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Crazy Firewall Log Activity — What Does It Mean?

Posted by kdawson on from the mainly-on-the-plane dept.

arkowitz writes "I happened to have access to five days worth of firewall logs from a US state government agency. I wrote a parser to grab unique IPs out, and sent several million of them to a company called Quova, who gave me back full location info on every 40th one. I then used Green Phosphor's Glasshouse visualization tool to have a look at the count of inbound packets, grouped by country of origin and hour. And it's freaking crazy looking. So I made the video of it and I'm asking the Slashdot community: What the heck is going on?"

8 of 344 comments (clear)

  1. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Funny

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  2. I'm confused by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Is this post an advertisement for Quova or Green Phosphor's Glasshouse?

  3. Re:2001 by hack++slash · · Score: 4, Funny

    And also... "oh my god... it's full of bars"

    Fixed that for you.

    --
    To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
  4. Great ways to start a conversation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "I happened to have access to five days worth of firewall logs from a US state government agency..."

    "While skimming through my grandmother's cookbook, I stumbled upon a recipe for processing yellowcake uranium..."

    "In passing, a close personal friend mentioned to me that he would deploy ~30k troops to a Mideastern country, but he's worried that the local restaurantuers won't serve fresh babaganoush ..."

    "While I was talking to a famous adult film star about my successful experiment with cold fusion..."

    "I was fighting against an alien invasion of the Soviet Union the other day. Natalie Portman and I prepared a platoon of sharks with frickin' hotgrits cannons on their heads, but the unwelcome overlords kept jumping the sharks..."

    1. Re:Great ways to start a conversation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      I want to be your friend.

  5. Re:Another Slashdot Ad? by noidentity · · Score: 3, Funny

    Maybe you could do a visualization of this guy's astroturfing. And for some reason it seems highly appropriate to use his own visualization tools for it. The ad demonstrating the product would be based on everywhere the ad itself had been spammed. I love it.

  6. Re:Skylab Shreds by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 2, Funny

    Ahah. So you are why my costs for bandwidth are so high.

  7. Re:Skylab Shreds by The+Archon+V2.0 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Not sure what it means, but I'm tempted to plug-in Guitar Hero and jam along to your firewall logs.

    Just let me finish my Klax game first.