The Linux backdoor attempt of 2003 (2013)
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The Linux backdoor attempt of 2003 (2013)
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Re: The Linux backdoor attempt of 2003 (2013)
#2Previous discussions - [1] [2]
Re: The Linux backdoor attempt of 2003 (2013)
#3I have the full story on that incident. It is actually really funny.
If the guy who did it wants to come forward, that is his decision. [edit: I won't name names.]
He did provided me the full story. He told me with the understanding that the story would go public, so I will dig it up and post it.
I also interviewed the sysadmins who were running the box at the time.
1. it was not an NSA operation, it was done by a hacker.
2. it was discovered by accident, not because of clever due diligence.
Basically, there was a developer who had a flakey connection and one time his commits didn't go through. To detect this in future he had a script that would download the entire tree from the server and compare it against his local copy to make sure that his changes had been committed.
It was discovered because of the discrepancy between his local working copy and the upstream copy. Which was checked not for security reasons, but because sometimes the two were out of sync. That's all. Just dumb luck.
The sysadmins are still quite bitter about it. I know how it feels when your box is hacked and you really take it personally.
The code wasn't added by hacking the CVS, as far as I remember, but rather through a hacked developer with commit rights.
that's the story as I was told
Re: The Linux backdoor attempt of 2003 (2013)
#4This is a single example of an unsuccessful attempt to backdoor Linux. There were successful attempts too https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/nsa-linked-bv...
Re: The Linux backdoor attempt of 2003 (2013)
#5This is a single example of an unsuccessful attempt to backdoor Linux. There were successful attempts too https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/nsa-linked-bv...
Am I missing something? That seems to link to a Linux backdoor, not a backdoor in Linux.
Re: The Linux backdoor attempt of 2003 (2013)
#6We used to use this as a cautionary tale in the CS department security course at the Technion. First, to highlight trust relationships in the "supply chain" (as the notion is now known in contemporary usage). Second, to pose the question of whether open source is inherently more trustworthy.
Re: The Linux backdoor attempt of 2003 (2013)
#7I have the full story on that incident. It is actually really funny. If the guy who did it wants to come forward, that is his decision. [edit: I won't name names.] He did provided me the full story. He told me with the understanding that the story would go public, so I will dig it up and post it. I also interviewed the sysadmins who were running the box at the time. 1. it was not an NSA operation, it was done by a ha…
Wait was the guy you know the hacker or someone who discovered the hack by accident? If the latter, how do you know anything about the hacker's identity or motive?
Re: The Linux backdoor attempt of 2003 (2013)
#8I have the full story on that incident. It is actually really funny. If the guy who did it wants to come forward, that is his decision. [edit: I won't name names.] He did provided me the full story. He told me with the understanding that the story would go public, so I will dig it up and post it. I also interviewed the sysadmins who were running the box at the time. 1. it was not an NSA operation, it was done by a ha…
Wait was the guy you know the hacker or someone who discovered the hack by accident? If the latter, how do you know anything about the hacker's identity or motive?
That confused me, too. They appear to know the person who accidentally discovered the issue, not the hacker.
Re: The Linux backdoor attempt of 2003 (2013)
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait was the guy you know the hacker or someone who discovered the hack by accident? If the latter, how do you know anything about the hacker's identity or motive?
That confused me, too. They appear to know the person who accidentally discovered the issue, not the hacker.
How do they know it wasn't the NSA then?
Re: The Linux backdoor attempt of 2003 (2013)
#10Another bit of cleverness not mentioned in the article is that assignment expressions always evaluate to the rvalue. So the expression `current->uid = 0` has the effect of making sure that entire conditional never actually runs (or at least, the return never runs), which means the overall behavior of wait4 doesn't change in an observable way. Very clever if you're trying to pass all of the existing tests