Linux Kernel Back-Door Hack Attempt Discovered

An anonymous reader writes "The BitKeeper to CVS gateway was apparently hacked in an attempt to add a root exploit back door to the Linux kernel, according to the linux-kernel archive. The change was in the file kernel/exit.c and changed the user ID of a process to root under the guise of checking the validity of some flags. The core Linux BitKeeper kernel repository was not at risk, and in fact it was the BitKeeper CVS export scripts that detected the unauthorized modifications to CVS. The changes were falsely attributed in CVS to long-time Linux developer davem (David Miller). Users of the BKCVS repository should resync their trees to remove the offending code if they had replicated it since yesterday."

Comments

Good grief

[ChaoticCoyote]

Kudos to Larry McVoy, owner of BitKeeper, who caught this little piece of interesting skullduggery.

Re:Well well

[GroovBird]

All the vulnerabilities you mentioned are listed as "patched", one isn't even from Microsoft itself and the first link points to good portion of FUD that already has been demystified years ago. So what's your point?

The offending code

[whereiswaldo]

Can someone post the source diff that the hacker tried to get into the tree?

Re:The offending code

[MrPink2U]

Click on the link in the slashdot blurb. Even though I'm no hardcore coder, it is pretty easy to see the exploit they tried when reading through the LKML thread.

I always did hate the == comparison operator in C!