Debian servers hacked?

[Fraser Campbell]

I hate to fan the flames of rumour but just in case this is true I thought I 
should forward.  I've seen a link stating that the archives 
(binaries/sources) are fine but nothing has come directly to me yet that was  
from "official" sources ...

I download all updates automatically every night to my servers but do not 
install them.  Last night I downloaded 9 packages which seemed unusual.  
Looking closer I could see the packages came from the main Debian archive 
(not security) which seemed even more unusual.

I checked debian-user to see if there were reports of any funny stuff.  So far 
this is what I know:

- Debian 3.0r2 was scheduled to be released today, it hit the mirrors last
  night and is "out there" though not yet announced, this would explain the
  new packages

- Many of the 9 packages are rather typical of ones that get trojaned, they're
  also typical of the ones that get security updates mind you:
 
    bsdutils_1%3a2.11n-7_i386.deb
    console-data_1999.08.29-24.2_all.deb
    procmail_3.22-5_i386.deb
    debianutils_1.16.2woody1_i386.deb
    procps_1%3a2.0.7-8.woody1_i386.deb
    util-linux_2.11n-7_i386.deb
    mount_2.11n-7_i386.deb
    zlib1g_1%3a1.1.4-1.0woody0_i386.deb
    nano_1.0.6-3_i386.deb

- Someone forwarded a link to an announcemet supposedly from debian-announce

    http://cert.uni-stuttgart.de/files/fw/debian-security-20031121.txt

Maybe the packages are trojaned, maybe they aren't ... I ain't installing them 
yet ;-)  My hope is that someone on Debian user just pulled a well timed joke.

-- 
Fraser Campbell <fraser-Txk5XLRqZ6CsTnJN9+BGXg at public.gmane.org>                 http://www.wehave.net/
Georgetown, Ontario, Canada                               Debian GNU/Linux

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