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The BBC's Honeypot PC
Alex Pontin writes, "This article from the BBC shows how vulnerable XP Home really is. Using a highly protected XP Pro machine running VMWare, the BBC hosted an unprotected XP Home system to simulate what an 'average' home PC faces when connected to the internet." From the article: "Seven hours of attacks: 36 warnings that pop-up via Windows Messenger. 11 separate visits by Blaster worm. 3 separate attacks by Slammer worm. 1 attack aimed at Microsoft IIS Server. 2-3 "port scans" seeking weak spots in Windows software." The machine was attacked within seconds of being connected to the Internet, and at no time did more than 15 minutes elapse between attacks.
Do you have a linux box on the public net with SSH open?
Yes.
I gaurantee you are getting more than 1000 attempted logins per day.
Uh, no. On the occasional day I get a sustained attempt to guess a username/password combo, and such an attempt may well get up to 1,000 attempts, but in the last 4 days' log (all I keep), I don't see any such attempt. There were a couple of attempts on my FTP server, but it looks like the attacker closed the connection as soon as they saw the welcome banner; scanning for a particular server/version in the connection report, I guess.
He said an coordinated effort. Of course no one person can get anywhere, but if we just decide not to accept this, we start blocking IP ranges, force the ISPs to deal with their spammers and botnets--it wouldn't take long at all to shut down the entire problem (and 60% of the web). Then you just bring up clean PCs one at a time--forward their DNS to a page that can lead you through the process of cleaning out your PC and contains a list of services that will help.
Subsidize the creation of some decent anti-virus and service companies that can clean your computer remotely (Just don't build one nuke, that should take care of funding it for a few years)
Of course we can't take these steps proactively, humans are too short-sighted, but we WILL do something like this reactively, It's going to happen--just a matter of time.