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Article from ADMIN 82/2024

By Amber Ankerholz

In the news: MySQL 9.0 Released; NordVPN Launches File Checker Tool; Critical OpenSSH Vulnerability Affects Linux Systems; IT Pros See Shrinking Job-Related Benefits Despite Salary Increases; Top Trends Driving Observability Adoption; Containers Dominate in Both Development and Production, According to Docker Report; Ubuntu Core 24 Released for Edge and IoT; Yocto Project Releases 5.0 LTS Version; OpenSSF Introduces Siren Security Platform; Raspberry Pi Announces Intent to Go Public; and Red Hat Introduces Image Mode for RHEL.

MySQL 9.0 Released

The MySQL team has announced open source MySQL 9.0 (Innovation Release), along with the first update of the 8.4 LTS (8.4.1): https://dev.mysql.com/doc/relnotes/mysql/8.4/en/news-8-4-1.html.

MySQL 9.0 represents a major release with several important updates. For example, this release removes the mysql_native_password authentication plugin. This plugin was previously deprecated but now has been removed altogether.

According to the 9.0 release notes (https://dev.mysql.com/doc/relnotes/mysql/9.0/en/news-9-0-0.html#mysqld-9-0-0-deprecation-removal): "The mysql_native_password authentication plugin, deprecated in MySQL 8.0, has been removed, and the server now rejects mysql_native authentication requests from older client programs which do not have CLIENT_PLUGIN_AUTH capability. For backward compatibility, mysql_native_password remains available on the client; the client-side built-in authentication plugin has been converted into a dynamically loadable plugin."

A recent blog post (https://blogs.oracle.com/mysql/post/mysql-90-its-time-to-abandon-the-weak-authentication-method) from MySQL Community Manager Frederic Descamps explains further, noting that the mysql_native_password is considered weak compared to modern authentication methods because it:

Uses the SHA-1 hashing algorithm, which is vulnerable to certain types of cryptographic attacks.
Does not use salting when hashing passwords.
Does not use multiple iterations of the hash function, which makes it

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