A new critical security hole has been found in the VLC player from the VideoLan project, while there is still no public fix for the previous security hole found two weeks ago. The new vulnerability has been found in the handling of mmst:// URLs.

Version 3.6.2, which so far is only available as a beta, fixes a critical security hole in Firefox 3.6 for Windows that was discovered some time ago

Earlier than originally planned, the Mozilla Foundation developers have released Firefox version 3.6.2, closing a security hole that prompted the German Federal Office for Information Technology Security (BSI) to issue a warning about using Firefox.

Security, the experts like to tell us, is a process, not a product. With open source that can be a very good thing since when security problems are found they can be fixed quickly. That's the case over this last weekend, Feb. 9-10, when a security problem was found, and given a hot fix

The European Commission has officially published its long-awaited Digital Agenda, outlining its policy plans for the next five years. "While it includes some important building blocks for Free Software, the omission of Open Standards rips a gaping hole in this agenda," says Karsten Gerloff, President of the Free Software Foundation Europe.

A flaw in the implementation of the Reliable Datagram Sockets protocol (RDS) in the Linux kernel can be exploited to gain root (also known as superuser) rights or permissions on a victim's system. Attackers can exploit the hole to get complete control remotely once they have broken into the system.

The flaw discovered in Ralink's Wi-fi drivers for Windows last weekend also affects the Linux drivers – as already suspected. Attackers can exploit the hole to crash a computer remotely or possibly even inject and execute arbitrary code. Debian has released new packages for the rt2400, rt2500 and rt2570 models, but the packages need to be compiled by the user for the time being.

Two security researchers have demonstrated a new technique to stealthily intercept internet traffic on a scale previously presumed to be unavailable to anyone outside of intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency.

wine patches the black hole of code? Patches rarely receive feedback - positive or negative - on the wine-patches list. Patches that are rejected aren't labelled as such, or publicly given a reason for why they were. Hundreds of patches don't get in, that just need a tweak or two, that would REALLY improve the wine experience.