Linux attacks on the rise? (Register) [LWN.net]

The Register speaks about a recent security study from security consultancy Mi2g. "Attacks on Linux and open source Web applications appear to have risen sharply this year, while attacks on Windows systems are markedly down. That's the conclusions of a study by security consultancy mi2g after it compiled a database on attacks culled from data from defacement archives (such as alldas.org), hacker bulletin boards and 'information from automatic robots'."

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Linux attacks on the rise? (Register)

Posted Jul 13, 2002 19:09 UTC (Sat) by rojaro (guest, #2571) [Link] (1 responses)

well, it's no secret that badly maintained machines will become vulnerable to miscellaneous attacks sooner or later. but as i read the article it came clear to me that those attacks on windows didnt go down - no, there are more attacks than ever. but as there are more an more linux machines connected these attacks just get more balanced over the operating systems. i believe the recent discovery of security holes in various linux softwares (e.g. the widely used OpenSSH) did their part. but the companies, the administrators, the website owners didnt learn yet form the past (remember those bugs in sendmail?) and still live by the rule "never change a running system" and don't maintain and update their servers. i wouldn't wonder if lwn.net gets hacked next...

genesis root # telnet www.lwn.net 22
Trying 66.216.68.48...
Connected to lwn.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
SSH-1.99-OpenSSH_3.1p1

Protocol mismatch.
Connection closed by foreign host.
genesis root #

just my 2 cents ...

Linux attacks on the rise? (Register)

Posted Jul 14, 2002 1:02 UTC (Sun) by lordsutch (guest, #53) [Link]

Well, except for the minor details that OpenSSH 3.1p1 is only vulnerable in a certain configuration, which virtually nobody running Linux actually uses, and that Red Hat's "fully fixed" backport is based on 3.1p1 (so you can't tell if LWN is vulnerable from the version string), and that the version string isn't necessarily indicative of what lwn.net is really running, you're spot on. :)