Is TNW a serious news source or a spoof? This seems rather too easily generated from just the information that was in the README file.
From what I have found out, it looks like they used a vulnerability found within a three year old Minify script that hadn't been upgraded. This gave them access to other parts of the server:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-12-14/ga...
Don't quote me on that however.