This week has been very busy with a beginning of a war, at the same in the cyber a cyberwar between two countries. The Linux side is rather calm, with an Ubuntu kernel and KDE Plasma LTS update. Intel is also showing its new products as well as a new Ultrabook-like concept, aiming for mobility.
Ukraine calls the hackers of the nation
The Ukraine Ministry of Defense has requested help from the nation’s hackers. They will be preparing for both defensive and offensive actions against Russia. As the hacker gathering begins, Anonymous declared a cyberwar on Russia as well. Ukraine on the other hand is being attacked by data wiping malware and DDoS attacks.
NTT Communications working on data center robots
Human labor in data centers is being replaced by robots. NTT Communications has announced their preparation for transitioning to robots that will be able to check pre-registered visitor information with face recognition. They will also be able to clean the work environment and detect the quality of the products as well.
Canonical releases a major Ubuntu kernel update
Canonical has released a series of kernel updates for its Ubuntu 21.10, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, Ubuntu 16.04, and Ubuntu 14.04 ESM versions. The updates bring security fixes for a variety of known vulnerabilities that allows DoS and arbitrary code execution attacks. The company urges the users for immediate action by updating their Ubuntu operating system to the latest versions.
CISA has published a list of free security tools
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency of the U.S. has provided some useful information about security advice for organizations and companies. In addition, the agency published a list of free tools and services for reducing the risks, detecting an intrusion, preparing to respond, and improving resilience against cyber attacks.
KDE Plasma 5.24.2 LTS is released
KDE has released the second point update for its most recent long-term support desktop environment, KDE Plasma 5.24 LTS. The new version brings numerous fixes as well as some improvements in Plasma Desktop, KWin, KScreen, Breeze, Plasma Workspace, and more for a better user experience. A simple update from KDE Plasma 5.24 LTS is possible via terminal.
Microsoft SQL servers are being attacked with Cobalt Strike
Threat actors are currently seeking for vulnerable targets to deploy their malware by using the popular penetration testing tool Cobalt Strike. At first, they are looking for an open 1433 TCP port, then trying to brute force the system by trying the widely used weak passwords or deploying dictionary attacks. As they breach, they tend to place cryptocurrency mining tools into the system.
Intel has a couple of big news to share
Intel has shared some important news from different areas of the company. The new Xeon processors, D-1700 and D-2700, have arrived with 4-10 and 4-20 cores, respectively, with the instruction of software-defined silicon. The company is also trying to achieve light and thin laptops with upcoming vPro Evo series laptops. They also acquired Linotronix for better and more responsive industrial applications based on Linux.