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.

LinuxSecurity.com Feature Extras:

Peter Smith Releases Linux Network Security Online - Thanks so much to Peter Smith for announcing on linuxsecurity.com the release of his Linux Network Security book available free online. "In 2005 I wrote a book on Linux security. 8 years later and the publisher has gone out of business. Now that I'm free from restrictions on reproducing material from the book, I have decided to make the entire book available online."

Securing a Linux Web Server - With the significant prevalence of Linux web servers globally, security is often touted as a strength of the platform for such a purpose. However, a Linux based web server is only as secure as its configuration and very often many are quite vulnerable to compromise. While specific configurations vary wildly due to environments or specific use, there are various general steps that can be taken to insure basic security considerations are in place.

  (May 27)
 

For the last two years, Darpa has been working to make waging cyberwar as easy as playing a video game. Now, like so many other games, it's about to get a lot more in-your-face.
  Tens of thousands of 'Watch Dogs' pirates ENSLAVED by Bitcoin botmaster (May 28)
 

Tens of thousands of pirate gamers have been enslaved in a Bitcoin botnet after downloading a cracked copy of popular game Watch Dogs.
  (May 27)
 

As you may know, I like to rant about the poor state of computer security. I have reason to, because each year it appears we're losing the battle as more and more systems get exploited. We can't seem to take care of the simple stuff, like requiring better passwords or fixing DNS (who among you has enabled DNSSec?), much less the hard work it will take to make substantial improvements in the state of security.
  A Hacker Is Using Find My iPhone To Hold iPhones, iPads, And Mac Devices Hostage (May 28)
 

Mac, iPhone, and iPad owners across Australia are reporting that their devices have been digitally held hostage by a hacker, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.
  (May 29)
 

I'm a security professional, and it pains me to admit that in my line of work, mistakes are made. Multiple times. In almost every organization. With alarming frequency.
  (May 28)
 

Hector Xavier Monsegur, who by the US government's calculations participated in computer hacker attacks on more than 250 public and private entities at a cost of up to $50m in damages, was released from a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday after the judge saluted his "extraordinary cooperation" with the FBI.
  Greenwald to publish list of U.S. citizens NSA spied on (May 29)
 

Glenn Greenwald, one of the reporters who chronicled the document dump by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden via the U.K. press, now said he's set to publish his most dramatic piece yet: The names of those in the United States targeted by the NSA.
  Hackers put security tool that finds payment card data into their arsenal (May 30)
 

Like a crowbar, security software tools can be used for good and evil.Bootleg versions of a powerful tool called "Card Recon" from Ground Labs, which searches for payment card data stored in the nooks and crannies of networks, have been appropriated by cybercriminals.
  New attack methods can 'brick' systems, defeat Secure Boot (May 30)
 

The Secure Boot security mechanism of the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) can be bypassed on around half of computers that have the feature enabled in order to install bootkits, according to a security researcher.
  GnuTLS bug exposes Linux clients to server attacks (Jun 2)
 

The maintainers of GnuTLS, a secure communications library used in Red Hat, Ubuntu other Linux distributions, have released fixes for a critical bug affecting the client-side of the software.
  Wearable Tech - Can your life be hacked? (Jun 2)
 

Paraphrasing the song made famous in the 1960s by The Troggs and wonderfully updated by Bill Nighy in "Love Actually" Big Data is really all around us. We are making more and more data about ourselves available to a broader audience. But what if that data is stolen? Is it useful to anyone?
  In baffling move, TrueCrypt open-source crypto project shuts down (Jun 2)
 

In a move that appears designed to provoke widespread questions, the anonymous managers of the TrueCrypt open-source encryption project abruptly pulled the plug on the effort without explanation.