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

It makes you wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

how many such holes are in Windows? They could never keep track of everything in the chaos at MS.

Nah

[Greyfox]

Neither one of those companies has the talent to pull this sort of thing off. It was probably some spammer looking for another couple of million hosts to hide behind now that Microsoft is posting bounties for compromising Windows code.

Re:Microsoft

[Inthewire]

Yeah, but you're an idiot.
Not that you don't have a point.

Re:Microsoft

[Inthewire]

Few are.
Nice to see you concede.