Contributor Xan

Pidgin saves account passwords in plain text (check the contents of ~/.purple/accounts.xml )

Saving passwords in plain text is wrong! The Gnome keyring is a perfect replacement for this insecure method and should be used.

Please, put tomoyo [http://tomoyo.sourceforge.jp/] in Ubuntu universe.

TOMOYO Linux is a MAC (Mandatory Access Control) implementation for Linux. It was developed by NTT DATA CORPORATION, Japan and is available under the GPL license.

TOMOYO Linux consists of patch files to vanilla kernel and userland tools. Patch files are provided for both 2.4 and 2.6. For the user's convenience, various binary packages are also available.

TOMOYO is an alternative to AppArmor.

Thanks,
Xan.

More references:
[1] [http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/Linux_Weather_Forecast/security]
[2] [http://kerneltrap.org/Linux/TOMOYO_Linux]

Currently installation of Lustre (http://www.lustre.org - one of the best distributed file system in the world) involves manual patching of old versions of kernel with Lustre specific patches, which lead to quite complicated installation and support processes.

Including Lustre specific patches in ubuntu kernel will make ubuntu an attractive choice for hight performance computing system - all other linuxes will still require this patching and recompilation while ubuntu will provide distributed file system almost out of the box!

While it is possible to use unpatched kernel for Lustre clients it will be also possible to use ubuntu as Lustre server if those patches will be included.

Right now, any application a user runs can access the network and send whatever it pleases anywhere it likes.

Ubuntu users shouldn't have to wonder if any of the programs on their system are 'phoning home' to check for updates - or worse, to upload information about them in a sneaky way.

I propose that we package strict network access profiles along with every application that needs to use the network.
If no network access profile is present in an application's .deb file, Ubuntu should NOT allow it to access the network.

It should be up to the package maintainer to find out if an application needs to open any 'listening' ports, or access an outside server, etc. The maintainer should then write and include the strictest workable profile possible.

Both SELinux and AppArmor might be able to handle implementation of this kind of policy already. We're already including AppArmor and SeLinux profiles for some applications; we just need the default policies to be stricter. In addition, we may want to configure the iptables firewall as well.

Something like the Authorizations control panel would be great in terms of a UI for seeing which application is permitted to do what. Perhaps PolicyKit integration could allow us to grant or revoke application network access privileges.

After this famous SSH/DSA/RSA bug,
users think that after upgrading affected packages (openssh server etc) they are safe.

This is unfortunately not fully correct.

Many users do not realize that:

1) Systems into which user logged into using weak dsa kay may have been compromised already. Also, your own box, if you had ssh enabled using public key.

2) Need to check (and regenerate if broken) ALL your keys. Also in non standard locations or on USB keys etc.


Therefore my idea is to:
- Warn users about above
- also, it may be nice to path ssh application to always check the key that is about to be used.

Please, audit the lines of code of ubuntu.

The main security problems are due to writing code without auditing.

If you do, perhaps an openssl-like incidents [1] were more dificult to happen.

I think it's hard to do, but if other OS [2] do, why not us?

[1] [https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openssl-blacklist/+bug/230193]
[2] www.openbsd.org

I've got two monitors, and right now if I use the wallpaper settings in gnome it stretches the wallpaper across the two monitors. It does this even for the default ubuntu wallpaper. This can look really bad depending on the image. In order to get around this I had to get two wallpaper images and join them into one large one with the GIMP and set that as my wallpaper.

There should be a way in gnome to set a different wallpaper for each monitor.

==== Merged with ideas of a similar scope: Different wallpapers on different workspace ===

Many workspaces option in Linux allows you to separate your work, why not allow users to have different wallpapers on each workspace. This allows for easier identification of which workspace you are on.
When used with compiz-fusion you can rapidly switch between your workspaces and the different wallapaper will allow you to quickly recognise what desktop you are on.

Currently this is natively available in KDE but not in Gnome. In Gnome you can't even let Compiz take over the wallpaper control because Nautilus doesn't allow for transparent backgrounds.

Other solutions like Wallpapoz are slow and when switching between desktops it takes too long to switch WP.

Ubuntu needs to go green. Powertop, Lesswatts and other tools have finally hit the Linux scene to pave the way for better power management. It needs to be said, "if you want your battery to last longest, or have your energy bill be the lowest, you better use Ubuntu Linux."

First of all: What is the difference between Preferences and Administration? For example: why do I see 'Encryption and Keyrings' in Preferences and 'Keyring Manager' in Administration? What is the difference between 'Default Printer' and 'Printing'? Why do I have to disable the Tracker under Sessions and not under Search and Indexing? And why are these menu's so large? I have 24 items in Preferences (they don't even fit on my screen!) and 18 items in Administration. To put all this stuff in a popup menu is bad interface design imho. Besides, the number of option should be much smaller. A few suggestions:

- Merge 'Screensaver', 'Screen Resolution' and 'Screens and Graphics'.
- Merge 'Network', 'Network Proxy' and 'Network Tools'.
- Merge 'Update Manager, Synaptic Package Manager, Software Sources'.
- Merge 'Encryption and Keyrings', 'Authorizations', 'Keyring Manager'.


