(Ed. note: As of 2000-02-12 06:57:13 UTC, Computer Currents
has published an amendment to the article with an
apology.)
[ Thanks to mike for this link.
]
“Nelson says the current problem, which has attracted
all the recent media attention is, in fact, not new. The high-tech
industry has known since August 1998, he said, that Solaris and
Linux systems were vulnerable to having foreign, unwanted code
placed on them by outsiders.”
“In addition, the source code, that provides
outsiders with the ability to insert this code and attack Solaris
and Linux systems, has been posted on the Internet for some time,
making it easy accessible by anyone.”
“Nelson said that there are “easily” over one million
Solaris and Linux systems in use, and that the current spate of
attacks takes advantage of an inherent vulnerability in these
systems; Windows- based systems are not subject to this
problem.”
“As many readers have pointed out, the February 11, 2000
article titled, “Solaris and Linux Vulnerable To Hack,” posted on
our site was in error. Although we are responsible for any
editorial that appears on our site (and yes, we should have
scrutinized this item before we posted it), keep in mind that this
was in fact a “feed” from the Newsbytes service, much like an AP or
Reuters feed. And as such, we don’t typically have control over the
content….”