[Sysadmin] changed list admin passwords

David Kaufman david at gigawatt.com
Mon Apr 9 13:54:04 CDT 2007


The changes to thelist configuration options appear to me to be mild 
vandalism.

I've attached a screenshot of the changes.  Most text options were 
modified only slightly, with a random letter added or inserted.  Most 
Yes/No options were reversed.  The "attacker" appeared to be idly 
testing to see *if* they could make changes, rather than trying to 
maliciously hijack the list.  The list admin password, for instance, was 
not changed.

That would have been bad.

Since the admin passwords for all of our lists were not exactly 
"cryptographically secure" and were in fact, not impossible to guess... 
I've change them all.  Even though only theList was compromised, knowing 
its password significantly increased the attackers ability to determine 
the passwords of the others :-)

If you have root on tempest, please

  sudo cat ~dkaufman/lists/list-admin-pwd.txt # readable only by root!

to get the new Administrator passwords for all lists.

-dave



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