FreeBSD Project Discloses Security Breach Via Stolen SSH Key

An anonymous reader writes "Following recent compromises of the Linux kernel.org and Sourceforge, the FreeBSD Project is now reporting that several machines have been broken into. After a brief outage, ftp.FreeBSD.org and other services appear to be back. The project announcement states that some deprecated services (e.g., cvsup) may be removed rather than restored. Users are advised to check for packages downloaded between certain dates and replace them, although not because known trojans have been found, but rather because the project has not yet been able to confirm that they could not exist. Apparently initial access was via a stolen SSH key, but fortunately the project's clusters were partitioned so that the effects were limited. The announcement contains more detailed information — and we are left wondering, would proprietary companies that get broken into so forthcoming? Should they be?"

Comments

Short Answer

[benjymouse]

would proprietary companies that get broken into so forthcoming? Should they be?

Yes, they are already required to

BTW, have we ever seen a satisfying explanation for what happened at kernel.org and linuxfoundation.org? We were initially told that it was something similar (stolen password/compromised user system), but AFAICT they have never explained how that could lead to the servers being root'ed. A rootkit *was* installed. That requires careless use of root privileges or an exploit of a privilege escalation vulnerability. Which was it?