Really disappointed in the number of posters here who are playing down rushing to judgement and suggesting perhaps a legitimate developer was compromised, when it's very clear this is sophisticated and not the work of a single person.
I'm recalling bad memories of the Juniper backdoor years ago.
Whoever did this, was playing the long game. As the top post pointed out, there was an effort to get this into Fedora.... which eventually makes its way into RHEL (read: high value targets). This was not for short term payoffs by some rogue developer trying to mine crypto or other such nonsense. What you are seeing here is the planting of seeds for something months or a year down the road.
I'm recalling bad memories of the Juniper backdoor years ago.
Whoever did this, was playing the long game. As the top post pointed out, there was an effort to get this into Fedora.... which eventually makes its way into RHEL (read: high value targets). This was not for short term payoffs by some rogue developer trying to mine crypto or other such nonsense. What you are seeing here is the planting of seeds for something months or a year down the road.