Category: System Administration

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Why it’s important to monitor logs

A while back I wrote sshfail. It’s a script to look at attempts on the ssh protocol on servers. You can find it up on git hub if your interested and want to install in your self. https://github.com/nevetsanderson/sshfail .

The interesting thing is that even if you use a non standard port to run ssh on (which is what this data relates to) it’s only a matter of time before modern hackers or bots or some Bs8dutard’s find that information and it gets propergated. Have a look at this raw data.

DateAttemptsips
1/3/20202828
1/4/2020239129
1/5/2020204125
1/6/2020337106
1/7/2020322167
1/8/2020386142
1/9/2020452195
1/10/2020273169
1/11/20205873197
1/12/20204346116
1/13/20208892191
1/14/20206192128
1/15/202000

As you can see things got ugly after about 11 days… from 28 to 5873 attempts on the server per day and within 2 weeks. Also worth considering is how did things go from weeks of no one being able to detect this, to 28 ip address suddenly finding my machine on the same day and then it increasing to 195 (Jan 3-9). I’d love to know what’s going on in the background. How is information is being propergated?

So as you can also observe on the 15 th, I changed the port and things have been have quiet since then but the issue is… If I hadn’t been observant and actually looked at the numbers then I’d be giving the bad guys a chance at reeking havok…

Stay safe out there people, and actually look at your log data!

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Quick shout out dumpNotificationDB.py

Had a quick look at this today and it’s a doozy! Patrick Wardle has created a small python script that dumps the data from the macOS, notifications database. This is a whole lot of information that you may not want anyone to see, let alone audit. Be interesting if and how the Mac os X dev team may manage this issue.

More info hear…

https://www.patreon.com/posts/18714633

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Detail and old technology

I keep lots of note books, technical one’s and personal. Unfortunately like most people I’m not blessed with a photographic memory, but I can get rather methodical, and that’s useful.

Technical writing – this blogging thing is valuable. But I also like to write things in long hand and in pencil in note books! I know it sounds crazy, because these days we can google many if not most problems. But writing my own cheat sheets, (spells, as I call them ) can help a lot to jog the memory. Often it can be just as quick if not quicker than trying to find that page in google you forgot to book mark 3 years ago!

Not to mention that there is some evidence that a hand written approach to the problem solving process can have a number of positive side effects.

When I’m working on something technical my journal is close buy but I’ll also have the index open that I maintain in a spread sheet. The reason is that it’s a lot quicker to find things via the spread sheet. But I also have a hand written index that is good for if i’m off line or taking things slowly. We live in very fast times but it’s good on occasion to slow down a little, think and reap the benefits.