News briefs for December 7, 2018.

Feral Interactive announced this morning that DiRT 4 is coming to Linux and macOS in 2019. The all-terrain motorsport game was originally developed by Codemaster and boasts a fleet of more than 50 rally cars, buggies, trucks and crosskarts. And, for the first time in the history of the franchise, players can create their own rally routes. You can view the trailer here.

Newly released Chrome 71 "now blocks ads on 'abusive' sites that consistently trick users with fake system warnings, non-functional 'close' buttons and other bogus content that steers you to ads and landing pages. The sites themselves won't lose access the moment Google marks them abusive, but they'll have 30 days to clean up their acts." According to Engadget, Chrome 71 has other additional safeguards, and it's available now for Linux, Mac and Windows. It'll be rolling out to Android and iOS users in the coming weeks.

Cyber-security company ESET has discovered 21 "new" Linux malware families, and all of them "operate in the same manner, as trojanized versions of the OpenSSH client". ZDNet reports that "They are developed as second-stage tools to be deployed in more complex 'botnet' schemes. Attackers would compromise a Linux system, usually a server, and then replace the legitimate OpenSSH installation with one of the trojanized versions. ESET said that '18 out of the 21 families featured a credential-stealing feature, making it possible to steal passwords and/or keys' and '17 out of the 21 families featured a backdoor mode, allowing the attacker a stealthy and persistent way to connect back to the compromised machine.'"

The Linux Foundation has launched the Automated Compliance Tooling (ACT) project in order to help companies comply with open-source licensing requirements. Kate Stewart, Senior Director of Strategic Programs at The Linux Foundation, says, "There are numerous open source compliance tooling projects but the majority are unfunded and have limited scope to build out robust usability or advanced features. We have also heard from many organizations that the tools that do exist do not meet their current needs. Forming a neutral body under The Linux Foundation to work on these issues will allow us to increase funding and support for the compliance tooling development community."

GNU Guix and GuixSD 0.16.0 were released yesterday. This release represents 4,515 commits by 95 people over five months, and it's hopefully the last release before version 1.0. See the release announcement for more details and download links.