elementary Blog: Updates for July, 2022

Firstly, thank you so much for your patience this month! I’ve been out sick with COVID for about 3 weeks, so I haven’t been able to contribute much or organize releases this month. I want to give a special thanks to our volunteer community who has continued to make improvements and move forward on projects in my absence. I’m excited to catch up and get back to work to make the most of the rest of this month. Having said that, this is going to be a very brief updates post. [...] A ton of energy in the community has gone into Gtk 4 porting for OS 7 and beyond. The team is making steady progress on porting System Settings and we landed the Gtk 4 port for Sideload. We’ve also uncovered some style issues and gaps in style constants, so if you’re working on porting your app to our Flatpak Platform 7, know that we’ll be releasing some fixes soon. I want to give some special acknowledgment to Owen Malicsi who has taken a lot of ownership over Gtk4 porting. Owen started contributing to elementary to improve his development skillset in preparation for college, and he’s done an amazing job both in successfully porting components to Gtk 4 as well as identifying blockers and creating discussions around refactoring for Gtk 4 paradigms. I’m super proud of his growth and contribution and we wish him well in his studies! Thanks Owen! Read on

Russian-Made Baikal M1-Based Laptop Shows Up in Pre-Production

Bitblaze, a Russian brand specializing in servers, storage systems, and workstations, has demonstrated its pre-production Bitblaze Titan BM15 laptop based around the Baikal-M1 processor designed in Russia. The notebook, designed primarily for government agencies and enthusiasts, is said to enter mass production in November. The only question is whether the company can indeed mass produce the machine now that TSMC does not produce advanced chips for any company in Russia. "I have a legend in my hands: a pre-production Bitblaze Titan (opens in new tab) laptop based on the Baikal-M processor is ready," said Yana Brush, commercial director of Prombit, the company behind Bitblaze, in a blog post (opens in new tab). "A very decent built quality, thin aluminum case, light weight. I have tested some mainstream software applications: office programs and YouTube. Works great, lasts five hours on the battery. We continue testing in various workloads, getting ready for the official release." [...] Keeping in mind that the company does not disclose which Linux distributions the machine will run, it should be testing various software. Read on

The sad fate of the JingPad A1 Linux tablet

Apple has long dominated the tablet space, but that hasn’t stopped companies from releasing hundreds of Android, Windows, or Chrome OS tablets in recent years. The JingPad A1 was supposed to be something different: it shipped with JingOS, a Linux-based operating system optimized for touchscreen input but capable of running full-fledged desktop apps. At least that was the idea. But when Jingling, the company behind the tablet, began shipping units to customers last year, many found the software to too buggy for the general public and not as open as Linux enthusiasts would like. Eventually the company ran out of money, laid off staff, and did provide a way to replace the operating system with Android or something else (like Ubuntu Touch). While Liliputing has covered the rise and fall of Jingling, but we never actually got to spend any time with the JingPad A1 tablet itself. Now TechHut has put together a video documenting the highs and lows… with some hands-on demonstrations of wha the tablet could and could not do. Read on Also: Essential Sensors

Security Leftovers

• CERT-In identifies multiple vulnerabilities in Microsoft products and Red Hat Linux Kernel

  CERT-In on Wednesday issued alerts for multiple vulnerabilities in Microsoft products including Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Windows Support Diagnostic Tool, and Red Hat Linux Kernel. The vulnerabilities are said to be used by remote attackers to access sensitive information and execute arbitrary code on Microsoft products while in Red Hat Linux Kernel they can be exploited to gain elevated privileges and access sensitive information

• Iron Tiger Compromises Chat Application Mimi, Targets Windows, Mac, and Linux Users [Ed: The issue is MiMi, not the OS]

  We noticed a server hosting both a HyperBro sample and a malicious Mach-O executable named “rshell.” HyperBro is a malware family used by Iron Tiger (also known as Emissary Panda, APT27, Bronze Union, and Luckymouse), an advanced persistent threat (APT) group that has been performing cyberespionage for almost a decade, and there have been no reports of this group associated with a tool for Mac operating systems (OS). We analyzed the Mach-O sample and found it to be a new malware family targeting the Mac OS platform. We also eventually found samples compiled for the Linux platform that belongs to the same malware family.

• This Week in Malware - Fileless Linux Cryptominer, 100 Packages [Ed: The issue is not "Linux" but malware that one can unwittingly install in Linux]