Thank you for reading the LinuxSecurity.com weekly security newsletter. The purpose of this document is to provide our readers with a quick summary of each week's most relevant Linux security headlines.

Encryption: An Essential Yet Highly Controversial Component of Digital Security - If youve been keeping up with recent security news, you are most likely aware of the heated worldwide debate about encryption that is currently underway. Strong encryption is imperative to securing sensitive data and protecting individuals privacy online, yet governments around the world refuse to recognize this, and are continually aiming to break encryption in an effort to increase the power of their law enforcement agencies.

Linux: An OS Capable of Effectively Meeting the US Governments Security Needs Heading into 2020 - As Open Source has become increasingly mainstream and widely accepted for its numerous benefits, the use of Linux as a flexible, transparent and highly secure operating system has also increasingly become a prominent choice among corporations, educational institutions and government sectors alike. With national security concerns at an all time high heading into 2020, it appears that the implementation of Linux could effectively meet the United States governments critical security needs for application development and installations.

  Police are about to deploy 'privacy destroying' facial recognition cameras across London (Jan 24)
 

Facial recognition cameras are set to be deployed across London for the first time, the Metropolitan Police has announced.The Police say the technology will help fight crime - but critics warn that the 'privacy destroying' scheme amounts to oppressive surveillance. What is your opinion on this decision?
  Get ready for the emergence of AI-as-a-Service (Jan 24)
 

SaaS and PaaS have become part of the everyday tech lexicon since emerging as delivery models, shifting how enterprises purchase and implement technology. A new _as a service model is aspiring to become just as widely adopted based on its potential to drive business outcomes with unmatched efficiency: Artificial intelligence as a service (AIaaS). The emergence of AIaaS will play a critical role in AI adoption.
  ANNOUNCE: Apache SpamAssassin 3.4.4 available (Jan 29)
 

One of the most significant projects from the Apache Foundation has released another version of SpamAssassin. This is primarily a security release, but also includes improvements to macro document processing with OLVBMacro and a set of smaller fixes. Apache SpamAssassin is a mature, widely-deployed open source project that serves as a mail filter to identify spam. SpamAssassin uses a variety of mechanisms including mail header and text analysis, Bayesian filtering, DNS blocklists, and collaborative filtering databases. In addition, Apache SpamAssassin has a modular architecture that allows other technologies to be quickly incorporated as an addition or as a replacement for existing methods.
  Free Software Foundation suggests Microsoft 'upcycles' Windows 7... as open source (Jan 27)
 

More than 10 years on from its campaign to persuade users to dump Windows 7 for a non-proprietary alternative, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) has kicked off a petition to urge Microsoft to open-source the recently snuffed software.
  Linus Torvalds Releases Linux Kernel 5.5 With Better Hardware Support (Jan 27)
 

With the regular milestone of Release Candidate (rc7), Linus Torvalds has announced the first stable release of the Linux kernel 5.5 for the general public.Apart from the last-minute network driver fixes, Linux 5.5 includes various improvements for security,the new and upcoming hardware platforms such as Raspberry Pi 4, Intel processors, and Chromebooks.
  Intel Makes Public Two More Data Leakage Disclosures (Jan 28)
 

Intel last night made public two more data leakage disclosures, which tie back to Zombieload and November's TAA issue.
  RHEL 8 Still Vulnerable to “Magellan 2” SQLite Bugs, as Patches Drop (Jan 28)
 

Are you a RHEL user? Severe bugs in the ubiquitous SQLite engine " used in thousands of software applications " continue to pose a major security threat, security researchers say, with Red Hat admitting that its flagship Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8 remains vulnerable, despite patching other products this week.
  Snowflake is the Linux SSH GUI you didn't know you needed (Jan 31)
 

Is a Linux SSH GUI in your future? Jack Wallen believes once you try Snowflake, there's no going back. If you are currently using Snowflake, we'd love to hear your thoughts!
  Amazon Engineer: ‘Ring should be shut down immediately and not brought back’ (Jan 31)
 

Are you an Amazon Ring user? An Amazon software engineer named Max Eliaser is calling for the shutdown of Ring, the doorbell camera company Amazon paid $2 billion for in 2018, due to seriousprivacy concerns. What are your thoughts?
  Indie VPN WireGuard gets the Torvalds seal of approval with inclusion in Linux kernel 5.6 (Jan 30)
 

The WireGuard VPN protocol, which is smaller, faster and easier to configure than IPsec, has been merged into Linus Torvalds' git repository for version 5.6 of the Linux kernel, the next release.
  RCE in OpenSMTPD library impacts BSD and Linux distros (Jan 30)
 

Security researchers have discovered a vulnerability inside a core email-related library used by many BSD and Linux distributions.The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2020-7247, impacts OpenSMTPD , an open-source implementation of the server-side SMTP protocol .