It seems that each applet added to the panel open a LISTENing socket. telneting to that port causes that applet to crash (i.e. disappear from the panel). Sometimes the panel it self crashes. Here's the output of a netstat: tcp 0 0 *:1176 *:* LISTEN tcp 0 0 *:1175 *:* LISTEN tcp 0 0 *:1174 *:* LISTEN tcp 0 0 *:1173 *:* LISTEN tcp 0 0 *:1172 *:* LISTEN tcp 0 0 *:1171 *:* LISTEN tcp 0 0 *:1164 *:* LISTEN this kind of attack has been tested from both the same system (where the ports can be easily discovered) and a remote one (from which you have to scan all ports above 1024).
Just verified that this happens, and know the solution. It's an ORBit/tcp_wrappers interaction that only happens on the sparc or other platforms that have -fpic _NEEDED_ for shared libraries. Will try to get a fix done this week.
Fixed in ORBit-0.4.3-3.sparc.rpm in errata. (This was a bad interaction between in ORbit and tcp_wrappers)