Sloppy Linux Admins Enable Slow Brute-Force Attacks

badger.foo passes on the report of Peter N. M. Hansteen that a third round of low-intensity, distributed brute-force attacks is now in progress — we earlier discussed the first and second rounds — and that sloppy admin practice on Linux systems is the main enabler. As before, the article links to log data (this time 770 apparently already compromised Linux hosts are involved), and further references. "The fact that your rig runs Linux does not mean you're home free. You need to keep paying attention. When your spam washer has been hijacked and tries to break into other people's systems, you urgently need to get your act together, right now."

Comments

Re:The Headline

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't we remove "Linux" from the headline and have it be just as accurate?

Ahh, yes let's remove the fact that this is Loonix boxes being brute force attacked because it would hurt the "ZOMG TEH LOONIX CAN NOT BE H4X0R3D THATS ONLY DUH WINDOZE BOXES!!".

if ths were a windows story

[smash]

... we'd all be making fun of how insecure M$ is, amirite?

Incompetence with security matters means you will get owned sooner or later, whatever OS you're running. There are plenty of microsoft tools out there to secure your shit, just as there is for Linux or any of the BSDs.

Re:my examples assume the attacker knows the schem

[smallfries]

Perhaps you are unusual in that you seem to be picking dictionary words uniformly at random, leading to an average complexity of half the search space. Sadly most people are not very good at picking random numbers and if you told them to use this method the probability is exactly one that they would choose fuckdonkey69...

Joking aside, using John is very good advice. It actually sorts the search space to pick common layouts of dictionary words plus fillers first. If it can't find your password then it is pretty secure.