Alien Pastures

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Tag: chromium (Page 10 of 20)

Chromium 86 update resolves critical security issue

October 8, 2020 / / 17 Comments

chromium_iconGoogle developers have released Chromium 86 to the public. Head over to the “Stable Channel” blog to read more details about this new major version.

And then get the fresh packages for chromium-86.0.4240.75 ! This is an urgent upgrade request, because the new release plugs a critical security hole in the online payments code which gives the attacker full access to your local machine (CVE-2020-15967: Use after free in payments).

Chromium 86 addresses 34 other security issues, none of the others are critical.

The 86 release comes with some nice new features, like:

  • Background Tab Throttling: the tabs that you have open in the background get ‘throttled’ after 5 minutes of inactivity, so that they consume at most 1% of the CPU time.
  • HTTP forms on a HTTPS page: Chromium will warn you if you are about to enter form data over an insecure connection embedded in a secure web page.
  • Quick password check enhancements: in the Settings page for passwords (chrome://settings/passwords) you’ll find a “password check” button which validates your stored passwords against the database of leaked passwords. And now in Chromium 86, it will attempt to automatically open the “password change” page for affected web sites that conform to the  “well-known URL for changing passwords” W3C draft specification which many web sites already adopted after Apple initially introduced the feature.

But also this is useful to know:

  • FTP protocol depreciation: In Chromium 86, support for FTP URLs will be disabled for 1% of users, but you can still re-enable FTP URL support via the “–enable-ftp” commandline parameter to chromium. In Chromium 87, the support for FTP will be disabled for 50% of the active users and Chromium 88 will no longer support FTP links.
    The expectation is that Chromium 88 hits the “stable channel” on January 19th, 2021. Be warned!

Slackware packages for Chromium 86.0.4240.75 are in my package repository as 64bit and 32bit versions for both Slackware 14.2 and -current. See: https://slackware.nl/people/alien/slackbuilds/chromium/ (rsync://slackware.nl/mirrors/people/alien/slackbuilds/chromium/)

Enjoy! Eric

Chromium 84 packages available for Slackware

July 22, 2020 / / 15 Comments

chromium_iconIt took a bit longer than usual to come up with packages for the recently released Chromium 84. Google’s “Stable Channel” blog for Chrome announced the version 84.0.4147.89 just over a week ago, but as I was traveling at the time (without computer) new packages needed to wait.

And just when I uploaded these packages to the mirror server I discovered that Google already released an update yesterday: 84.0.4147.94. That will have to wait since again I am busy at the moment. Enjoy the first 84 release though!

Chromium 84 sees a lot of bugs fixed, of which 38 are security fixes. There’s also the usual UI and engine improvements but there’s really not much visible on the User Interface side. With one exception: the ‘spam’ notification popups which some web sites bothered you with are now hidden by default under a button in the URL bar. By clicking that button you can decide to show the blocked popups (or not). This feature was implemented earlier by Mozilla in their Firefox browser where it was highly valued by its users.
Under the hood, the most notable change is that Google has removed support for the insecure TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 ciphers. Web servers which still use these for their HTTPS content will be blocked by default and you’ll see an error.

Slackware packages for Chromium 84.0.4147.89 are in my package repository already. They are available as 64bit versions for both Slackware 14.2 and -current and a 32bit version only for Slackware-current.
There is no new 32bit package for Slackware 14.2 unfortunately, because I have been unsuccessful in my attempts to compile the package. Let’s hope future releases allow me to compile the 32bit package for 14.2 again…

Note that because of the changed status of the Widevine library (which is now automatically downloaded and kept updated by the browser), a separate “chromium-widevine-plugin” package containing the Widevine DRM library is no longer required. Widevine is a Content Decryption Module (CDM) used by companies like Netflix and Disney+ to stream video to your computer in a Chromium browser window.

