On Tue, 2 Dec 2003, Jonathan Hutchins wrote:

> Recent troubles with the Debian distributions turn out to be the result of a 
> kernel exploit, according to yesterday's article on Slashdot: 

Its a local exploit, meaning a user must have access on the system to take
over.  Here is a discussion with an included test script to see if your
kernel is vulnerable:

http://lists.netsys.com/pipermail/full-disclosure/2003-December.txt.gz

If you have people logging into your computer with permissions to create 
and run processes, *then* this is something you have to worry about.

Apparently, a debian developer had simply forgot his password and started 
all this fun...