You may not use it as your main OS but there is a chance your TV, PlayStation and quite possibly a lot of your networking gear runs on a version of FreeBSD. While the repercussions are likely to be limited to a kernel crash which is annoying but not overly concerning researchers do suggest it is possible a talented attacker could get hold of at least some of the contents of the kernel's memory. You probably shouldn't panic like your kernel could but following the link from The Register and patching is probably a good idea.
"Got FreeBSD? Get busy on the patch, because a problem with its TCP ordering has emerged, with both denial-of-service and data leakage as possible effects."
Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
- Major flaw found in Oauth and OpenID affects Google, Microsoft and Facebook @ The Inquirer
- Researcher says Apple fibs about crypto for iOS email attachments @ The Register
- Interview with AMD’s Sasa Marinkovic: Top 8 Trends in Computing @ Kitguru
- Microsoft's Azure cloud goes a bit wobbly in West Europe @ The Register
- Windows May Fail To Boot Up After Installing Latest Internet Explorer Patch @ Tech ARP
- Hackaday Space: Pixel Art Contest @ Hack a Day
Returning a derefrenced
Returning a derefrenced pointer to the grab bag again. Makes me wish for a microprocessor version of the Burroughs B6700, everything had a stack, data was in the data stack, and code was in the code stack, the hardware and MCP kept tight control over the stack pointers, top and bottom of the stacks, and everything ran in a stack.
http://users.monash.edu.au/~ralphk/B6700.html
Burroughs ALGOL was a very powerfull language, and it had a high level Job Control language, where IBM had its limited JCL, Burroughs had its workflow job control language that included logical and Branching constructs.