04.12.14
Posted in News Roundup at 3:58 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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Tabletop Simulator, a game that combines an RPG adventure with classic boards and a physics sandbox, will released on Steam for Linux.
Tabletop Simulator is a title developed and published by Berserk Games and aims to be the only one of its kind. It will allow users to go berserk with anger if they don’t succeed in playing any of the included games and destroy everything in sight.
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As you’ve no doubt heard over the years from writers and enthusiasts far beardier than I, there are all sorts of reasons for switching to Linux, from financial to ideological to functional, and everything in between. For some tasks, Linux is far superior to Windows. More importantly, though, there are many tasks where Windows isn’t significantly better than Linux — such as surfing the web (Chrome for Ubuntu is the same as Chrome for Windows or OS X). Even for gaming, Linux is definitely catching up with Windows, thanks to Steam and the Source engine.
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Football Manager Classic 2014, a simplified version of the famous Football Manager 2014 made by Sports Interactive and heading to PlayStation Vita, will also arrive on Steam for Linux.
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This is the fourth article in a series covering completely free and open-source games available for Linux, usually included in any of the popular distributions. These games are all included in the Ubuntu repositories, so you can install them with APT. The other three articles covering 22 other free games can be found at the following locations:
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Posted in News Roundup at 3:56 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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After five months of releasing the last alpha, NixNote 2 beta has finally arrived and can be downloaded. Nixnote, which was formerly known as Nevernote is an unofficial Evernote client for Linux. It was initially written in Java. However, NixNote 2 has been completely rewritten in C++ using the Qt framework. The main aim was to enhance speed and reduce the memory footprint. While it still uses Java to encrypt / decrypt text in NixNote 2, it’s available as an option. So those who don’t require this feature don’t need to install it.
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No matter how well organized you are, no matter how well you manage your time, you probably don’t get the chance to read all of the interesting articles that you find when you find them. To get around that, you can use services like Readability, Instapaper, and Pocket that allow you clip articles and read them when you do have the time.
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There’s been a lot of talk about the cloud as of late. Nowadays it seems that everybody’s getting in the game of cloud computing. Even Adobe has cloud offerings of its own and they’re going more towards software as a service as opposed to selling a pricey license every few years.
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FFmpeg developers have released a major 2.2 update only a few weeks ago, and a lot of new features have been added such as HNM version 4 demuxer and video decoder, Live HDS muxer, a complete Voxware MetaSound decoder, WebP encoding via libwebp, VP8 in Ogg demuxing, libx265 encoder, and more.
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Posted in News Roundup at 3:47 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Spain
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The state aims to criminalize protest with a troubling ‘citizens’ security’ law
Venezuela
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Hollywood liberals Sean Penn, Michael Moore and Oliver Stone have paid tribute to Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, who died on 5 March after a long battle with cancer, at the age of 58.
Other Covert Actions
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In an interview, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière, 60, warns that American spying has become “boundless” and expresses sorrow that approval ratings for the United States have plummeted in Germany.
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Soon after the 2004 U.S. coup to depose President Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti, I heard Aristide’s lawyer Ira Kurzban speaking in Miami. He began his talk with a riddle: “Why has there never been a coup in Washington D.C.?” The answer: “Because there is no U.S. Embassy in Washington D.C.” This introduction was greeted with wild applause by a mostly Haitian-American audience who understood it only too well.
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Not that this is news to PandoDaily readers, of course: Earlier this year, we broke the story about USAID co-investing with Omidyar Network in Ukraine NGOs that organized and led the Maidan revolution in Kiev, resulting in the overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych. That revolution hasn’t turned out so well — thanks to the “success” of the USAID-Omidyar-funded revolution, there’s talk of the West going to war with nuclear-armed Russia, Ukraine is losing entire chunks of territory like the proverbial leper on a waterslide, Kiev is run by a coalition of costume-party fascists and a handful of billionaire Mafia dons—and Vladimir Putin has never been more popular, or more tyrannical.
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The truth is, USAID’s role in a covert ops and subversion should be common knowledge—it’s not like the record is that hard to find. Either USAID has developed those Men In Black memory-zappers, or else—maybe we don’t want to remember.
