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Brute-Force SSH Server Attacks Surge (InformationWeek)Brute-Force SSH Server Attacks Surge (InformationWeek)Posted May 15, 2008 15:33 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806)In reply to: Brute-Force SSH Server Attacks Surge (InformationWeek) by ekj Parent article: Brute-Force SSH Server Attacks Surge (InformationWeek)
Hm, are you saying that worrying about running services is silly because there are so many more reliable ways of rooting a box? If so, I have two replies: - Running services have always been most effective way of remoting a box. They are the 1:100 number you quoted. - Disregarding a 1:100000 chance event might make sense on some level. The problem is that Linux deployments are immense and the downside of having your box rooted is so enormous. If 36,000 Linux boxes will be compromised this year, and a particular running service is responsible for only 60 of those breakins, it sounds like you're saying that the service is statistically insignificant and can be ignored. That might keep the statisticians happy but I think it is clearly wrong. At least, I hope that the distros I use don't feel that way!
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Brute-Force SSH Server Attacks Surge (InformationWeek) Posted May 16, 2008 6:00 UTC (Fri) by ekj (subscriber, #1524) [Link] Nah. We don't really disagree. I'm just nitpicking. Specifically, I'm nitpicking the claim that a large relative reduction in risk by ITSELF is a reason to do something. Cutting a risk by 99% sounds great, my point was merely that if the risk is miniscule already, it may be that it's not worthwhile. Arguably, the safest default is to install no servers, unless the user specifically requests the install (default: not installed), but some services are probably still better left installed. Indeed, the safest default is to install NOTHING whatsoever, but this is hardly reasonable, despite improvements to security. Similarily, the safest default if the user DOES explicitly install a service is to not run it -- requiring the user to explicitly enable it if he wants it. But this is unreasonable; most people who install say "openssh-server" also wants to run it, so defaulting to off is unfriendly, even though sligthly more secure. Further, the safest default config would be something like disable-root-login disable-password-authenthication allow-login-only-from-whitelisted-hosts, but again, this would be unfriendly because it would mean extra work for most people. So this is probably not worth it -- despite being more secure.
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