Re: !SPAM! [Full-Disclosure] Automated ssh scanning

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To: Tremaine <tremaine@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 15:14:27 -0500 (CDT)

On Thu, 26 Aug 2004, Tremaine wrote:

        [SNIP]

> >
> >
> > The issue here is why does debain include such a weak account,m thaqt has
> > not been tamed via a very restricted chroot env!?
>
> That's not the issue though. As someone who has installed and
> maintained debian systems over a period of years, I can assure you
> that debian does not include a guest account (or any account) with a
> weak password or shell.
>
> There aren't any shell accounts other than root on a debian install
> until added by the administrator.
>
> The weak account in question here was created by the original poster
> with the intent of catching one of these apparently automated ssh
> attacks.
>

I may have misread the orig poster on this, but, my impression was it was
either added by his choices on the debain install, or is setup as access
for 'general' users on his system. Perhaps I misread...

> > As Barry pointed to directly, it all depends upon what you make available
> > to your clients once in a shell. It;s very likely your server would be as
> > exploitable as most 'default' installs with the kitchen sink dropped in.
> > Perhaps not, but likely, depending upon what you 'installed and allow
> > clients access to'.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Ron DuFresne
>
>
> As for the defaults on the original posters install... that would of
> course depend entirely on what install method he chose. Like many
> current distros (Mandrake, Redhat etc) Debian offers a packaged
> install of a couple varieties (desktop, server, workstation etc) for
> an admin to pick from, or they can choose to run dselect (package
> management interface) and choose by hand what they do and do not want.
>

Those do not make alot of difference, the key is not to accept any of the
defaults by any of these dists, pick and choose carefully which individual
packages you install. I know redhat has dependancy hell with various
packages, from the experience of trying to do as minimal as possible an
install for a webhost while migrating from sunone on solaris to
apache/redhat on the mainframe awhile back. I do not doubt that some of
these additional dists are wraught with the same issues. But, I do know
that slackware's installation process has the ability for one to do
finegrained installs and to determine specifically individual packages
from each package set.

> This of course again comes back to not knowing what the initial poster
> did with the system beyond running dselect -> update -> install which
> would have autohandled updates and dependency resolution for installed
> packages.
>

Yes, kida like what I was saying above, but, also depenant upon how the
dists deal with packages themselves in their various 'default modes'.

Thanks,

Ron DuFresne

> --
> Tremaine
> IT Security Consultant
>

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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