This selective amnesia doesn’t do anyone else any good however, so I figured it might be useful to offer a brief look back at some of USAID’s darkest, ugliest moments. It’s important to note that not everything USAID does is patently evil — in fact, there are many programs that could even be described as good. But USAID, as with any agency of American power, is fully capable of and will continue to be an instrument of geopolitical and corporate force.
As Big Tech becomes increasingly intertwined with USAID’s missions around the world — particularly as USAID’s programs and language merge with the lexicon and interests of Silicon Valley (such as “Global Development Lab,” USAID’s new “DARPA-like” research arm) — now’s a good time to refresh our memories about USAID’s dark past.
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In Syria, Libya, Egypt, the Ukraine, and most recently in Palestine and Israel, too many calamitous scenarios have exposed the fault lines of US foreign policy.
Syria
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Remember the almost-war in Syria last year? An amazing new report — which our media won’t touch — is a must read
Ukraine
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Any report about Ukraine these torrid days needs to come with a political health warning, even if that report originates from what might be called “our own” side. This includes the latest revelation from Nato about Russian troop deployments on the borders of eastern Ukraine.
Over the past six months, but especially since the collapse of Viktor Yanukovych’s government in February and his circuitous flight from Kiev, there has been as much of a propaganda war as – potentially – a real war between Russia and the west. Two distinct, and for the most part mutually exclusive, versions of the truth have been put about, and have found receptive audiences on either side.
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This disruption is something we have seen in numerous other countries—at this very time from Venezuela to Thailand. The goal of these western-financed attacks has been to make the world safe for the 1%, the global super rich. Ukraine citizens who think they are fighting for democracy will eventually discover that they are really serving the western plutocracy. They will be left with a new government filled with old intentions. Ukrainians will end up with nothing to show for their efforts except a still more depressed and more corrupt economy, an enormous IMF debt, a worsening of social services, and an empty “democracy,” led by corrupt opportunists like Tymoshenko.
Journalism
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The Huffington Post is reporting that Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, two US journalists who have played prominent roles in the series of reporting about the classified National Security Agency documents leaked by Edward Snowden, will be in the US on Friday, the first time since the news about NSA surveillance programs first broke in the international media.
The two journalists met with Snowden and interviewed him in Hong Kong in June 2013 and helped with breaking the news of the leaks.
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Glenn Greenwald says he wasn’t 100 percent sure he wouldn’t be arrested.
European Privacy
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In 2010, the coalition announced that they would roll back the surveillance state including the “Ending of storage of internet and email records without good reason”. The coalition is on the threshold of fulfilling that pledge – at least in relation to data held by ISPs. ISPs meanwhile need to clarify what they are doing now that the law is gone.
NSA PRISM
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Social network says more than 70% of requests in second half of 2013 in connection with criminal cases led to release of content
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Dropbox has been hit with a firestorm of criticism after announcing that Iraq war architect Condoleezza Rice has joined its board.
The cloud-based file-sharing service said it was “honored to be adding someone as brilliant and accomplished as Dr. Rice to our team”.
However, the internet has lit up with anger over the decision, with many Dropbox users threatening to stop using its services – “Drop Dropbox” in other words.
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Rice joining Dropbox is the insult, not the injury, which is in the firm’s DNA: customer privacy as a feature, not a principle.
Torture
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While President Obama forbid via executive order the use of torture techniques such as waterboarding, or confinement in a small box or coffin, the same executive order cemented the use of isolation, forms of sensory deprivation, use of drugs, and sleep deprivation in the Department of Defense’s Army Field Manual 2-22.3, which is now the U.S. standard for interrogation. In that sense, irrespective of the controversies over waterboarding and the post-9/11 “enhanced interrogation” program approved by John Yoo and other Bush-era government attorneys, much of what was KUBARK lives on.
Rights
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Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies mistakenly shot to death a hostage who was fleeing from a knife-wielding attacker at a West Hollywood apartment, authorities announced Thursday.
John Winkler, 30, an aspiring television producer, died at a hospital following Monday night’s confrontation.
“Taking the life of an innocent person is a police officer’s greatest nightmare,” Interim Sheriff John Scott said at a news conference.
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Jonathan Fleming (center) talks with reporters after exiting a courtroom in New York on April 8. Fleming, who spent almost a quarter-century behind bars for murder, was freed on Tuesday and cleared of a killing that happened when he was 1,100 miles away on a Disney World vacation.
