Red Hat and Novell have released patches for a critical security hole in their Linux distributions, which stems from a vulnerability in the KDE desktop environment.

Linux vendors have warned of a serious security flaw affecting the KDE desktop environment, one of the two main graphical user interfaces used on Linux and Unix operating systems.

nnposter has reported a vulnerability in Ntop, which can be exploited by malicious, local users to perform certain actions on a vulnerable system with escalated privileges.

It wouldn't be a Friday, without a trip to Linux.com for the weekly security warnings.

This week, advisories were releaed for bluez-utils, thunderbird, mysql, epiphany, system-config-netboot, kdbg, doxygen, kdeedu, ncpfs, gaim, system-config-bind, tar, vnc, metacity, cups, pygtk, slocate, myodbc, xpdf, libgal2, dhcpv, diskdumputils, kdebase, cvs, hwdata, eject, pcre, kismet, wikiwiki, apache, tor, netpbm, vim, and elm. The distributors include Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, and Red Hat.

Don't be fooled by the title, Linux.com isn't looking into the future. Rather, they're listing this week's security warnings.

This week, advisories were released for amd64, fetchmail, Mozilla, heartbeat, clamav, lam, vim, evolution, audit, evolution, mc, kdeaddons, kdeadmin, kdebase, kdedu, kdegames, kdegraphics, kdemultimedia, kdenetwork, kdepim, kdesdk, kdetoys, kdeutils, kdevelop, kdewebdev, koffice, xpdf, arts, kdepim, epiphany, kdbg, doxygen, ncpfs, gaim, pcre, tar, vnc, metacity, cups, pygtk, shadow-utils, and netpbm. The distributors include Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, an Red Hat.

Apple has fixed a problem with a security patch on Monday and re-released it.

Apple has re-released a mammoth security patch after the original update broke 64-bit applications.

Here is a belated Linux Advisory Watch from Linux.com.

This week, advisories were released for yaboot, ttmkfdir, Netpbm, ruby, squirrelmail, sysreport, xpdf, kdegraphics, cups, ucd-snmp, gaim, ethereal, and gpdf. The distributors include Fedora, Gentoo, and Red Hat.

A new study has found Linux kernel vunerabilities are becoming less frequent while the amount of code actually grows.

In December, Coverity looked at version 2.6.9 of the Linux kernel, the heart of the open-source operating system, and found six critical defects in the core file system and networking code. In July, the code analysis company scanned the latest version of the Linux kernel, version 2.6.12, and found no such programming errors, Coverity CEO Seth Hallem said.

Linux.com informs us of the weekly security warnings via the Linux Advisory Watch.

This week, perhaps the most interesting articles include cacti, heimdal, webcalendar, ekg, phpbb2, setarch, openoffice, pvm, fetchmail, mozilla,devhelp, yelp, subversion, zlib, kdenetwork, perl, module-init-tools, mgetty, system-config-netboot, libsepol, gnbc-kernel, dlm-kernel, cman-kernel, util-linux, tar, gcc, libtool, audit, zlib, apr, pam_ldap, fetchmail, sandbox, Koptete, Clam, Ethereal, cpio, kdenetwork, httpd, and dhcpd. The distributors include Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, and Red Hat.

It may be Sunday, but we aren't going to skip Friday's Linux Advisory Watch.

This week, advisories were released for krb5, heimdal, phpgadmin, ekg, heartbeat, affix, zlib, cacti, java, diskdumputils, radvd, bind, kdelibs, freeradius, firefox, thunderbird, ypserv, mysql, setarch, openoffice, pvm, fetchmail, mozilla, epiphany, devhelp, yelp, php, ruby, acroread, phpgroupware, dhcpd, mediawiki, cpio, shorewall, and kdenetwork. The distributors include Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, and Red Hat.

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