JingOS arrives as China’s first Linux Distro, offers iPadOS-like features and functions

JingOS was built with the idea of improving the functionality and productivity of a tablet overall. So, the team behind the new operating system took inspiration from the Cupertino based giant’s iPadOS platform to offer a simple/clean, yet productive and efficient UI design that can ensure that your tablets are a mini computer that one can work on, on the go. JingOS is not only a tablet OS but a full function Linux distro.

9to5Linux Weekly Roundup: January 17th, 2021

Thank you everyone for following 9to5Linux on social media; we’re nearing 6K followers on Twitter and that’s only possible thanks to you guys! Thank you again to everyone who donated so far to help me keep this website alive for as long as possible. This week has been quite interesting despite the fact that no major releases were planned. We saw the launch of a new PinePhone Linux phone edition, the release of the Flatpak 1.10 and Wine 6.0 software, and much more.

Security Leftovers

• New coalition aims to combat growing wave of ransomware attacks [iophk: Windows TCO]

  The California-based nonprofit aims to produce recommendations that will help governments and the private sector tackle the scourge of ransomware attacks.

  [Attackers] have increasingly used these types of attacks -- which involve accessing and encrypting the victim’s network and demanding payment to allow access again -- to hit major targets, with city governments in Atlanta, Baltimore and New Orleans severely impaired by ransomware attacks over the past two years.

  More recently, hospitals have become a target during the COVID-19 pandemic, with cyber criminals seeing vulnerable hospitals as easy targets more likely to pay a quick ransom as health care systems struggle to keep up with coronavirus cases. In some instances, the cyberattacks have been blamed for deaths due to delayed care.

• This tiny shortcut can completely crash your Windows 10 device

  A zero-day exploit has been discovered that can crash your Windows 10 device – and, even more worrying, can be delivered inside a seemingly harmless shortcut file. The vulnerability can corrupt any NTFS-formatted hard drive and even be exploited by standard and low privilege user accounts.

  Security researcher Jonas Lykkegaard referenced the vulnerability on Twitter last week and had previously drawn attention to the issue on two previous occasions last year. Despite this, the NTFS vulnerability remains unpatched.

  There are various ways to trigger the vulnerability that involve trying to access the $i30 NTFS attribute on a folder in a particular way. One such exploit involves the creation of a Windows shortcut file that has its icon location set to C:\:$i30:$bitmap. Bleeping Computer found that this triggered the vulnerability even if users did not attempt to click on the file in question. Windows Explorer’s attempts to access the icon path in the background would be enough to corrupt the NTFS hard drive.

• This Easily-Exploitable Windows 10 NTFS Bug Can Instantly Corrupt Your Hard Drives

  Jonas says that this Windows 10 bug isn't new and has been around since the release of Windows 10 April 2018 Update, and remains exploitable on the latest versions, as well. BleepingComputer shared that the problematic command includes $i30 string, a Windows NTFS Index Attribute associated with directories.

  [...]

  After running the command, Windows 10 will start displaying prompts to restart the device and repair the corrupted drive. Apparently, the issue also impacts some Windows XP versions and similar NTFS bugs have been known for years but are yet to be addressed by the Windows maker.

• Nidhi Razdan, Phishing, And Three Hard Lessons

  Nidhi Razdan, a career journalist, became a victim of an elaborate phishing attack that made her quit her 21-year-old job and part with many of her personal details.

• Windows Finger command abused by phishing to download malware

  Attackers are using the normally harmless Windows Finger command to download and install a malicious backdoor on victims' devices. The 'Finger' command is a utility that originated in Linux/Unix operating systems that allows a local user to retrieve a list of users on a remote machine or information about a particular remote user. In addition to Linux, Windows includes a finger.exe command that performs the same functionality.

Security Auditing Tools For Ubuntu

Malware, where aren’t thou found? Well, even our wonderful Ubuntu can be infected. So what can we do about it? Hope and pray we keep our system safe and better yet, audit our systems regularly for malwares and rootkits. There are 4 system auditors for Ubuntu that we will review - lynis, rkhunter, chkrootkit, and clamav. [...] Oddly enough, there aren’t many tools to scan for malware out there for Linux. Why? I’m not sure. However, these 4 tools are more than enough to detect malwares, rootkits, and viruses. Also: Windows Finger command abused by phishing to download malware