Below are all settings I can visit via the System menu. This is just way too much.


-- Preferences --
Universal Access
About Me
Appearance
Bluetooth
Default Printer
Encryption and Keyrings
Keyboard
Keyboard Shortcuts
Main Menu
Mouse
Network Proxy
PalmOS Devices (I don't have one)
Power Management

[....]

Now is says that the currently loaded plugins do not provide means to burn such disks.

I don't really know if this has already been implemented on Ubuntu, but applying Fedora ideas to boost X startup would be appreciated.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/OneSecondX

Although it's not very Ubuntu to tell anyone to RTFM, manuals should be read. But for now manuals are accessible only through terminal, which is not really new-user friendly.
Also there is no way of knowing what to write to get certain manual. I know for only two manuals: form rm and Lynx.
=========
Manuals could be added to Help which should be included in every app package. I know that some of my apps that I installed through apt-get don't have Help.

That is for people who start pidgin automatically on boot time and always have to close the buddy list when the system boots.

From Ubuntu itself allow it to be upgraded from a CD and now always downloaded because this puts more strain on your Broadband and you ISP's.

Simply put the CD of the new version on the click upgrade.

me parece que seria bueno tener una gui para apparmor para poder configurar los perfiles

When we download updates (deb files), we are vulnerable to attacks.

Recent results published by cryptographers say:

"MD5 should no longer be used as a hash function for software integrity or code signing purposes."

http://www.win.tue.nl/hashclash/SoftIntCodeSign/
http://www.mscs.dal.ca/~selinger/md5collision/

We really don't want some malicious code installed on nice clean ubuntu systems, keylogging, spamming, ddos'ing etc. And just imagine how quick the malicious code will be spread with apt updates.

So let's not wait for this to happen. We need to find an alternative cryptographic function. SHA-1 is not perfect but harder to crack. Does anyone know anything better?

Ubiquity should set up encrypted swap, unless told not to. Because encrypted swap doesn't require inputting a password every boot, and it increases security against forensic investigation.

There are at least 13 unpatched security vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel.
Please fix these. Some of them are many years old...

* Linux Kernel CHRP Denial of Service Security Issue
* Linux Kernel Multiple Vulnerabilities
* Linux Kernel Various Vulnerabilities
* Linux Kernel SMP "/proc" Race Condition Denial of Service
* Linux Kernel perfmon Local Denial of Service Vulnerability
* Linux Kernel IP ID Value Increment Weakness
* Linux Kernel Socket Data Buffering Denial of Service
* Linux Kernel URB and IPv6 Flowlabel Handling Denial of Service
* Linux Kernel "syscall()" Argument Handling Denial of Service
* Linux Kernel "is_hugepage_only_range()" Denial of Service
* Linux Kernel Multiple Vulnerabilities
* Linux Kernel Page Fault Handler Privilege Escalation
* Linux Kernel Multiple Vulnerabilities
* Linux Kernel Binary Format Loaders Privilege Escalation
* Linux Kernel Multiple Vulnerabilities
* Linux Kernel IGMP and "__scm_send()" Vulnerabilities
* Linux Kernel Local DoS and Memory Content Disclosure Vulnerabilities
* Linux Kernel smb Filesystem Implementation Multiple Vulnerabilities
* Linux Kernel ELF Binary Loader Setuid File Handling Vulnerabilities
* Linux Kernel ide-cd SG_IO Functionality Permission Bypass Vulnerability
* Linux Kernel NFS and ptmx Denial of Service Vulnerabilities
* Linux Kernel File Offset Pointer Handling Memory Disclosure Vulnerability
* Linux Kernel Sbus PROM Driver Multiple Integer Overflow Vulnerabilities
* Linux Kernel IEEE 1394 Driver Integer Overflow Vulnerabilities
* Linux Kernel Framebuffer Driver Direct Userspace Access Vulnerability

See Secunia for more information:
* http://secunia.com/product/2719/?task=advisories

[....]

The "About Me" utility under System->Preferences is a nifty way to store information like your name, phone number, etc.

Do many people use it? I think not. Why? Because you have NO idea which applications read this information and what they do with it.

Either allow me to control which applications read this information so I can restrict access on a field level or get rid of the thing entirely. For example, I do not want Pigin/IRC channels to have access to my home phone number, etc.

As it is, it has that creepy, privacy-invading feel of Windows that made me move to Ubuntu in the first place. Time to fix it or lose it.

Now OpenOffice could NOT read abiword documents. It's an annoying fact because we have to install abiword (having two write processors).

Please, improve OO for at least could read abiword docs.

Thanks,