BBC team exposes cyber crime risk. The BBC report fails to mention what the makeup of the various systems they controlled was, and many pundits are assuming that it was mostly (if not entirely) Windows powered PCs that made up the 20,000 strong botnet, as Windows is by far the dominant PC operating system, and other platforms are not really targeted.

This of course is entirely untrue, its just that the Windows powered systems are the ones that are failing to repel the intruders!!. The server this site is hosted on is running Debian GNU/Linux 5.0, and since March 8th (6 days) there have been 861 failed ssh login attempts against it.

I’m using Shorewall as my firewall, and have restricted the number of ssh connections per second ftom the same ip address. This limits the number of attempts the crackers are able to make in said period, without having an impact on my normal external usage of this box. Prior to the modifications I made to the firewall rules, I was getting in excess of 10,000 attempts in the same period.

Thank you Shorewall, iptables/netfilter dudes.