This week, we saw that the notorious cybercriminal group, LockBit is shifting its focus from VMware to Windows. LockBit 3.0 now uses a legitimate Windows Defender command line tool. Also, the Linux Mint distribution has received a new version that delivers many bug fixes, improvements, and enhancements among its three flavors. All of the flavors of Linux Mint 21 are based on the latest long-term-support version of Ubuntu; 22.04. Also this week, Linux Torvalds officially announced the release of Linux Kernel 5.19 after two months of development and 8 release candidates. The development of this release took one extra week due to the problems while implementing Retbleed vulnerability fixes.
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Linux Mint 21 “Vanessa” is available for download with three flavors
Linux Mint has reached version 21. The new version is codenamed Vanessa and is released approximately eight months after the previous version. It comes with three different flavors based on the desktop environments they come with; Xfce 4.16, MATE 1.26, and Cinnamon 5.4, all based on Ubuntu 22.04 and Linux Kernel 5.15. Linux Mint 21 comes with a bunch of new features and changes. Blueberry is replaced with Blueman, a desktop environment-agnostic tool. Linux Mint 21 updates the old thumbnail generator which lacked the capability of generating thumbnails for certain file types.
Is GitLab going to delete inactive projects from its free tier?
Rumors have been circulating that GitLab is going to delete the dormant projects permanently from its free tier. According to the rumors, the company has decided to delete those projects to reduce yearly hosting costs by up to $1 million. Recently, multiple news has been circulated about GitLab’s free tier, suggesting that the company is going to take down the projects that are not active within a year. The reason is that those projects take up unnecessary disk space. The company already advises its users to delete such projects by themself on their documents administration page.
A breakthrough discovery in semiconductors is revealed
Researchers tested a cubic boron arsenide crystal and discovered that it offers high carrier mobility for both electrons and holes. This could be a major development for next-generation electronics. Research results show that cubic boron arsenide crystal could be an alternative to silicon material. The researchers have shared the results of their experiment on cubic boron arsenide and have reported that it has a unique combination of properties. A semiconductor with high ambipolar mobility could lead to making efficient versions of both types of devices. Although the discovery is a result of a lab experiment, the findings show the great potential that the material has.
Linux Kernel 5.19 is ready
Linux Torvalds officially announced the release of Linux Kernel 5.19 after two months of development and 8 release candidates. The development of this release took one extra week due to the problems while implementing Retbleed vulnerability fixes that affect CPUs on Linux-based operating systems. The final release of Linux Kernel comes with optimizations, improvements, security fixes, and improved hardware support. Linux Kernel comes with improvements for network drivers for both wireless and wired connections, including a Big TCP support, pureLiFi driver, and WFX WiFi low-power IoT receivers driver.
Oracle has begun to lay off employees in the U.S
Oracle is cutting the workforce in its some divisions in the U.S.This reduction will impact employees mostly in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the company was previously headquartered. This strategy is most likely a result of the divisions’ growth failure versus to rest of the company’s services last year as well as the cost reduction strategy and the company’s focus on recent cloud investments. Oracle was planning to reduce thousands of jobs in its worldwide workforce with cost cuts targeting up to $1 billion. According to its latest annual report, the software giant had about 143,000 full-time employees as of May 31. Canada, India, and parts of Europe are also expected to face workforce cuts in the coming weeks and months.
WebP support for WordPress is now merged into Core
The WordPress team will go ahead with its initial plan to add WebP by default in WordPress 6.1 release. The decision came after several months of discussions, and feedback from the WordPress community. Beginning of this year, the WordPress Performance Team started discussing bringing WebP by default into WordPress Core. However, after a month of investigation, WordPress put it on hold due to WebP concerns received from its community. Last month, the performance team revised their plan of merging WebP into Core with the WordPress 6.1 release which is expected to be available in fall 2022. Developers of WordPress have now merged WebP support for the upcoming WordPress 6.1 release.
LockBit abusing Windows Defender to load Cobalt Strike
SentinelOne announced that Lockbit is now targeting a security tool in Windows Defender to sideload Cobalt Strike payloads. The notorious LockBit team is shifting its focus from VMware to Windows. The report shows that in the latest iteration of the RaaS, LockBit 3.0, also known as LockBit Black, the team implemented various anti-analysis and anti-debugging routines and now targeting Windows. While trying to execute Cobalt Strike, the team detected a new tool used for sideloading a DLL that decrypts the payload. Attackers are also using a legitimate Windows Defender command line tool MpCmdRun.exe to decrypt and load Cobalt Strike payloads.