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Hoards of internet enthusiasts crowed in unison, when Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer was convicted of computer fraud in 2012 and later sentenced to 3.5 years in prison. And on Friday, those cries were justified. A federal appeals panel just overturned the conviction but not for the reasons some activists might’ve hoped for.
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Andrew “weev” Auernheimer is set to be released from federal prison, following a federal appeals court decision to reverse and vacate his conviction and sentence.
“I’m going to prison for arithmetic,” Weev declared last March. Shortly after, he was incarcerated in the federal prison system, charged with violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the same law that federal prosecutors were invoking against the late Aaron Swartz — a close friend of weev.
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A neo-Nazi mob affiliated to the Greek Golden Dawn party has intimidated a polyclinic of the human rights organisation Medecins du Monde (Doctors of the World) because it was providing healthcare services and medication to immigrants.
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Posted in News Roundup at 3:35 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Themes
Unity
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A new video out of Canonical is showing off the Unity 7 desktop with an X11 session running side-by-side with a Unity 8 Mir-powered session.
Stephen Webb, the engineering manager of desktop Unity at Canonical, posted a video of “A demonstration of Unity 8 (Mir) and unity 7 (X11) running on the same machine at the same time.” They’re in different sessions and showing it’s possible with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS without too many challenges.
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Meizu
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Canonical announced a while ago that it had chosen Meizu and BQ as the first hardware partners for the first Ubuntu-powered phones, and now an official video of Ubuntu running on a Meizu phone has been made public.
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Later this year the Meizu MX3 will become one of the first smartphone to ship with Ubuntu Linux. An Android version of the 5.1 inch smartphone is already available, but the Chinese phone maker started showing of an Ubuntu version at Mobile World Congress in February.
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Going back to January has been talk about Ubuntu on Chinese smart-phones and in February it was announced that Meizu is one of two Ubuntu Phone launch partners. Meizu dominates the Chinese market while the BQ Ubuntu Phone will target Europe.
More Phones
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Hello Linux Geeksters. Canonical has released yet another three Ubuntu Touch images over the weekend, coming with important fixes for Unity 8, the time zone support has been added to the organizer library, a bunch of boot improvements have been added, an enhanced version of calendar has been implemented, and the latest scopes API changes have been added.
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Ubuntu phone: Are you an Android for the past couple of years but recently you have been looking for a fresh take on your smartphone OS experience? If so, then you may want to check out Ubuntu’s phone which would arrive some time this year.
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Ubuntu for phones and tablets has confronted with a number of blockers in the development, but that hasn’t stopped its makers from implementing new features and fixing some bugs.
Surveillance-Friendly Computing
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Ubuntu One has been shut down and people are seeking alternatives.
The service is not shut down immediately–Canonical announced that the service will go offline as of June 1.
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Canonical – the company behind operating system Ubuntu and founded by open source pioneer Mark Shuttleworth – has discontinued its cloud-based file storage service Ubuntu One.
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Canonical has announced that the service in question will go offline in a couple of months. So you have until June 1 to migrate to a new cloud hosting service, while your data will be accessible until the end of July before it gets wiped clean. The reason behind the shutdown is basically due to high competition where other services are providing good amounts of storage for free and it would take huge investments for Canonical to do the same. To help you choose a new storage service, we’ve compiled a list of viable substitutes.
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Ultimate Edition
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The previous version of Ultimate Edition was a more down-to-earth variant that came up with some interesting features. It was one of the few distros out there that chose to keep Unity as a desktop environment, but the current version is a complete mess.
Elementary OS
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elementary OS “Isis” is the next iteration of the famous operating system that swooped everyone off their feet with some amazing looks and a new desktop concept. The first details about the new version have been revealed and it is going to be one of the most beautiful Linux distributions in the world.
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elementary OS developers are working to integrate a dedicated application for listening to podcasts and leave the Music app to do what it does best, namely play music.
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Posted in News Roundup at 3:25 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Linux
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The Imaging Source has announced the immediate availability of open source Linux support for all of its cameras.
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If you are using any of the versions released until now in the Linux kernel 3.12.x branch, you should consider an update to this build. Keep in mind that this is an LTS release, which means that it’s going to be around for a very long time. If you feel adventurous, you can ditch this LTS branch and go for the latest 3.14 version.
