Stefan Mileschin

The FreeBSD project has suffered a security breach which could cause a mess for the Unix based operating system.

Hackers have successfully compromised servers that were part of the infrastructure used to build third-party software packages.

It appears that the hackers gained access to the servers using legitimate SSH keys, FreeBSD's security team did not think that there was a fault in the operating system.

The intrusion was first detected on 11 November. FreeBSD insists that the security breach hasn't affected the project's core components like kernel or system libraries.

However, third-party software packages being distributed by the project might have been tampered with.

While they have not found any evidence of modifications to third-party packages but, they haven't ruled out the possibility yet.

They are warning users that there is no guarantee about the integrity of packages available for installation between 19 September and 11 November.

FreeBSD told Parity News that it was planning to adopt more robust distribution services like Subversion system while deprecating legacy distribution services like those based on CVSup, following the hack.

http://news.techeye.net/security/freebsd-servers-hacked