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A member of the Debian GNU/Linux system administration team believes there is an unknown local root exploit for the Linux kernel circulating in the wild and says it may have been used to compromise four servers belonging to the free software . . . . A member of the Debian GNU/Linux system administration team believes there is an unknown local root exploit for the Linux kernel circulating in the wild and says it may have been used to compromise four servers belonging to the free software project, after initial unprivileged access was gained by using a sniffed password. Debian is a free operating system which uses the Linux kernel; most of the basic OS tools come from the GNU project hence the name GNU/Linux. The break-in was reported on November 21. An ongoing investigation had shown that a sniffed password was used to initially access the server named klecker, one of four which was compromised, a post to one of the Debian mailing lists, by James Troup, said. Troup said that on November 20, it had been noticed that the kernel on a server called master, which hosts the project's bug tracking system, was doing an oops - something which occurs when the kernel code gets into an unrecoverable state. . The Debian GNU/Linux development group warns of a potential local root vulnerability following a breach of credentials that may have impacted their server infrastructure.. Debian Server Security, Root Exploit Incident, Password Sniffing Attack. . Anthony Pell
Developers of the NetBSD open source operating system say a recent security breach did not compromise the software's source code. NetBSD developer and project spokesman Charles Hannum has confirmed that a key developer's password was "discovered" by outsiders.. Developers of the NetBSD open source operating system say a recent security breach did not compromise the software's source code. NetBSD developer and project spokesman Charles Hannum has confirmed that a key developer's password was "discovered" by outsiders. The password would have given hackers the opportunity to impersonate Paul Vixie, a leading developer with the right to make changes to the source code for the software, although not directly. The link for this article located at Fairfax IT is no longer available. . A recent FreeBSD vulnerability alarmed users yet did not jeopardize the software's development files or overall reliability.. NetBSD Security Breach, Open Source Security Flaw, Developer Access Compromise. . LinuxSecurity.com Team
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