Re: the warez dudez won't leave me alone...

[Richard Morin <qnc496@durhamnews.net>]

On Thu, 20 Mar 1997, Daniel Robbins wrote:

> 
> I'm new to Linux, how can I be sure there is no way for others to get in 
> to my machine when I am in a PPP session?
> 
> 
> Daniel Robbins
> School of Medicine Computer Services
> University of New Mexico
> 
> [email:drobbins@unm.edu]
> 

Hi Daniel, 
I'm no expert, but I do know that you should make sure that you have this
in your /etc/host.deny     
here is mine....
# /etc/hosts.deny: list of hosts that are _not_ allowed to access the system.
#		   See hosts_access(5) and /usr/doc/net/portmapper.txt
#
# Example:    ALL: some.host.name, .some.domain
#             ALL EXCEPT in.fingerd: other.host.name, .other.domain
#
# The PARANOID wildcard matches any host whose name does not match its
# address.

ALL:PARANOID

Hope that makes you feel a little better.  Please note when I mentioned
that the warez punks were trying to get in, I meant just that, there is no
evidence that they were able to get in at all.  It is just pure
coincidence that I was looking at the vt on F1 and noticed a failed
attempt from this *net address*.  Then I looked in my /var/log/auth.log
and lo and behold they had been trying for a few days.  Freaked me out at
first, (I went throught the whole disk directory with the tree command
lookin for something.) then I realized, hey these are all failed attempts.

This should be a sortof kudo to the Debian developers, because this is a
stock system (other than what I've mungeed up) and I feel much better
knowing that my system didn't have any holes (that you could drive a truck
though anyway) right out of the box... Thanks guys and gals!  

(hmm not to open a kettle of fish, but how many female developers are
there??)


Richard Morin
qnc496@durhamnews.net
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