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This is not the big update that everyone has been waiting for, but at least there are a few things that will definitely catch your eye. For example, support has been added for systemd and upstart to control the Hamachi service, the network list is now immediately updated after going online or offline in a network, and the update interval count is now reset after each manual update.
File Systems
Linux 3.15
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A second Git pull request has been made for the ACPI and power management code within the kernel for Linux 3.15.
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Earlier in April I wrote about link-time optimization support for the kernel nearing reality. LTO support for the Linux kernel has been in the works since 2012 but only with Linux 3.15 will it become a mainline possibility. Link-Time Optimizations via GCC and other compilers allow for various compile-time optimizations to be applied across the binary as a whole. Enabling link-time optimizations can yield some significant performance improvements but results in much slower compile times and with large programs can cause problems due to the size of optimizing the complete binary at once.
Graphics Stack
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With OpenArena the frame-rate went from just 8 FPS on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS to 19 FPS when using the Linux 3.14 kernel. Linux 3.14 allows for the R3 Graphics to re-clock to their highest performance state compared to Linux 3.13 where DPM isn’t enabled by default for GCN GPUs. When going to Mesa 10.2-devel that will be officially released in about one month, the frame-rate rose to 25 FPS… That’s over a three-fold performance improvement when pulling in the bleeding edge latest code.
Wayland
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Intel developers continue experimenting with a Resize and Rotate protocol extension for Wayland’s Weston compositor that was originally designed for the X.Org Server.
Intel
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The “Cherryview” Atom processors feature “Gen8″ graphics (Broadwell) capabilities, there’s three display pipes, three HDMI/DisplayPort/EmbeddedDisplayPort ports, two MIPI DSI display ports, and VGA support has been dropped from Cherryview.
AMD
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Alex Deucher sent out a set of three patches today to update the microcode used by the AMD “Southern Islands” graphics processors.
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As expected AMD unveiled the Radeon R9 295X graphics card this morning as the “world’s fastest” for those with $1500 USD to spare.
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After much information being made public in March concerning AMD’s AM1 platform that delivers socketed APUs for low-cost desktop systems, the first of these new socketed APUs are shipping today under the restored Athlon and Sempron branding. We’ve been fortunate enough to have one of the new Athlon AM1 APUs at Phoronix for a few days of testing.
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Gallium3D
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The Gallium3D HUD has gain some new reporting capabilities for the Radeon Gallium3D R600 and RadeonSI drivers.
X.Org
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Keith wrote on the mailing list, “With this, the 1.16 merge window comes to a close. Thanks to everyone who contributed a huge pile of fixes and new features! We’re a week behind schedule; Kristian was a bit late with Xwayland, and that included a driver-visible API change that needed fixing (this appears to have been my fault originally).”
NVIDIA
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This latest driver update arrives only a day after the previous Beta release, which caused quite a stir because it featured the option to overclock the video card. It may not seem like much but, in fact, this is actually great progress for the NVIDIA drivers.
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Benchmarks
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04.11.14
Posted in Microsoft at 9:46 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Everyone should get fired for buying into PRISM
Summary: The leaks from Edward Snowden show that rather than “nobody gets fired for buying Microsoft” we should adopt the “everyone should get fired for buying Microsoft” (the seminal company behind PRISM)
According to this post from Lauren Weinstein, one New York-based store learned the hard way that it should have stayed away from Microsoft. “The store has now suddenly closed,” he writes. “Apparently the new Microsoft software didn’t work out as hoped, at least as far as the storefront is concerned.”
What kind of a store chooses to rely on Microsoft for business? Probably the type of store owned by people who grew up with nothing but Windows and are sometimes shocked (paralysis) into thinking that nothing except Microsoft would be suitable. We see a lot of the same thinking in governments where, unlike when it comes to a private business, buyers are liable to citizens who foot the bill. In Australia, for example, politicians or their ‘technical’ staff have just chosen to be spied on by the NSA through Microsoft. And believe it or not, they even pay Microsoft for this ‘privilege’ to be spied on (well, the taxpayers are paying, without even the opportunity to vote on this matter). How negligent — to put it politely — must the CIO(s) have been?
As iophk put it: “Now they lost control over their data. In the EU the exit cost is taken into account when assessing the TCO. Here it looks like it wasn’t. Queensland could have saved more and still kept their data if they had moved to Apache OpenOffice or to LibreOffice.
