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      Intel fixes high-severity CPU bug that causes “very strange behavior”

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 14 November - 20:57 · 1 minute

    Intel fixes high-severity CPU bug that causes “very strange behavior”

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    On Tuesday, Intel pushed microcode updates to fix a high-severity CPU bug that has the potential to be maliciously exploited against cloud-based hosts.

    The flaw, affecting virtually all modern Intel CPUs, causes them to “enter a glitch state where the normal rules don’t apply,” Tavis Ormandy, one of several security researchers inside Google who discovered the bug, reported . Once triggered, the glitch state results in unexpected and potentially serious behavior, most notably system crashes that occur even when untrusted code is executed within a guest account of a virtual machine, which, under most cloud security models, is assumed to be safe from such faults. Escalation of privileges is also a possibility.

    Very strange behavior

    The bug, tracked under the common name Reptar and the designation CVE-2023-23583, is related to how affected CPUs manage prefixes, which change the behavior of instructions sent by running software. Intel x64 decoding generally allows redundant prefixes—meaning those that don’t make sense in a given context—to be ignored without consequence. During testing in August, Ormandy noticed that the REX prefix was generating “unexpected results” when running on Intel CPUs that support a newer feature known as fast short repeat move, which was introduced in the Ice Lake architecture to fix microcoding bottlenecks.

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      Parallels Desktop 19 gets Sonoma-ready, expands OpenGL and Linux support

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 24 August, 2023 - 20:16 · 1 minute

    A login screen for Windows allowing the use of Touch ID

    Enlarge / You can now use Touch ID to log in to your Windows virtual machine. (credit: Parallels )

    It's an annual tradition to see an update to Mac virtualization software Parallels Desktop a few weeks before the next major macOS release. Like clockwork, we've come to that time again: Parallels Desktop 19 is available now, with a handful of improvements for users who want to run Windows or Linux on their Macs.

    It's not the most radical year-over-year update we've seen, but there are some welcome optimizations and tweaks. The headlining feature is the ability to use Touch ID to sign in to your Windows virtual machine. When you next launch your Windows VM, your Windows password can be saved to your Mac's keychain with a Touch ID-specific record that is unique to your device. It's important to note that this is just for signing into the VM, though; this is not full Touch ID support for all the places Windows Hello appears throughout Microsoft's operating system.

    There are also various tweaks to make Parallels macOS Sonoma-ready, what with Apple's annual OS update coming sometime this fall. For example, a change in Sonoma would have broken the Shared Printing feature that allows you to print from your Windows VM. Parallels' engineers re-configured the feature to get it working within the new release and made some improvements to it.

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      Quake II gets a remaster for PC and consoles—and it’s exactly what it needs to be

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 10 August, 2023 - 21:08

    Quake II' s remastered edition trailer

    In a surprise announcement at QuakeCon, publisher Bethesda Softworks announced the immediate availability of a light remaster of the classic first-person shooter Quake II , similar to the one for the first Quake that was released not that long ago.

    It's available now on Windows, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5.

    As Bethesda is now a subsidiary of Microsoft, the remastered version of Quake II is part of Microsoft's Game Pass subscription service on Xbox and PC. Further, those who already owned the previous version of Quake II on Steam, GOG, or Microsoft's store will get the new version as a free update.

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      How to Install VirtualBox 6.1 On Linux?

      pubsub.do.nohost.me / FossBytes · Friday, 5 March, 2021 - 12:49 · 2 minutes

    install virtualbox on linux

    Virtual Machines are software used to run other operating systems within a pre-installed operating system. This self-contained OS runs as a separate computer that has no relation to the host OS. VirtualBox is an open-source cross-platform software that can help you run multiple guest operating systems on a single computer. In this article, let’s look at how to install VirtualBox 6.1 on Linux, easily.

    Why Install VirtualBox?

    One of the most important use cases of VirtualBox is its ability to try out/test various operating systems without fiddling with your internal storage. VirtualBox creates a virtual environment that utilizes system resources like RAM and CPU to power the OS inside a container.

    For example, if I want to try out and check if the latest Ubuntu release is stable or not, I can use VirtualBox to do it and only then decide if I want to install it or just totally use it in VirtualBox. This not only saves me a lot of time but also makes the process flexible.

    How To Install VirtualBox 6.1 On Ubuntu/Debian/Linux Mint?

    If you already have an older version of VirtualBox installed, remove it first. Fire up the terminal and type the following command:

    $ sudo dpkg -r virtualbox

    To install VirtualBox on Ubuntu/Ubuntu-based, Debian, Linux Mint distributions, head over to the official VirtualBox download page .

    Download the appropriate VirtualBox .deb file by clicking on the links.

    After the download’s complete, click on the .deb file and the software installer will install VirtualBox for you.

    Also Read: Linux Windows Dual Boot and More: Multi-booting Up to Five OS

    Starting VirtualBox 6.2 In Ubuntu/Debian/Linux Mint

    Head over to the applications menu, find “Oracle VM VirtualBox” and click on it to open.

    $ VirtualBox

    How To Install VirtualBox 6.1 On Linux: Fedora/RHEL/CentOS?

    Before installing Virtual Box 6.1, uninstall any older version of VirtualBox from your system. Use the following command:

    $ yum remove VirtualBox

    To install VirtualBox 6.1, you need to add the VirtualBox 6.1 repo to your system.

    Adding The VirtualBox 6.1 Repository In RHEL/CentOS:

    $ wget https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/rpm/rhel/virtualbox.repo -P /etc/yum.repos.d/
    $ rpm --import https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox.asc

    Adding The VirtualBox 6.1 Repository In Fedora

    $ wget http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/rpm/fedora/virtualbox.repo -P /etc/yum.repos.d/
    $ rpm --import https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox.asc

    Also Read: How To Use Linux In Windows Using VirtualBox

    Enabling the EPEL Repo And Installing Tools And Dependencies

    On RHEL 8/CentOS

    $ dnf install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm
    $ dnf update
    $ dnf install binutils kernel-devel kernel-headers libgomp make patch gcc glibc-headers glibc-devel dkms -y

    On RHEL 7/CentOS

    $ yum install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm
    $ yum update
    $ yum install binutils kernel-devel kernel-headers libgomp make patch gcc glibc-headers glibc-devel dkms -y
    

    On RHEL 6/CentOS

    $ yum install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-6.noarch.rpm
    $ yum update
    $ yum install binutils kernel-devel kernel-headers libgomp make patch gcc glibc-headers glibc-devel dkms -y
    

    On Fedora

    $ dnf update
    $ dnf install @development-tools
    $ dnf install kernel-devel kernel-headers dkms qt5-qtx11extras  elfutils-libelf-devel zlib-devel

    Installing VirtualBox 6.1 On Linux: Fedora/RHEL/CentOS

    After adding the needed repos and installing the dependency packages, now it’s time to hit the install command:

    $ yum install VirtualBox-6.1
    
    or
    
    $ dnf install VirtualBox-6.1

    Did you find this tutorial helpful? Let us know in the comments below. Also, feel free to ask if you faced any difficulty.

    The post How to Install VirtualBox 6.1 On Linux? appeared first on Fossbytes .