Linked by Adam S on Tue 26th Aug 2008 12:29 UTC, submitted by Hakime
Red Hat Linux distributor Red Hat has issued a statement (Ed: via their errata) revealing that its servers were illegally infiltrated by unknown intruders. According to the company, internal audits have confirmed that the integrity of the Red Hat Network software deployment system was not compromised. The community-driven Fedora project, which is sponsored by Red Hat, also fell victim to a similar attack. More news is available around the web.
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Not entirely accurate
by slight on Tue 26th Aug 2008 14:07 UTC
slight
Member since:
2006-09-10

Their package signing key was compromised and the intruders managed to get some OpenSSH packages signed. Combined with DNS poisoning this could be nasty.

RE: Not entirely accurate
by TechGeek on Tue 26th Aug 2008 14:59 in reply to "Not entirely accurate"
TechGeek Member since:
2006-01-14

It could have been bad if they had not caught it. But it is pretty easily fixed as they just issue a point release with a new key and will overwrite the older version if you happened to get it. Doesnt look like too many people actually downloaded it though.

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 2

RE[2]: Not entirely accurate
by flanque on Tue 26th Aug 2008 22:10 in reply to "RE: Not entirely accurate"
flanque Member since:
2005-12-15

I think the point is that it should never of happened.

Prevention is always better than cure.

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 3

RE: Not entirely accurate
by Znark on Tue 26th Aug 2008 16:31 in reply to "Not entirely accurate"
Znark Member since:
2006-01-09

Actually, there were two separate attacks (although probably related) on the Red Hat and Fedora infrastructure servers. The Red Hat attacker was able to sign some openssh packages. My impression is that the intrusion was detected before the packages were pushed to users. But they did not compromise the private key since it is in a hardware device.

The Fedora attacker was not able to sign any packages but did potentially compromise the signing key so they generated a new one. In both cases, they shut down the update service until everything was fixed. They also forced all the Fedora contributors to generate new certificates and upload new SSH keys.

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 1