Shell zero-day vulnerability has appeared
Cloud Computing | Ubuntu update on Azure VMs causing DNS problems
Back at the end of August, Azure virtual machine on cloud customers reported issues regarding DNS resolving. It was later understood that the problem was in systemd version 237-3ubuntu10.54, which came with a recent Ubuntu 18.04 operating system update. As a temporary solution, Microsoft advised users to reboot their VM instances because they can receive a fresh DHCP lease, which could potentially fix the issue. Interestingly, the same problem had happened in Ubuntu 20.04 almost two years before this problem.
- Ubuntu update on Azure VMs causing DNS problems
- Pax8 expanding into the Baltic Region with TVG acquisition
- Nvidia introduces CV-CUDA to accelerate computer vision cloud applications
Web Hosting | Matthew Hill, the founder of Liquid Web, died unexpectedly
This summer, the web hosting industry was shaken by the sad news coming from Matthew Hill, the founder of Liquid Web. Hill passed away at the age of 41 in West Hollywood, California. His death was unexpected, and there is no information about the cause. Matthew Hill founded the company while he was still a student in high school in 1997 and sold it in 2015 to a Chicago-based investment firm. This was indeed one of the saddest news from the industry this year.
- Matthew Hill, the founder of Liquid Web, died unexpectedly
- cPanel is to increase its prices in December
- Let’s Encrypt preparing to revoke the latest certificates
Data Center | Equinix announces its tenth Paris data center
Equinix, one of the most active data center companies this year, has begun the year by opening its tenth data center in Paris, France. The new data center in Paris, PA10, utilizes a heat recovery system that transfers the waste energy to the urban heating network and a local swimming pool. It provides 3,775 m2 of colocation space and 1,525 cabinets of capacity, later to be upgraded to provide 5,775 m2 of space and 2,250 cabinets.
- Equinix announces its tenth Paris data center
- KKR and GIP completed the CyrusOne acquisition
- DCF Data Center Expo 2022 has ended
Development | GitHub Copilot becoming free for students
In May, GitHub announced that the controversial Copilot service will be free for students and open-source contributors. Copilot is an AI-powered service that can suggest code lines. Along with this news, the company has also announced its new feature for the AI service, Copilot Explain, which can translate code into natural language descriptions. However, GitHub warned users those services are currently in the early stages, and might be buggy for a while.
- GitHub Copilot is becoming free for students
- Stack Overflow published its developer survey 2022 results
- Envato is closing Envato Studio and Twenty20
Hardware | Pay-to-unlock Intel CPUs are on the way
The news about Intel’s “Software Defined Silicon” platform was around earlier this year. The concept behind the platform was making the hardware subscription-based, an approach that Intel already tried in 2010. By the time we wrote this article, the details of the Software had Defined Silicon was uncertain, especially their method to charge the users. Later, Software Defined Silicon was renamed to Intel On Demand.