<story><title>The Linux backdoor attempt of 2003 (2013)</title><url>https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2013/10/09/the-linux-backdoor-attempt-of-2003/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>grugq</author><text>I have the full story on that incident. It is actually really funny.&lt;p&gt;If the guy who did it wants to come forward, that is his decision. [edit: I won&amp;#x27;t name names.]&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;I also interviewed the sysadmins who were running the box at the time.&lt;p&gt;1. it was not an NSA operation, it was done by a hacker.&lt;p&gt;2. it was discovered by accident, not because of clever due diligence.&lt;p&gt;Basically, there was a developer who had a flakey connection and one time his commits didn&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;s all. Just dumb luck.&lt;p&gt;The sysadmins are still quite bitter about it. I know how it feels when your box is hacked and you really take it personally.&lt;p&gt;The code wasn&amp;#x27;t added by hacking the CVS, as far as I remember, but rather through a hacked developer with commit rights.&lt;p&gt;that&amp;#x27;s the story as I was told</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>epcoa</author><text>Geez, this crowd. The clearest evidence that it was not an NSA attack is that it was not very good. It modified a CVS mirror. At no time was the source of truth (the bitkeeper repo) in any danger. Anybody that knew how this stuff worked at the time would have known it would be caught immediately. Not very state level expertise, pretty sad if it was the NSA.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Linux backdoor attempt of 2003 (2013)</title><url>https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2013/10/09/the-linux-backdoor-attempt-of-2003/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>grugq</author><text>I have the full story on that incident. It is actually really funny.&lt;p&gt;If the guy who did it wants to come forward, that is his decision. [edit: I won&amp;#x27;t name names.]&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;I also interviewed the sysadmins who were running the box at the time.&lt;p&gt;1. it was not an NSA operation, it was done by a hacker.&lt;p&gt;2. it was discovered by accident, not because of clever due diligence.&lt;p&gt;Basically, there was a developer who had a flakey connection and one time his commits didn&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;s all. Just dumb luck.&lt;p&gt;The sysadmins are still quite bitter about it. I know how it feels when your box is hacked and you really take it personally.&lt;p&gt;The code wasn&amp;#x27;t added by hacking the CVS, as far as I remember, but rather through a hacked developer with commit rights.&lt;p&gt;that&amp;#x27;s the story as I was told</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>causal</author><text>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&amp;#x27;s identity or motive?</text></comment>