MachineOfTheMonth: Hacking the hacker

Aug 11, 2001, 22:30 (7 Talkback[s])

[ Thanks to Glenn Mullikin for this link. ]

This article goes into some detail about detecting those pesky script-kiddies and protecting your system. Friendly to people just getting started with securing their machines and networks:

"You're a hot shot. You know how to use Linux and hey, you even got that modem working. People think you're smart because you know how to use Linux. But then one night, you're sitting in front of your computer (the one that has the always-on cable modem or DSL connection) and being the smart person that you are, you said that you didn't need security. Well, sure you did a little tweaking on that /etc/inetd.conf file and hey, it looked good.

But for some reason, someone slipped past that defense and connected to port 80. Oh, yes that's right, that's your apache web server running there in full daemon mode, not even protected by inetd. What you did is inexcusable. Why is that? Because before you could click on Bill Gates on that famous linux game (what is it called?) that hacker just downloaded or caused some type of network traffic in excess of 15 megabytes.

What the hell did he do?"

Complete Story

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• LinuxPlanet: .comment: The Weakest Link(Jul 25, 2001)
• Linux Journal: PortSentry(Jul 14, 2001)
• Linux.com: Introduction to Port Scanning(Jun 08, 2001)
• ITWorld: Joe Barr gets cracked and recovers with NMAP(Apr 05, 2001)
• SysAdmin: Linux Intrusion Detection (Dec 31, 2000)
• Security Focus: An Introduction to Incident Handling(Dec 01, 2000)
• PC Magazine: Freeware Port Scanners: Plug the Holes(Nov 18, 2000)