Also note (to the purists among you): even though support for Widevine CDM plugin has been built into my chromium package, that package is still built from Open Source software only. If you do not want theWidevine DRM library to be downloaded at all, you will have to recompile the chromium package after setting “USE_CDM=0” in the chromium.SlackBuild script. This can not be disabled at run-time.

Chromium packages: https://slackware.nl/people/alien/slackbuilds/chromium/ (rsync://slackware.nl/mirrors/people/alien/slackbuilds/chromium/)

Enjoy! Eric

Chromium 83 – packages for Slackware, news about Widevine plugin

May 22, 2020 / / 16 Comments

chromium_iconThe COVID-19 crisis caused Google to change its release calendar for the Chromium browser sources, and they decided to skip the 82 release altogether, in order to focus on keeping the 81.x versions as safe as possible while working on their upcoming 83 release.
And so this week, Chromium 83.0.4103.61 was introduced to the “Stable Channel” with lots of bugs fixed, of which 38 are security fixes. There’s also a lot of new and improved features which are introduced in this release but it seems that many of those are only available in Google’s official Chrome binaries.
One of the notable changes for Chromium users (as opposed to Google Chrome users for which it has always worked this way) is that the Widevine content decryption module is now an official component of the browser. Like with Mozilla Firefox, the Chromium browser will now automatically download the Widevine library into your personal profile and enable access to DRM-protected content. In the URL “chrome://components/” you’ll see Widevine listed as a component, displaying its current version and a “Check for update” button.

Slackware packages for Chromium 83.0.4103.61 are in my package repository already. They are available as 32bit and 64bit versions for both Slackware 14.2 and -current.

Note that because of the changed status of Widevine, a separate “chromium-widevine-plugin” package containing the Widevine DRM library is no longer required. However…
It seems that there is an issue with the online availability of a 32bit Widevine library of the version that Chromium tries to download. As long as that is not fixed and only if you are using the 32bit Chromium browser, keep using my “chromium-widevine-plugin” please.

You can test whether Widevine works on https://bitmovin.com/demos/drm and validating that the page says “Detected using Widevine” and not “Detected NO DRM“). If you can not immediately get Widevine to work with your 32-bit browser, check that the content of the file in your Chromium profile “${HOME}/ .config/chromium/WidevineCdm/latest-component-updated-widevine-cdm” points to the installed location of the chromium-widevine package, like this:

alien@darkstar:~/.config/chromium/WidevineCdm$ cat latest-component-updated-widevine-cdm 
{"Path":"/usr/lib/chromium/WidevineCdm"}

In the profile of a 64-bit browser you will see instead something like this:

alien@darkstar:~/.config/chromium/WidevineCdm$ cat latest-component-updated-widevine-cdm 
{"Path":"/home/alien/.config/chromium/WidevineCdm/4.10.1610.0"}

For newcomers: Widevine is a Content Decryption Module (CDM) used by companies like Netflix and Disney+ to stream video to your computer in a Chromium browser window.

Also note (to the purists among you): even though support for Widevine CDM plugin has been built into my chromium package, that package is still built from Open Source software only. If you do not want theWidevine DRM library to be downloaded at all, you will have to recompile the chromium package after setting “USE_CDM=0” in the chromium.SlackBuild script. This can not be disabled at run-time.

Chromium packages: https://slackware.nl/people/alien/slackbuilds/chromium/ (rsync://slackware.nl/mirrors/people/alien/slackbuilds/chromium/)
Widevine packages: https://slackware.nl/people/alien/slackbuilds/chromium-widevine-plugin/ (rsync://slackware.nl/mirrors/people/alien/slackbuilds/chromium-widevine-plugin/)

Chromium 81 – and the new build process for Slackware 14.2

April 17, 2020 / / 40 Comments

Google released version 81 of their Chromium browser sources last week, after spending a lot of effort to bring security patches to the 80.x releases in the weeks before. As said before, Google is going to skip the 82 release entirely because of the staffing challenges resulting from the Corina crisis, and will jump straight to release 83 somewhere mid-May.
I uploaded packages for chromium 81.0.4044.92 a few days ago – but those were only for Slackware-current.

