Eli Zaretskii writes to tell us that Emacs 29.3 has been released. It’s the first time in a long time—or maybe ever—that I can recall Emacs releasing a security update. It’s an editor, after all, what security issues could it have. The problem is that Emacs is not just an editor: it’s a complete operating environment and some of those files it works on can have active elements.
You can read about the specific issues that the update addresses in the NEWS file but they’re just what you’d think they would be. The fixes mainly tighten down on existing safeguards that prevent Emacs from executing possibly malicious Elisp.
As I always say, thanks to Eli and the other developers for their work on this release. It’s not the type of thing that gets a lot of notice and hosannas. It’s a simple security update: boring but nevertheless vital. That makes it all the more worthy of our thanks.
Afterword
Ihor Radchenko announced that there’s a corresponding update to Org mode so be sure to update them both.