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Well, it seems that stupid people actually *build* linux too!

You think that's an ugly URL? Try this one for size:

http://hugeurl.wiggy.net/go/machine-specificinterm ediaterepresentationrepairofrepairablesdirectoryof occupationaltitles/scienceandtechnologyobjectivere activeionetchs/769705d9b08519a4787a04a681da4700/in ewsdevelopmentenvironmentx

On the second thought...perhaps it would be better to use something like http://hugeurl.wiggy.net/ for this kind of proof-of-concept...

I am very sorry to hear this. I give my condolences to Hans's close friends and family. I did not know him personally, however any loss of an OSS contributor is a great loss (*). Thank you Hans!

-Chuck

(*) For those suffering from a lack of perspective: Yes, any death is a great loss to someone.

There have been a bunch of rumours about a car accident involving some free software folks today. Since there seems to be no central place for all information I am trying to gather all information here.

If you have any other information please drop me an email at wichert@wiggy.net

All mentioned times are in CEST (UTC +0200).

• There has been a car accident returning from a trip to bring Richard Stallman (RMS) from SANE 2004 to Paris. (confirmed by several sources)
• they collided with a truck which merged onto their lane while driving in fog (unconfirmed)
• Exact time of the accident is unknown. It was on the morning of September 30th before 09:00.
• Richard Stallman was dropped off in Paris and no longer in the car (confirmed by Rop and Richard).
• At the time of the accident Hans Bakker (mclightje), Edwin Hermans (madeddie), and Sebastian S. (webmind) were in the car. (confirmed).
• The car belongs to Rop Gonggrijp, who lent it to the travelers. RMS was staying with Rop during SANE. (confirmed by Rop)
• Hans Bakker (photo, homepage) did not survive the crash. (confirmed by girlfriend)
• Edwin Hermans has a broken hip and has been transfered to a different hospital for surgery. Sebastian is (or was by now) in surgery for broken bones but is not in critical condition.

• This Yahoo France accident report is from another accident which occured later and the car was traveling in the wrong direction

• Webwereld (Dutch)
• NedLinux.nl (Dutch)

I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Open Sore hippie Hans Bakker was found dead in a French hospital this morning. There weren't any more details, other than this shitty webpage. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to making the IT market decline even more. Truly a filthy open sores commie..

But still, what intrigues me the most is that they have found out that they were hijacked in the first place.

Because they suddenly started spewing oopses. RTFAs:

"On November 20 it was noticed that masters' kernel was generating a lot of oopses. While investigating this it was discovered that murphy was showing the exact same oops, which was an overly suspicious coincidence." -- Compromise details

the link in the topic was broken

Which one? Did you tell us?

Here's what the topic says RIGHT NOW:

14:40 Topic for #debian: Compromised machine info: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2003 /debian-devel-announce-200311/msg00012.html || Down: gluck (people, packages.d.o); || more info at http://www.wiggy.net/debian/ || Take your Knoppix questions to #knoppix. || /msg the bots, NOT the people || flood in #flood, NOT here || FAQ: http://www.linuks.mine.nu/debian-faq/

Both the links work for me. Since slashdot will mangle them, here they are in usable form: Debian.org mailing list announcement and wiggy.net status page.

is that if you go into an IRC channel for any non main-stream OS (os/2, linux, mac, etc) and ask a question, you're going to get beaten up by assholes.

And a Microsoft(tm) Windows(r) IRC channel is any better? (Do they even have an IRC channel?)

Strangely enough, the channel topic had absolutely nothing to talk about the package servers, and the link in the topic was broken.

Let's quote the channel topic, and you can read it again.

*** Topic for #debian: Compromised machine info:
+http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-annou nce/200 3/debian-devel-announce-20031
+1/msg00012.html || Down: gluck (people, packages.d.o); || more info at
+http://www.wiggy.net/debian/ || Take your Knoppix questions to #knoppix. ||
+/msg the bots, NOT the people || flood in #flood, NOT here || FAQ:
+http://www.linuks.mine.nu/debian-faq/


See the section with "Down: gluck (people, packages.d.o)"?

and the link in the topic was broken.

Both URLs work fine. If you can't figure out how to remove newlines from a long URL, it's your own fault. Here, practice by removing the whitespace Slashcode adds:

http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/20 03 /debian-devel-announce-200311/msg00012.html

As mentioned in order comment Wichert Akkerman has setup a page explaining the current situation at http://www.wiggy.net/debian/

Notice that you will not find a note in the www.debian.org web server since until all the servers are being restored and are back online a public note (giving more details than the previous announcement) is being postponed. Also, the infraestructure used to build up the web site (english + all the translations) is part of the compromised servers.

In reponse to "DOH!! correction"

No, the release was not delayed so that security fixes could be put in it. The release was delayed, but the security fixes in it, are not related to the cracking of the Debian file servers. Some rumors say the reason was password compromise, but I still don't know for sure what the reason was.

Anyway, the delay was that when you get your file servers cracked, its should be your first priority. They had the release ready before they were cracked.

Click to get more (recent) information about the crack/compromise.

/Spam .