Politicians within and outside the US should never host anything with Microsoft, ever. Microsoft is collaborating with the NSA, which spies not only on government officials in ‘ally’ countries but also inside the United States (as it recently confirmed). Software like Skype is a spy and Microsoft’s E-mail hosting is known to be spied on by Microsoft for business reasons, not security reasons. It’s a crime, but nobody is in jail. It’s done in collusion with the state.
CIOs and business heads who choose Microsoft despite all that is known (especially after the NSA leaks) probably deserve to be fired. Watch how DPI giant BT (which also assists in drone assassinations) falsely claims access to Microsoft Azure to be “secure” (a ‘secure’ link to GCHQ, NSA, etc. through abusive monopolist Microsoft). This is PRISM in disguise of “security”.
Nobody should ever host anything at all on Microsoft servers. Those who do ‘on behalf’ of citizens (and at their expense) certainly don’t deserve to keep their jobs. They are aiding illegal surveillance and their choice is also technically unwise (which is another issue that we tackled in past years). █
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Posted in FUD, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Windows at 8:43 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Government the only likely entity to exploit Heartbleed®, but Microsoft and its peripheral PR apparatus try to scare everyone away from GNU/Linux
A LOT of concerned people, including large businesses, are moving to GNU/Linux for improved security right now (I am aware of some businesses but cannot name them), bearing in mind that Windows XP is no longer secure even in Microsoft’s eyes. Microsoft put back doors in Windows (for governments), so when even Microsoft claims something to be not secure, then it should be ever more alarming.
We are still seeing many articles about migration from Windows XP to GNU/Linux, not just in blogs of GNU/Linux advocates [1,2,3] but also in Microsoft-friendly news sites [4], widely-distributed publications like The Economist [5] (typically GNU/Linux-hostile or just ignoring GNU/Linux), GNU/Linux-oriented sites [6,7], and the Linux Foundation [8]. There are other general news sites [9-12] that cover this (suggesting GNU/Linux as a replacement for XP) and on the other hand there are those in the GNU/Linux world who are apathetic about it [13]. The common theme, however, is rather clear. People are being advised to explore GNU/Linux and jump off the treadmill of Windows ‘upgrades’. Microsoft must be worried. There are many confirmatory indicators of this worry — ones that we covered before.
We recently saw a lot of FUD over GNU/Linux security coming from Microsoft-linked sources, basically inciting/creating unnecessary panic by twisting facts and never mentioning Microsoft’s security issues (some are there by design, like NSA back doors or even FBI entry points).
Someone who worked for the FBI (worse than the NSA by some criteria) and then Microsoft (the back doors partner of the NSA) then revealed Heartbleed®, on the very same date that Windows XP is officially dead. What’s the likelihood that this was a coincidence? Microsoft’s ‘former’ security chief sure helped distract from stuff like the articles about moving to GNU/Linux for security. If it was a stunt, then it sure worked like a charm.
Heartbleed® does not seem like the work of secret agencies [14], but it sure helps them a lot [15], undermining activism [16] and Free software [17], as well as security in Apple and Microsoft products (they use OpenSSL too and they still have no patches, unlike GNU/Linux distributions). Pay attention to how Microsoft boosters like Miguel de Icaza twist this to look like a problem only for GNU/Linux. Microsoft propagandist and partner Tony Bradley (he works with Microsoft) plants some FOSS-hostile articles to that effect [18] as well. Microsoft must be having a day field with its PR/propaganda agents. As we expected, Microsoft partners now spread articles full of FUD — stuff which was published in a timely fashion by a Microsoft-linked firm, exactly upon Windows XP EOL. Watch some timely new revisionism (PR) from Microsoft Peter, using false claims (changing history) to push people to ‘upgrade’ from XP to Vista 8. This is not journalism; it’s advertising from a Microsoft booster who infiltrated a news site. Many sites are still affected by Heartbleed®, but reports from Microsoft-friendly journalists (who were behind some of the previous security smears against GNU/Linux) exaggerate the numbers. At my job, for example, no Web site was found to be affected by Heartbleed® (one can check this online [19]). The main source of danger right now is government spies [20,21] (or government crackers). Those who understand the technical details [20] even guess that government actors may have played a role in putting the bug there [22]. The FSF responded by highlighting the fact that proprietary system have back doors by design [23] (the FSF says “Microsoft are even sharing bugs with others like the NSA without fixing them”) and other GNU/Linux-oriented sites did cover the incident, but not with an excessive sense of panic [24-29], unlike Gates-funded papers [30].
