Month: July 2021

Enlarge / MuseScore (the website) offers access to hundreds of thousands of sheet music arrangements. MuseScore (the application) allows easy editing and modification, MIDI playback, and more. (credit: Muse Group)

Muse Group—owner of the popular audio-editing app Audacity—is in hot water with the open source community again. This time, the controversy isn't over Audacity—it's about MuseScore, an open source application which allows musicians to create, share, and download musical scores (especially, but not only, in the form of sheet music).

The MuseScore app itself is licensed GPLv3, which gives developers the right to fork its source and modify it. One such developer, Wenzheng Tang ("Xmader" on GitHub) went considerably further than modifying the app—he also created separate apps designed to bypass MuseScore Pro subscription fees.

After thoroughly reviewing the public comments made by both sides at GitHub, Ars spoke at length with Muse Group's Head of Strategy Daniel Ray—known on GitHub by the moniker "workedintheory"—to get to the bottom of the controversy.

Enlarge / White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki speaks during the daily press briefing at the White House on July 20, 2021, in Washington, DC. Psaki acknowledged that a White House staffer has tested positive for COVID-19 and there have been other recent breakthrough cases of vaccinated staff members. (credit: Getty | Drew Angerer)

Multiple White House staff members and an aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) have tested positive for the pandemic coronavirus despite being fully vaccinated, press secretary Jen Psaki confirmed in a White House press briefing Tuesday.

The confirmation came after reports that the Pelosi staffer and one White House official tested positive after they attended the same reception at a DC hotel last Wednesday, according to a report from Axios. Additionally, the Pelosi staffer was in contact with a delegation of Texas Democrats who had come to the US Capitol last week in an effort to thwart a GOP voting bill. Six of the more than 50 Texas Democrats have since tested positive for the pandemic coronavirus.

The infected Pelosi staffer had not been in direct contact with the speaker recently, and the infected White House official had not been in direct contact with the president recently, Axios reported.

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The world woke up on Tuesday to two new vulnerabilities—one in Windows and the other in Linux—that allow hackers with a toehold in a vulnerable system to bypass OS security restrictions and access sensitive resources.

As operating systems and applications become harder to hack, successful attacks typically require two or more vulnerabilities. One vulnerability allows the attacker access to low-privileged OS resources, where code can be executed or sensitive data can be read. A second vulnerability elevates that code execution or file access to OS resources reserved for password storage or other sensitive operations. The value of so-called local privilege escalation vulnerabilities, accordingly, has increased in recent years.

Breaking Windows

The Windows vulnerability came to light by accident on Monday when a researcher observed what he believed was a coding regression in a beta version of the upcoming Windows 11. The researcher found that the contents of the security account manager—the database that stores user accounts and security descriptors for users on the local computer—could be read by users with limited system privileges.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Erik Pronske Photography)

President Joe Biden today said he will nominate Jonathan Kanter to be the assistant attorney general in charge of the Department of Justice's antitrust division. Kanter is an attorney known for his criticism of Google and will take over the antitrust division as it considers a Biden plan to reverse harmful mergers and break up monopolies.

Kanter "is a distinguished antitrust lawyer with over 20 years of experience" and has been "a leading advocate and expert in the effort to promote strong and meaningful antitrust enforcement and competition policy," the White House announcement said.

US Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) applauded the nomination in a statement. "For years, Jonathan Kanter has been a leader in the effort to increase antitrust enforcement against monopolies by federal, state, and international competition authorities. His deep legal experience and history of advocating for aggressive action make him an excellent choice to lead the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division," Klobuchar said.