Linux B-day celebrations rattled by break-in
(PhysOrg.com) -- Just days after celebrations marking the 20th birthday of Linux, the operating system revered around the globe as a rock-solid open source triumph, news surfaced that key servers used to maintain and distribute the operating system were hacked. Malware had gained root access. System software had been modified. The attack was confirmed in a note on Wednesday, August 28, posted on the Linux Kernel Archives www.kernel.org , the main distribution site for the Linux kernel. Though discovered on the 28th, the security breach possibly took place some time before, possibly no later than August 12. By Sunday, the 28th, it was obvious to admins of the web site that things had gone wrong. Files belonging to ssh (openssh, openssh-server and openssh-clients) were modified. A trojan startup file had been added to startup scripts.
