Kernel.org Compromised

First time accepted submitter JoeF writes "There is a note posted on the main kernel.org page indicating that kernel.org was compromised earlier this month: 'Earlier this month, a number of servers in the kernel.org infrastructure were compromised. We discovered this August 28th. While we currently believe that the source code repositories were unaffected, we are in the process of verifying this and taking steps to enhance security across the kernel.org infrastructure.' The note goes on to say that it is unlikely to have affected the source code repositories, due to the nature of git."

Comments

Re:Wishful thinking

[bzipitidoo]

You know what? Linux users will go right on using plain Linux. Not SE Linux, not OpenBSD, and certainly not Windows. We're not even going to change our root passwords. Why? Because this security breach is not that big a deal.

Yes, it is embarrassing for kernel.org, but the damage is not that great. Sure, we'd all like to prevent security breaches from ever happening in the first place, but I have always thought detection and recovery is more important than prevention. Kernel.org has that covered in spades. Keep backups. Keep many backups. Keep them in many different locations. A distributed source code revision control system such as git does that automatically. Whoever did this wasn't too smart if they were seriously trying to inject a backdoor into the Linux kernel. Now they've blown their cover. They can't have seriously expected the code modifications they tried to go unnoticed for long, unless they have no idea how large projects handle source code. So either they were dumb, or all they were trying to do was embarrass Linux.

Re:Highly unlikely the code was compromised

[Octoploid]

The private signing key + passphrase are normally present on hera. So all tarball signatures could be compromised.