It’s easy to believe that releasing software at a slower pace means the software gets released more securely. While it’s sometimes counter-intuitive, my experience has been the exact opposite: quick releases are beneficial for shipping secure products. . Back in 2014 when I was running security and privacy for social products at Google, OpenSSL was hit with a rather nasty security vulnerability . We needed to update the application code immediately. Our fixed Android apps were publicly available within a few hours while the iOS apps were in review with Apple. Unfortunately, the rest of the Google team took weeks to remediate the risk and many companies took far longer. What allowed us to move quickly while the rest of the organization was behind? The social products at Google had the kind of CI/CD release setup for mobile applications that many organizations even today only dream of. Pair that with a truly excellent team of release engineers and we were able to get the job done. The organization as a whole, however, did not. And there’s no single entity to blame. Excellent engineers who cared about their users and security worked on each of these teams, but the difference was the social teams already had processes in place to make, test, approve, and roll out releases quickly. . Boosting software release speeds enhances security by swiftly addressing risks and refining response. Frequent updates ensure prompt vulnerability patches and secure coding practices. Software Release Cycle, Agile Security Practices, CI/CD Benefits. . Brittany Day
Nitrux Update Tool System (NUTS) command-line utility is now available for Nitrux users and it can also perform rollbacks. . Nitrux developer Uri Herrera has been working on a new utility that would make it a lot easier for existing users to upgrade their immutable Nitrux Linux installations to newer releases, called Nitrux Update Tool System (NUTS). Until now, upgrading your Nitrux installations to newer releases involved downloading the latest ISO image, writing on a USB flash drive, booting it on your Nitrux machine, and performing an installation using the Calamares installer where you had to make sure that it doesn’t overwrite your /home directory. Upgrading your Linux distro should be a straightforward process where you open a tool, check for new versions, and perform the upgrade with a few mouse clicks. Nitrux was missing such a tool until now, as the devs announced Nitrux Update Tool System, or NUTS for short. The link for this article located at 9 to 5 Linux is no longer available. . The Nitrux Upgrade Manager enhances user experience by facilitating effortless system enhancements and reverts within unchangeable configurations.. Nitrux Upgrade System, Nitrux Update Tool, Linux Installation Utility, Command-Line Upgrade, Immutable Linux. . LinuxSecurity.com Team
Six-monthly releases have become something of a talking point in free and open source software circles after the problems Ubuntu has faced with users unhappy over major bugs. While Ubuntu, which is now five years old, appears to struggle with this pace of development, the OpenBSD project has been doing six-monthly releases for the last 12 years - with no major bugs. . The head of the project, Theo de Raadt, says he came to the six-monthly schedule as a result of his experiences with NetBSD; he started the OpenBSD project in 1996 after being shut out by the NetBSD team. "NetBSD was dragging out releases - 'not ready yet!' - which ended up full of stupid bugs which should have been caught but were not, and I felt this was because it was just a replay of the vendor model of software development: 'product driven', 'must meet milestones' 'ship the new candy we planned'," he said in an interview with iTWire. The link for this article located at IT Wire is no longer available. . OpenBSD stands out with its biannual releases, emphasizing stability and security through thorough code audits and rigorous testing before each rollout. OpenBSD, Release Management, Bug Prevention, Software Development. . LinuxSecurity.com Team
Debian Etch, the next major version of the Linux distribution, will only be available on eight architectures, with four getting the boot. Steve Langasek, a release manager at Debian, said in a mailing list posting last week that the official release of Etch, which is due in December 2006, will not be ported to systems based on the ARM, Motorola 68k, IBM S/390 and Sun SPARC architectures. . The move to cut down the number of architectures supported was discussed during a project meeting in March 2005. The Debian release team agreed that it was not sustainable to continue making coordinated releases for as many architectures as the current version supports. "This [move] will drastically reduce the architecture coordination required in testing, giving us a more limber release process and (it is hoped) a much shorter release cycle on the order of 12-18 months," said Langasek in an email at the time. The link for this article located at ZDNet is no longer available. . Fedora intends to embrace six platforms for its upcoming release, dropping two to streamline development and optimize the update timeline.. Debian Architecture, Linux Release Management, Platform Support. . LinuxSecurity.com Team
A security breach is likely to delay for several days tonight's (AEST) scheduled release of the next version of the popular GNOME open source desktop environment, a member of the release team said. . . .. A security breach is likely to delay for several days tonight's (AEST) scheduled release of the next version of the popular GNOME open source desktop environment, a member of the release team said. Jeff Waugh, the head beekeeper of the GNOME Release Team and the director of the GNOME Foundation Board has confirmed that a security breach of the GNOME Web server is "likely to delay the release [of GNOME 2.6]...however we have not made that decision officially yet". He told ZDNet Australia the delay was likely to be about a week. Last night Owen Taylor, on behalf of the GNOME sysadmin team released a statement via their newsgroup that an intrusion had been made. The link for this article located at ZDNet.au is no longer available. . An unexpected server vulnerability may postpone the upcoming launch of GNOME 2.6 by roughly a week starting tonight.. GNOME Security Issues, Open Source Release Delay, Desktop Environment Management. . LinuxSecurity.com Team
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