“Computer vandals are exploiting two fairly common
vulnerabilities in Unix computer systems discovered since July. In
about 100 cases since then, intruders have used the vulnerabilities
to install distributed denial-of-service tools on machines,
according to CERT Incident Response Team Leader Kevin Houle. Those
tools figured prominently in February’s well-publicized attacks on
big-name Web sites like Yahoo.com, Amazon.com, and CNN.com.”
“New reports are coming in at the rate of about two to five per
day, he said.”
“In one incident, we recorded over 560 hosts at 220 Internet
sites around the world as being a part of a Tribe Flood Network
2000 DDoS network,” Poule said.”
“…Most of the compromised computers were Red Hat Linux
machines running the basic, default configuration, Poule said.
Linux is one flavor of Unix, and vulnerabilites often span the many
flavors of Unix.“