non-disclosure of infrastructure problem a management issue?

[Nifty Fedora Mitch]

On Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 10:36:21AM +1200, Clint Dilks wrote:
> Bjoern Tore Sund wrote:
>> It has now been a full week since the first announcement that Fedora  
>> had "infrastructure problems" and to stop updating systems.
>
> Hi, I work in an environment very similar to yours a University in New  
> Zealand.  And while I understand your frustration and agree that this  
> situation and the communication surrounding it have been managed poorly  
> I will say that we as administrators can not blame Fedora if we make  
> their infrastructure to critical to our own systems.  For example we can  
> make our own local repositories and we can control / test updates to try  
> and minimize the risks from events such as this.

Just guessing,

This smells like a hacker was detected or a hack was discovered.
As readers of this list will note the historic resolution for a
hacked system has been to do a full reload which takes time.

Ssh key management may also be at issue given the key generation flaw known
as the Debian SSH key attacks.   In some cases a key can be recovered in
20 min...  In this case the issue might be poor keys generated outside
of RH and not a flaw in RH process or tools.

If it had been a blown disk farm we would have more info already.

The more I read about the SSH key attacks the more convinced
I am that there is a need to update my set of keys for me and my systems.  

In time they will tell.

-- 
	T o m  M i t c h e l l 
	Got a great hat... now what.