As we reported last week, our public forums have been compromised and defaced. Passwords were safe but the cracker did manage to get access to the database with our forum posts as well as email addresses. Read on to find out what happened, what we did to prevent further damage and what we’re going to do in the future.
vBulletin hacked
openSUSE has used vBullentin forum software for a very long time. While we haven’t always been happy with it, the issues never prompted us to put in the (substantial!) time and effort required to move to another solution.
On January 7, 2014, we received word from The Hacker News that our public forums were compromised and defaced by a cracker exploiting a zero day flaw in the underlying vBulletin forum software (vBulletin 4.2.1). A Pakistani cracker has claimed responsibility. According to The Hacker News, the cracker confirmed that he/she uploaded a PHP shell to the openSUSE Forum server using a private vBulletin’s zero-day exploit, that allows him/her to browse, read or overwrite any file on the Forum server without root privileges.
Read more at openSUSE News
