gnu.ftp.org was compromised in Mar 03 but discovered only this month. This shows escalating privileges to root isn’t the “end game,” as this intruder sought to leverage that access to compromise others. A year ago today Wired published a story on an underground zine called el8.3.txt which declared war on white hats. It appears that the machine was cracked using a ptrace exploit by a local user immediately after the exploit was posted. This reminds me of the techniques espoused by el8 in their.”]
Source: https://taosecurity.blogspot.com/2003/08/gnu-ftp-site-compromised-while.html