A serious vulnerability in the Linux 2.4 kernel has been discovered. The flaw allows users on a Linux machine to gain unlimited access privileges, according to a security advisory posted by developers of the noncommercial Debian Linux distribution.

In an attack four Linux servers that hosted Debian's bug tracking system, mailing lists, and various Web pages were compromised.

A patch is (and actually was) already available. The Debian linux distrivution (and some other ones too) just let it slip past there update system.