[ale] Hacked? Curious lack of home dir

[David Dagon]

Hi,

   A friend running a Linux box has an urgent, and puzzling, problem.

   Accounts have been set up for various users.  Logs indicate normal
usage.  Then, all of a sudden,
no user is able to log in.  "No directory /home/<USER>!" is the only
message, when in fact there
exists such a directory.  In addition, when root attempts to remove the
user and add the user
all over again, the same message appears.

   In short, only root can log in from the console (remote root login is
of course not permitted).

Any ideas?  I'm thinking chmod problems?  Has anyone seen this before?

His box was hacked a few weeks ago, and I'm concerned this is a
lingering backdoor exploit.

Regards,

David Dagon
david.dagon at mindspring.com
=======================================================

 telnet <IP>
Trying <IP>
Connected to <IP>
Escape character is '^]'.

Red Hat Linux release 5.1 (Manhattan)
Kernel 2.2.0-pre7 on an i586
login: dagon
Password:
Last login: Tue Jan 26 22:06:43 from <ANOTHER IP>



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No directory /home/dagon!
Connection closed by foreign host.