Re: identd log entries

From: /dev/rob0 (rob0_at_gmx.co.uk)
Date: 03/31/04 

Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2004 08:36:39 -0600

On Wed, 31 Mar 2004 10:40:34 +0200, jack wrote:
> I just don't know why You're posting it here then, neither do I know
> why people - including myself - even bother to write a reply...
>
> Seriously: This is a usenet news group, and this is a discussion
> rather than a competition.
>
> I'll take it just as a "noise"...

I'm sorry you feel that way. I disagree: I hoped it could serve as a
good exercise. So here's what I did ...

Seeing that it was SMTP the first place I looked was in the maillog
file, which in my syslog gets all mail.* messages. I could find no
correlation between that and the identd logs. In fact my MTA was
passing everything along to the relayhost as it should; no external
connections at all.

My auth daemon is a "dumb" one, and I've seen that error before when
machines behind the firewall are doing something to trigger an auth
query. To test whether or not they were coming from another machine I
put in an iptables rule:
    iptables -I FORWARD -i $INTIF -o $EXTIF -p tcp --dport 25 -j LOG --log-level debug
*.debug messages go to /var/log/debug, and a tail -f quickly found the
perpetrator, scrolling faster than I could read, but the same source IP
on every outgoing packet ... a Windows box.

No, I was not cracked, and now my children are no longer allowed to use
Windows to access the Internet. This is also a testimony to the virtues
of running an identd open to the outside: it's safe, it doesn't give
away vital information, and it the things it logs can be VERY useful!

And I hope this followup puts this thread back on the "signal" side of
the signal-to-noise ratio. :) 

-- 
  /dev/rob0 - preferred_email=i$((28*28+28))@softhome.net
  or put "not-spam" or "/dev/rob0" in Subject header to reply

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