IBM has made Firefox the company’s default Web browser. According to IBM’s vice president of Linux and open source software, company-wide Firefox adoption will accelerate IBM’s shift to cloud computing.

Via: ars technica

The release of OpenBSD 4.6 was released on Sunday. Highlights of the new release include:

• Simplified installation process.
• Improved documentation and man pages.
• New versions of packages in ports (package management system). Over 5800 packages in total.
• Hardware driver updates: sensors, chipsets, video devices etc. New drivers, functionality and reliability updates.
• Network stack updates: stricter default settings. Wired interfaces are now preferred over wireless ones.
• Firewall changes: enabled by default, stricter checking of package formats.
• Routing daemon updates: mainly BGP daemon updates, fixes few bugs.
• New more secure smtpd (mail server).New OpenSSH released (5.3).

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ISC is reporting that a new, remotely exploitable vulnerability has been found in all versions of BIND 9. A specially crafted dynamic update packet will make BIND die with an assertion error. There is an exploit in the wild and there are no access control workarounds. Red Hat claims that the exploit does not affect BIND servers that do not allow dynamic updates, but the ISC post refutes that. This is a high-priority vulnerability and DNS operators will want to upgrade BIND to the latest patch level.

Via: Slashdot

Nmap Security Scanner version 5 has been released. Significant performance improvements were made, and many scripts have been added. Nmap can now log into Windows a system and perform local checks such as Conficker detection.

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Vancouver city council has endorsed the principles of making its data open and accessible to everyone where possible, adopting open standards for that data and considering open source software when replacing existing applications.

More details on the announcement available at the Straight

OpenBSD 4.5 has been released today. This release includes OpenSSH 5.2 as well as various tweaks, bugfixes, and enhancements. New and extended platforms include sparc64, and added device drivers. See the announcement page for a full list

The Tokeneer research project has been released to the open source community by the US National Security Agency. The main goal of this project was to show how highly secure software can be developed cost-effectively.

“Tokeneer has been written in SPARK Ada, a high level programming language designed for high-assurance applications. Originally a subset of the Ada language, it is designed in such a way that all SPARK programs are legal Ada programs. Ada is the natural choice for mission-critical, high-integrity systems due to its combination of flexibility, reliability and ease of use, and SPARK further adds a static verification toolset that combines depth, soundness, efficiency and formal guarantees.”

Via Slashdot

In an important milestone for open source, a draft defense authorizing act in Congress includes wording plugging open source software. Both cost and software security appears to be considerations.

“It’s rare to see a concept as technical as open-source software in a federal funding bill. But the House’s proposed National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009 (H.R. 5658) includes language that calls for military services to consider open-source software when procuring manned or unmanned aerial vehicles.”