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Security researchers have discovered a Linux backdoor that uses a covert communication protocol to disguise its presence on compromised systems. The malware was used in an attack on a large (unnamed) hosting provider back in May. It cleverly attempted to avoid setting off any alarm bells by injecting its own communications into legitimate traffic, specifically SSH chatter.

Requests from governments worldwide for user information have more than doubled since three years ago. Worse still, says Google, is what the US won't let us tell you...

Google also urged Washington to take action to shore up privacy protections for US citizens: We strongly believe that the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) must be updated in this Congress, and we urge Congress to expeditiously enact a bright-line, warrant-for-content rule. Governmental entities should be required to obtain a warrant--issued based on a showing of probable cause--before requiring companies like Google to disclose the content of users' electronic communications.

Free Software Foundation president Richard Stallman tried to get Stratfor hacker Jeremy Hammond’s judge to only hand down a community service sentence. Hammond, instead, received 10 years in jail...

Following my recent post on the initiatives now in place to rebalance the demographics of the Linux Kernel community, I would like to share a set of specific training activities to get beginners, specifically college students, involved in the kernel. These were created by an enthusiastic group at Red Hat, including Matthew Whitehead and Priti Kumar, and unfolded on campus at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Rensselaer Center for Open Source (RCOS), and State University of New York at Albany.

Yesterday there was news that OpenACC 2.0 parallel programming support was coming to GCC complete with GPU acceleration support for NVIDIA GPUs. While it was exciting on the surface, it appears that this work may be poisonous and could have a very tough time making it upstream...

Many programs exist that try to serve as a replacement for MATLAB. They all differ in their capabilities—some extending beyond what is available in MATLAB, and others giving subsets of functions that focus on some problem area. In this article, let's look at another available option: FreeMat.

I remember the first time a friend of mine introduced me to Linux and showed me how I didn't need to type commands and path names fully—I could just start typing and use the Tab key to complete the rest. That was so cool. I think everybody loves Tab completion because it's something you use pretty much every minute you spend in the shell.

Littlebits is disrupting the open hardware space. It's "an open source library of electronic modules that snap together with magnets for prototyping, learning, and fun." The company is the invention of Ayah Bdeir, an MIT graduate and TED senior fellow, and was founded in September 2011. This is the normal for our kids: piecing together parts to make something they want to use, and being creators not just consumers! For one, many parents in the western world are having children later in life. Women often delay having a baby until they start a career, finish graduate school, or have more disposable income. A large majority of these mothers are highly educated and tend to be savvy consumers. Bear in mind, women are the leading or sole breadwinner in 40% of American households with children under 18. Here are the 5 big reasons why littleBits is exciting and different:

Linux-mad ex-Nokia bods prep mobes for Helsinki launch Finnish startup Jolla has revealed when the first batch of its Sailfish OS–based smartphones will be available to customers, along with new information about what software will be on offer when the devices ship.…

Xamarin, the company driving the development of the Mono open-source .NET framework that is generally loved or hated by Phoronix readers, has announced a new partnership with Microsoft...

We are celebrating the SELinux 10th year anversary this year. Hard to believe it. SELinux was first introduced in Fedora Core 3 and later in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. For those who have never used SELinux, or would like an explanation...

An even cloudier ultrabook? We'll make it so, says Dell Dell is taking another stab at making the Sputnik Ultrabook it converted from Windows to Ubuntu even cloudier for developers.…

Okay fanbois ... time to compile your very own Apple II The Computer History Museum has scored something of a coup, publishing – with Cupertino's permission – the source code for the Apple II's DOS, version 3.1.…

National Security Agency spooks can apparently scoop up millions of records every day from the internal networks of Google and Yahoo by secretly tapping into the communication links connecting the Silicon Valley tech giants' data servers. The new revelations suggest that NSA surveillance goes well beyond the court-approved, front-door access to Google and Yahoo user accounts under the now-infamous PRISM program.

Want to update your Android smartphone or tablet, but your vendor or carrier won't give you a fresh release? Cyanogen can help.

Who needs an Android cam when you can go with patent-friendly Linux While lawyers pettifog their patent arguments in the Apple-Samsung World Series, the South Korean has been quietly recruiting partners and developers to Tizen, and has launched its first Tizen-based product – a camera, not a phone.…

The communication technologies of the 21st Century have disrupted both the time-honored ways of delivering education and its social and cultural purposes. Today, the debate over delivery is whether the digital technologies and open source applications are actually a means for enlightenment. Many do not embrace these new technologies because they believe them to be a shoddy imitation of the class room experience. Or, that the millennial mind needs to be fixed, certainly not the educator's. The debate over purpose is whether online material is primarily a financial tool to create new revenue streams by video recording lectures to reach distance and nontraditional students or an opportunity to systemically restructure the substance and nature of higher education.

The Fedora 20 "Heisenbug" beta release has arrived with a preview of the latest fantastic, free, and open source technology currently under development. Take a peek inside:

OpenEMR intro OpenEMR is ONC-ATB Ambulatory EHR 2011-2012 certified electronic medical records software with scheduling, prescription, billing and security modules. It's free open source software (FOSS), which makes it user customizable. It is installed either on a single machine acting as a web-server in an office or on a hosted server. Either way users access OpenEMR thru a web browser. Patient and visit information is stored in a database and accessible for reporting. OpenEMR is a mature electronic health record system. It can track patient demographics, vitals, immunizations, medications, prescriptions, conditions, risk factors, visit clinical notes, and user specified variables. The real strengths of the program are its' affordability, extensive user and support base, translation features, CCHIT certification and ability for users to customize.

The Linux Foundation became a sponsor for the FOSS Outreach Program for Women earlier this year, choosing seven interns to hack on the Linux kernel from June through September. And, the results are in: the intern group ranked among the largest contributors to Linux kernel 3.12.