Problems with Linux

[johnwhelan]

According to the Economist one of the foundations of UNIX has been compromised. Apparently the maintainer had a spot of ill health and someone volunteered to assist him. For the first year everything was fine about two years after they started a Microsoft person noticed that SSH was taking 50 milliseconds longer than it should do. They were looking for another problem at the time. On inspection the code was found to contain sophisticated malware. The new volunteer appeared to have shifted his time zone but it was noted that he was never available on Russian holidays.

That one has been found, the issue is how many more are lurking in the foundations of UNIX.

Cheerio John

 

[pware]

A correction to John's post above. It is some Linux, not UNIX, distros that had been hacked. From some reports I have read it was a new update to the compression system used by some Linux distros that was about to go live in the Linux world when the issue was discovered. The update was available as a beta version only so it was a close call.

Since then there has been a storm of posts in the Linux world about how the practice of allowing significant system updates and maintenance to be handled by just a single often over-worked and under resourced individual has led to this near disaster. Unfortunately that is a common feature of open source software.

 

[ek.skirl]

That one has been found, the issue is how many more are lurking in the foundations of UNIX.

Unfortunately this is a worldwide and over all problem. Nobody knows how many lurks work in industries and organisations and for whom and what they are lurking for.
So don't panic. And keep your eyes open.

 

[johnwhelan]

The other problem is finding out from a reputable source exactly what the problem is or was. I've seen a number of different tales from different sources which is why I went with the Economist version.

One interesting thought is does this impact Apple since I understand their operating system is built on a version of UNIX. At one time professionally we avoided BSD because a lot of code was written by students and it really wasn't as robust or free from backdoors as it could have been.

Cheerio John

 

[ek.skirl]

One interesting thought is does this impact Apple since I understand their operating system is built on a version of UNIX

Don't think so, since LINUX was derivated from UNIX in the 90th by Linus Torvald. From there the ways of UNIX and LINUX are splitted in my eyes.

we avoided BSD because

But of course, if there are old, not public, but by some hackers known backdoors from the times of BSD there is a chance to be coruptable.

 

[pware]

Just to clear up some confusions here.

• UNIX is a proprietary OS - it is commercial and its use requires the payment of (often steep) licensing fees while Linux is open source and is free (but technical support may involve payments).
• MacOS X is based on a version of UNIX and not Linux.
• Linux was developed from UNIX and, like MacOS X, it has a great deal of similarity to UNIX
• The "hack" described in this thread affects Linux, not UNIX (or MacOS X)

 

[ek.skirl]

The "hack" described in this thread affects Linux, not UNIX (or MacOS X)

It wasn't clear if the hack used new code or possibly old backdoors or older hacked code.
But in this case MacOS X is clear.