Hi,My question is: They did not guess the root password, how did they manipulate files which are only writable by root???The following articles at wikipedia should give you an idea what was going on on your maschine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploit_%28computer_security%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rootkit Hope that helps, Jan P.S. I would recommend an clean re-install. You never know what things are sleeping and hiding on your maschine now...