I found it impossible to compile the latest Chromium 81 code on Slackware 14.2 and I had been trying for days. Yesterday I finally succeeded after more than a week of trying since the sources were released. I can not sit behind my computer for long, but that was not too much of a setback in this particular case. I kept running into new compiler or linker errors, then I would think of a fix, set the box to compile again and had to wait for hours to see the result… and lie down in the meantime. For an entire week, I met failure upon failure.

I asked in the chromium-packagers group online, how to fix these issues I was facing – for Chromium 81 and onward, several of the libraries in Slackware 14.2 that Chromium wants, are simply too old.
I was told to try what Google also does when building their own Chrome binaries that are meant to run on a wide range of Linux OS-es: use a “sysroot”, essentially a core set of Debian Sid packages, extracted, tweaked and zipped into an archive. Apparently Chromium code can be compiled in such a way that it uses the Debian shared libraries, but the resulting Chromium binaries (for Slackware in my case) are not depending on these Debian libraries. If someone knows how that works, please enlighten me.

So, I set out to learn how this “sysroot” can be utilized on a Slackware computer. It took another bunch of iterations, but eventually the changes to the chromium.SlackBuild are not even that intrusive. And I produced a working chromium package for Slackware 14.2, only to discover that yesterday, Google released chromium-81.0.4044.113. So, I had to start over.

Anyway – the Slackware 14.2 packages for chromium-81.0.4044.92 have been uploaded for your enjoyment. I am building a new set of Chromium 81.0.4044.113 packages for both Slackware 14.2 and -current, in 32bit and 64bit flavors of course. Hopefully that will run its course event-free and you’ll have those in a day or so.

Enjoy the 81 release!

Eric

Chromium and LibreOffice updates

March 20, 2020 / / 8 Comments

Due to the Corona (COVID-19) crisis, Google decided to postpone the introduction of Chromium 81 to the stable channel. Understandably due to the challenges created by sending most developers home for their own safety and protection, which is a cause for less efficient work schedules.
Instead, there is an increased focus on addressing security related issues in Chromium 80 and releasing those in rapid succession. After all, any crisis attracts the worst of humankind to mess with the more gullible part of the population and browser based phishing and hack attempts are on the rise.

And so, yesterday there was another version upgrade, and I built the new chromium packages for Slackware 14.2 and -current already. The chromium-80.0.3987.149 release can be downloaded from any mirror – or upgraded using slackpkg/slackpkg+ if you use that.

In addition, new LibreOffice packages are available for Slackware -current.

You’ll get the latest and greatest ‘fresh’ release of 6.4.2 and unfortunately, no new packages for Slackware 14.2. I am unable to compile the 6.3 or 6.4 releases on the stable version of Slackware due to outdated/obsoleted libraries.

Note: among the packages for LibreOffice that are targeting Slackware-current, you will find a “libreoffice-kde-integration” package which adds Qt5 and KDE5 (aka Plasma5) support to the LibreOffice suite.
If you run Slackware-current but do not have KDE5 packages installed at all, don’t worry. LibreOffice will work great – the KDE integration package just will not add anything useful for you. On the other hand, if you have Plasma5 installed you will benefit from native file selection dialog windows and other integration features. And even if you do not have Plasma5 but you do have Qt5 installed, then you will be able to run LibreOffice with Qt5 User Interface elements instead of defaulting to GTK3.

If you want to compile LibreOffice 6.4.2 packages yourself using my SlackBuild script, then be aware that by default the KDE5 support is disabled. You will have to set the value of the script parameter “ADD_KDE5” to “YES”. Additionally you will have to install the packages that this functionality depends on otherwise the compilation will fail.
Read the ‘README.kde5‘ file in the source directory for the list of packages you’ll need. All of the required packages can be  found in my ‘ktown’ repository: https://slackware.nl/alien-kde/current/latest/

Enjoy! Eric

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