* Ingo Molnar [off-list ref] wrote:

The compromise relies on you having reviewed something harmless, while 
in reality what happened within the DB was far less harmless. And the 
DB remains self-consistent: neither fsck, nor others importing your 
tree will be able to detect the compromise. This attack can only be 
detected when you apply the patch, after that point all the 
information (except Malice's message in your inbox) is gone.

in fact, this attack cannot even be proven to be malicious, purely via 
the email from Malice: it could be incredible bad luck that caused that 
good-looking patch to be mistakenly matching a dangerous object.

In fact this could happen even today, _accidentally_. (but i'm willing 
to bet that hell will be freezing over first, and i'll have some really 
good odds ;) There's probably a much higher likelyhood of Linus' tree 
getting corrupted in some old fashioned way and introducing a security 
hole by accident)

	Ingo