anonymous ftp

[vida@uni-freiburg.de]

Hi, 

i have some questions concerning anonymous FTP
and uninvited users

I run a Debian Linux machine in my office.
I need FTP to be able to access my data 
from different (non-Linux) machines I have to use.
The server is setup as suggested by the manual.

Lately i had a constant barrage of logins from different sites mainly from .fr.  
There were often plenty of files uploaded in a complex directory structure
so I gradually built up a nice list in my hosts.deny file.
However, the barrage of login attempts doe not seem to vain.
Could someone please explain me the motivation behind these "attacks"
What is this good for? -  i don't see the point, unless:

I found the following in my deamon.log file and i don't understand it,
nobody used the computer at this timepoint - at least not with my knowledge.
Could this be related to these attempts?

Feb 14 13:43:32 sharp in.ftpd[7052]: connect from localhost 
Feb 14 13:43:32 sharp sshd[2561]: debug: Forked child 7055. 
Feb 14 13:43:33 sharp sshd[7055]: connect from 127.0.0.1 
Feb 14 13:43:33 sharp sshd[7055]: log: Connection from 127.0.0.1 port 3484 
Feb 14 13:43:33 sharp sshd[7055]: fatal: Did not receive ident string. 
Feb 14 13:43:33 sharp sshd[7055]: debug: Calling cleanup 0x8056f2c(0x0)


Thanks,

Imre