GNU Network Utilities Sees First Major Release In 9 Years (inetutils 2.0)

The GNU Network Utilities (inetutils) has seen its first major release in nine years or even the first release at all in six years since the prior point release. With GNU inetutils 2.0 are several updates to common programs like ping and ifconfig.

GNU's inetutils provides the commonly used command-line network utilities on Linux and other Unix-like systems. Given the significant time since the inetutils 1.9 release in 2011, there are a number of changes to find with today's inetutils 2.0 milestone. Among the changes with GNU inetutils 2.0 include:

- The ifconfig command now allows changing of the hardware address on Linux and BSD systems. The ether/hwaddr/lladdr options can now be used for setting a new MAC address via ifconfig.

- The ifconfig command can provide statistics now on BSD-based systems.

- The ftp command has portability work for Android support.

- The rcp command has a possible integer overflow fix when transferring large files.

- Telnetd fixes the BraveStarr telnetd remote exploit (CVE-2020-10188). The telnet command has also seen a separate security fix for validating environment variables (CVE-2019-0053).

- Various GNU/Hurd support improvements.

- Various Solaris portability improvements.

More details on the long overdue GNU inetutils 2.0 release via the GNU mailing list.