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North Korea’s homegrown computer operating system mirrors its political one – marked by a high degree of paranoia and invasive snooping on users, according to two German researchers.

Getting a Linux server hacked and made part of a botnet is easier than some people may think. As two unrelated blog posts published in the past week demonstrate, running a vulnerable piece of software is often all that's required.

In world where everything is connected and everything can be hacked, it shouldn't be a surprise that a rifle can be hacked to have a shooter change targets. That's precisely what independent security researcher Runa Sandvik and her husband Michael Augur detailed at the Black Hat USA conference here.

Google has removed an extension from Chromium, the open source sibling to the Chrome browser, after accusations that the extension was installed surreptitiously and subsequently eavesdropped on Chromium users.

The issue first came to light in late May when a bug was filed in the Debian bug tracker. Chromium version 43 was seen downloading a binary extension from Google, and there was neither any ability to prevent this download, nor any source code available for the extension. The extension, called "Chrome Hotword," was found to be responsible for providing the browser's "OK, Google" functionality.

Privacy campaigners and open source developers are up in arms over the secret installing of Google software which is capable of listening in on conversations held in front of a computer. First spotted by open source developers, the Chromium browser – the open source basis for Google’s Chrome – began remotely installing audio-snooping code that was capable of listening to users.

A team of developers has created a rootkit for Linux systems that uses the processing power and memory of graphics cards instead of CPUs in order to remain hidden. The rootkit, called Jellyfish, is a proof of concept designed to demonstrate that completely running malware on GPUs (graphics processing units) is a viable option. This is possible because dedicated graphics cards have their own processors and RAM.

To rescue its struggling business, Hewlett-Packard is making a long-shot bid to change the fundamentals of how computers work.

Internet activists scored a landmark victory on Thursday as the top US telecommunications regulator approved a plan to govern broadband internet like a public utility. FCC says ‘we listened and we learned’, and passes strict broadband rules that represent ‘a red-letter day for internet freedom’

Backed by tech giants, Core Infrastructure Initiative will provide support for crucial Internet projects like OpenSSL

WD (Western Digital) today unveiled a hard drive that acts as a personal cloud, offering password-protected access to data over the Internet via any mobile or desktop device.WD's My Cloud drive runs on Linux and comes with management software that is compatible with iOS, Android, Windows or OS X. The My Cloud software also allows users to organize digital content from all of their devices and set up automated cloud backups.

Despite the rise in the number of patent trolls launching lawsuits affecting open source software, there are some glimmers of hope. The America Invents Act that was signed into law in September 2011 has provided new ways to prevent the issuance of over-broad software patents that could fuel future lawsuits.

Samsung Electronics Co's flagship Galaxy smartphone looks very similar to Apple's iPhone, but the South Korean firm has not violated the iPhone design, a Seoul court ruled on Friday. The South Korean ruling comes as the two technology titans are locked in a high-stakes global patent battle that mirrors a fierce rivalry for industry supremacy between two companies that control more than half the world's smartphone sales. The Seoul court ruling on Friday comes ahead of more crucial U.S. verdicts.

Security researcher Jonathan Brossard created a proof-of-concept hardware backdoor called Rakshasa that replaces a computer's BIOS (Basic Input Output System) and can compromise the operating system at boot time without leaving traces on the hard drive. Brossard, who is CEO and security research engineer at French security company Toucan System, demonstrated how the malware works at the Defcon hacker conference on Saturday, after also presenting it at the Black Hat security conference on Thursday.

Few apps available for the iPad sell for $300—and even fewer are considered a bargain at the price. But "Speak for Yourself" turned consumer-grade tablets into sophisticated Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) devices for those struggling to speak due to issues like autism; standalone hardware offering the same capabilities goes for up to $15,000.

Back in February, AMD raised the possibility that future processors from the company might include ARM cores. The assumption at the time was that these ARM cores would be used for computation. The company has revealed its first plans for chips combining x86 and ARM cores, but it turns out they won't be used for computing at all: the embedded ARM cores will be used to provide security services.

The board is built around the Broadcom BCM2835 chipset, which is designed to handle intensive multimedia. In a recent interview, Raspberry Pi founder Eben Upton claimed that the Broadcom graphics hardware in the Raspberry Pi offers twice the performance of the iPhone 4S GPU and soundly beats NVIDIA's Tegra 2. Upton worked for Broadcom on the team that developed the hardware.

Here are 13 of the best, oddest and most useful distributions that Linux has to offer, and why on Earth you'd want to use them.

A reinterpretation of Don McClean's"American Pie"

LXer Feature: 19-Oct-2011

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, the Elder Gods of the Digital Universe decreed that the Icon would rule the World of Desktops, just as it had dominated the Land of the Hand-held since the dawn of time. No matter that on a giant monitor the Firefox appeared at nearly life size, all desktop items were to be stripped of verbal clues to the nature of their meaning.

It is pretty clear that whether you use Apple, Linux, or Windows (to be scrupulously alphabetical about it) you are going to be at least offered – and more likely stuck with – a highly iconified desktop in any current or future offering of an operating system. It doesn't seem to matter whether you're using a phone, a tablet, or a Real Computer.