Darn Annoying Hackers...

Well, I'll be the first person to admit I'm not perfect, and I found that out really quickly when we were hacked severely over the weekend. My biggest mistake was using the same two passwords all over a bunch of assorted Linux boxes I use around the Internet, and my second mistake was overusing 'sudo' and giving myself too much access based on two very good and cryptic passwords. Sure they were good passwords, but once someone has captured those two passwords (through a compromised ssh client or sshd server no doubt), they had root access all over the place. So now I have changed passwords everywhere, patched assorted systems with clean binaries (why are we still using Red Hat 9 on some boxes?) and removed access to many domains and simply turned off sshd on several systems that really did not need it (Did I really need to ssh into my iMac?). What a fun time this has been, all because a few people somewhere thought they needed to run psyBNC bouncer somewhere and also scan half the internet for some open anonymous FTP servers. Why do these people do this? Is this their idea of fun? Don't they realize with their knowledge they could actually be earning real money somewhere instead of just giving other people grief? Then they could buy their own dedicated or "virtual private" server somewhere (they're cheap!) and install anything they feel like on it! That way their psyBNC bouncer could stay up and running for months or years instead of just until some random sysadmin shuts it down.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Trying out the L'Ecole Culinaire Presentation Room restaurant

Image
We had been seeing the ads for the restaurant at L'Ecole Culinaire and since we live so close by we thought we would try it out. We had always enjoyed dining out at cooking or hotel schools like the CHIC in Chicago and the Statler at Cornell where we went to college. Since we still love to go out and eat here in St. Louis , we ventured over to their restaurant on the first day they were open for lunch. The first thing we noticed is that they do not have much parking! They really need to let patrons know where they are supposed to park. The restaurant itself is small but very well attended. There was one fellow who kept straightening all the centerpieces and place settings on the tables, and we always saw one or two student workers milling about. The lunch menu was small and the choices did not appear overly "gourmet". The special of the day was a bison burger stuffed with cheese, and other choices picked by my group included a club sandwich, a "margherita" pi...
Read more

BMI & BMR Calculator (Body Mass Index and Basal Metabolic Rate)

Image
My wife has been researching type 2 diabetes and recently checked a book out of the library which included a body mass index (BMI) chart much like the one pictured here. Whereas it is fairly easy to follow, I, of course, think it must be converted to an online calculator! However, when I checked the Internet, there were already a billion of them so I had to make one that was different. So my lovely BMI BMR calculator accepts either inches or centimeters for your height and pounds or kilograms for your weight and calculates not only your BMI, but also your BMR (basal metabolic rate) which determines how many calories you should consume! So I made a spiffy "all in one" healthy body indicator calculator which not only determines how underweight or overweight you are, but also tells you how many calories you should consume to maintain or improve your ideal weight. 
Read more

Not all Frosted Window Films are the same!

Image
We live in an older home with a lot of issues and one of them concerns our back door to our patio from our sunroom. The door has double paned glass on it, but unfortunately the seal has broken so you can see moisture collect inside of it. We decided the easiest way to "remedy" the problem was to cover the window with some "frosted" film so we did not have to see the moisture condensing between the panes. But the question was, what film? There are a bunch of them available so we had to select something to try on the door. The first place we tried was our nearby Lowe's store which had a bunch of Gila brand film. We selected what seemed like the typical adhesive based door sized  film that cost about $25 after tax. We thought it could not be that hard to put up and look nice on our door. So one day my wife ran out and purchased it at Lowe's and we commenced to install it on our door window. We made our own soapy water solution and followed the directions...
Read more