Ubuntu Core 16

Canonical, the parent company of Ubuntu, has released Ubuntu Core 16. Ubuntu Core is Canonical’s minimal edition for embedded devices, Internet of Things, and cloud deployments. The latest version comes with Update Control, which allows software publishers and manufacturers to validate updates across the ecosystem before they are applied. The greatest feature of Ubuntu Core is that its updates are transactional, which means that failures are automatically rolled back so there are no bricked or compromised devices.

Canonical claims the new Ubuntu Core delivers security, management, operations, and upgradability in a compact, developer-friendly platform, thanks to its use of Snap packages. Snaps are securely confined, digitally signed, read-only, tamper-proof application images.

In the month of October, millions of IoT devices were used to launch a massive wave of DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks on the managed DNS service Dyn. The attack brought down a big chunk of the Internet in the U.S. Services for Amazon, Twitter, and many other major sites were down for many users.

Experts believe that the attack could have been avoided if these IoT devices were running operating systems that focus on security of IoT devices through regular and secure updates without user intervention.