To summarise, what we are dealing with here is an incident where the firm of Microsoft’s ‘former’ security chief shares bugs with the whole world irresponsibly (many sites had not been secured by that time in which his firm decided to release details, exactly when XP hits EOL). And having checked customers’ systems overnight, I found that nothing was affected by this OpenSSL bug. Irresponsible reporting from Microsoft-friendly journalists (with history) claims — falsely — that 2/3 of the Web is affected. Talk about appalling FUD. Wow!
One sure thing is, Chromebook sales are not going to be stopped by it, not even by Microsoft's attack ads (hypocritical FUD is now central to Microsoft’s official strategy and there is no hiding it). █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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If you think you can’t do without XP, think again. I have not touched an XP machine or any other OS from M$ for years now because all my PCs run GNU/Linux. If you think you can’t do without some application that only runs on XP or any other OS from M$, think again. Many millions of users of GNU/Linux don’t have those problems that M$ causes: malware, spyware, re-re-reboots, and lock-in.
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Linux is frequently touted as one of the most successful open-source projects ever. Since its release in the 90s, the versatile OS has gradually become more popular with users. With a 1.49% market share, Linux is now rated the third-most popular PC operating system after Windows and Mac OS X operating systems.
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But to what? For those determined to stay in the Microsoft camp, forget Windows 8 or 8.1. Not only do they demand too much in the way of hardware, both have been been written off as a debacle as bad as the Windows Vista disaster. With their touch-based design, they require users to do things differently from the way they are familiar with. Microsoft is now hurrying out Windows 9 in a bid to pre-empt a mass migration to Linux or Macintosh.
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Microsoft has ended its support for Windows XP and most of you might not even care but for some of you who do care and understand the complications involved in using a discontinued piece of software, you are in for a change. You can either install already outdated Windows 7, no one’s favourite Windows 8 or you can join the elite group of Linux users by installing on of the many available flavours of Linux.
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One reason technology choices are so difficult is technology is always a work in progress; your one choice has lasting consequences since the technology rarely ever lives on its own, and most good technology is never done — that is unless you’re Windows XP. As most of us know, Microsoft today is turning off support for Windows XP. That means that roughly 30 percent of all Windows users will cease to get security updates and other ongoing maintenance. Since hackers disproportionately target Windows products, this is a big deal.
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RMS is the guru of computing freedom, and a great source. He started the “hack” movement as an outsider inside MIT during the Vietnam protesting era, and founded both the GNU software movement and the Free S/W Foundation. He seems (to me) to be highly-influenced by socialist ideals.
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In this case, Linux Mint 16 is the perfect candidate for a Windows 7 look-alike transformation and the Windows7 Pack (Cinnamon+ GTK3/2) theme works like a charm. You will have to move the files manually in the appropriate folders, but the themes should be easy to activate.
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To simplify the downloading and installing, collections of these many software components, called “distributions“, are available ready for users to download and start using straight away.
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On Tuesday, Microsoft finally end support for one of its most successful operating systems, the 13-year-old Windows XP. Owing to this, there will no longer be any official security updates and bug fixes from the company, meaning those who continue to use the OS will be left vulnerable to security threats.
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Frankly, I’ve never liked Windows XP. I found the interface to be an eyesore way back when it was first released and using it never improved the experience. I’m very glad to see that it’s going away finally, it’s demise has been been long overdue. I’m rather surprised that it has hung on this long, given that it was never all that anyway. It’s almost become like some sort of a disease you can’t quite get rid of, it just goes on and on and on.
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The Heartbleed bug in OpenSSL wasn’t placed there deliberately, according to the coder responsible for the mistake.
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“The best guess is that the only ones exploiting this bug are spy agencies, if anyone at all.”
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At this point, the probability is close to one that every target has had its private keys extracted by multiple intelligence agencies. The real question is whether or not someone deliberately inserted this bug into OpenSSL, and has had two years of unfettered access to everything. My guess is accident, but I have no proof.
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GOOGLE HAS BEEN QUICK to jump on the demise of Windows XP, and is looking to persuade businesses still running the operating system to buy Google Chromebooks instead.
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