If they use ProFTPD for hosting the code too, why wouldn't the Hackers just use that same exploit on that? Why do they need to insert another way in?

I suspect whatever vulnerability was used allowed the attackers to upload files, but didn't give them actual control over the machine; their backdoored version, as stated in the article, allowed attackers to gain root on the box.

Their FAQ says:

It was produced by a private company, it seems the most OO had to do with it was providing stats on which features were most commonly used, and agreeing for their "brand" to appear on it.

If you want offline backlogging, an IRC bouncer like ZNC can take care of that for you. As for pastebins, pasting the URL to a post is dead easy; there's plenty of IRC bots out there which can automatically post a "$user has made a new pastebin post at $url" message to a channel as soon as someone posts.

At work, we use IRC to communicate, we have a copy of the codebase from pastebin.com with a small modification to report pastebin posts to our development channel, and a script run from a Subversion post-commit hook which reports commts to the channel with a link to view the diff.

Works pretty well for us!

Being an attack against a vulnerability for which a patch has not yet been released qualifies it as a 0-day attack.

From Wikipedia's Zero day attack article:

A zero-day (or zero-hour) attack or threat is a computer threat that tries to exploit computer application vulnerabilities that are unknown to others, undisclosed to the software vendor, or for which no security fix is available.

(Of course, one security fix is available: disable Flash, or use Flashblock :) )

That's why the sensible money is on buying a fairly small SSD on which you put your OS & apps for speed, and a large normal HDD for your data.

Public transport doesn't work for everyone. It's of little use in rural areas, or to people who need to travel at times when it is unavailable (night shift workers, for instance).

Even when it's available, I could leave my house, walk about 10 minutes to a bus stop, then spend 30-40 minutes on a bus that travels a convoluted route across town, stopping every minute or two. Or, I could walk outside, get straight in my car, and drive directly to the same destination in about 10 minutes in comfort, with no waiting for the bus, easily carrying whatever I need, with control over the temperature in the cabin, the music, happy in my own little world. I can return whatever time I want to, without wondering if it's too late for the last bus.

Public transport still has a long way to go.

So, you can't stab someone with it, you have to slash them instead?

A well-placed slash to the throat is still likely to cause death through blood loss.

The knife isn't the problem, it's the nutter holding it that you need to deal with!

Dude, necrophilia is wrong.

The remote side identifies the version of OpenSSH, which will also often include the platform it's on:

[dave@supernova ~]$ ssh -v hostname 2>&1 | grep version
debug1: Remote protocol version 2.0, remote software version OpenSSH_5.1p1 Debian-2
debug1: Local version string SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_5.1