In security and privacy: Theres an SSH Stalker

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

The News:

Mint Monthly News – January 2026

Discord Launches Teen-by-Default Settings Globally. Face scan or I.D. needed?

Firefox Announces ‘A.I. Controls’ To Block Its Upcoming A.I. Features

AppManager offers drag-and-drop AppImage management.

Sony Will Ship Its Final Blu-ray Recorders This Month

The Memory Crisis Is Taking No Prisoners

RaspberyPi goes Dual RAM

Linux 6.19

KDE 6.6 & Gnome 50 Betas out

Ubuntu getting rid of the Software & Updater tool

Libreoffice 26.2 released

Security and Privacy:

SSHStalker Botnet Uses IRC C2 to Control Linux Systems via Legacy Kernel Exploits

Contact Info:

• Joe – Tllts.org,  linuxlugcast.com, jb@mintcast.org, Buy Joe a coffee
• Moss – Full Circle Weekly News, moss@bodhilinux.com, Mastodon @zaivala@hostux.social, occasionally on HPR
• Bill – bill@mintcast.org, Bill_H on Discord, @wchouser3@fosstodon.org on Mastodon, also checkout the other podcast I am on, Linux OTC (with Eric & Majid).
• Majid – drmajid@mintcast.org @atypical_doctor@mastodon.social, Atypical.doctor on Instagram and Threads and The Atypical Doctor Podcast and also Linux OTC and Distrohoppers Digest.
• Eric – I can be reached by email at eric@mintcast.org.
• Charles – charles@mintcast.org, Mr PDX on Discord
• Jim– jim@mintcast.org, GNU2Linux on Discord, The Linux Shortcut on YouTube

Special Thanks To:

• Bill for our audio editing and for hosting the server which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio
• Archive.org for hosting our audio files
• Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo
• Londoner for our time syncs and various other contributions
• The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem … and co!>