More Info on Debian.org Security Breach

mbanck writes "James Troup (part of the Debian System administration team) has published more information on the recent compromise of four debian.org machines. The attack vector seemed to be a sniffed password of an unprivileged account, from which the attacker somehow managed to gain root and install the suckit rootkit and crack the other machines. As the machines were fairly uptodate with respect to security, an as-of-yet unknown local root exploit might be in the wild, so keep an eye on your boxen.Note that the main ftp archive running on a sparc machine was not compromised, so the exploit might not yet be ported to non-i386 architectures."

Comments

Boxen..

[WeblionX]

Here come the comments about the word "boxen..."

Re:Boxen..

[Chuck Chunder]

Someone needs their ears boxen.

Re:Boxen..

[Stormie]

If you call your computers "boxen", I hope they get cracked and rootkitted.

Re:Boxen..

[AndroidCat]

It's a perfectly good middle-english plural. Perhaps they just have rather olde boxen to develop on?

Re:Boxen..

[nyctopterus]

It's a perfectly cromulent word. A noble linux emboxens the smallest geek.

Re:Human Error

[Tyler Eaves]

Random passphrase?

Repeat after me: The best password is the one that isn't stikie'd to the monitor and/or keyboard.

Re:Human Error

[SugoiMonkey]

I say we cut out the user.

Easy solution

[therufus]

Install windows. You'll never have to wonder if your system is being compromised, you'll know it is.

Oh, and "password" is not really a "password".

Ammended for the rest of us:

[Anonymous Coward]

Law #1: If Bill can persuade you to run his program on your computer, it's not your computer anymore.

Re:#1 on Ten Immutable Laws of Security

[prockcore]

Law #1: If a bad guy can persuade you to run his program on your computer, it's not your computer anymore.

That's why I've been saying for years that all my computers are owned by Bill Gates.

Unknown Debian exploit?

[t0ny]

Im sure glad my network runs on Windows!

Re:Unknown Debian exploit?

[flacco]

Im sure glad my network runs on Windows!

hey it is pretty nice - i'm having a look around right now!

Re:Human Error

[BJH]

Dunno, but I might cut off your head if I had a headache.

Re:One recommendation

[Celvin]

To make sure my logs are secure, they are automaticly:

• posted to several usenetgroups
• posted as random comments to /.-stories (Along with some random anti-SCO/Microsoft propaganda so I don't get modded down and don't lose karma :)
• uploaded to the linux kernel CVS
• sent as email to all my friends

This way they are mirrored as many places as possible and hopefully cached by Google. Wipe that out!

Re:So much for unbiased Slashdot

[Alioth]

Slashdot is NOT supposed to be unbiased. It's called /. for heaven's sake - if it was a Microsoft oriented site it would be \. (backslashdot.org)