SSH brute force attack

Recently I bought a dedicated server. One of the provider's admin, which installed the system added an account called "admin1". First I wanted to remove it, but I thought it may be used for some checks and I let it stay. One month later there was some activity on that account from an IP in a "strange" country let's say. I asked the provider about it and they had no idea.
Luckily the box was not compromised since the user didn't got any root access, I killed his processes and removed the account, but I still needed an answer for this mess.
And here it was, after some hundreds sshd[3157]: (pam_unix) authentication failure; there was one sshd[12358]: Accepted password for admin1 from X.X.X.X

A classical brute force attack on a weak password, so make sure you change every password when you buy a new dedicated server.
And to be even safer, put the SSHD on some other port and add some iptables rules to deny ssh access for other IPs than yours.

ASP and other .NET APIs now on Linux

Although I didn't need to use it, I like this idea very much. It's called Mono and it is a cross platform, open source .NET development framework. You can find more here: http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page.

DC++ for Linux

Over the last weeks I tried several DC++ applications for Linux and none of them worked well. It was either very annoying or impossible to use.
Now I found linuxdcpp which works like a charm.
To get it, on Debian you can simply apt-get install linuxdcpp, otherwise go to http://linuxdcpp.berlios.de.

RAR: GLIBC_2.4 not found

I just downloaded the latest version of RAR and couldn't get it started:

./rar: /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.4' not found (required by ./rar)

Of course first I tried to to install glibc 2.4, but then I looked into the rar directory I just downloaded and I found rar_static which worked like a charm!

Gmail in Germany

I keep getting an annoying message that Gmail cannot be used under this name in Germany.
Then it works with mail.google.com, but when I send an email, it seems like it's using user@googlemail.com by default instead of user@gmail.com.

We can't provide service under the Gmail name in Germany; we're called Google Mail here instead.

External HDD errors in Linux

Recently I bought an Western Digital external HDD and after a couple of hours I noticed these:


Jun 14 19:24:45 debian kernel: scsi 4:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to dead device
Jun 14 19:24:45 debian kernel: FAT: FAT read failed (blocknr 8764)
Jun 14 19:24:45 debian kernel: scsi 4:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to dead device
Jun 14 19:24:45 debian kernel: FAT: FAT read failed (blocknr 8764)
Jun 14 19:24:45 debian kernel: scsi 4:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to dead device
Jun 14 19:24:45 debian kernel: FAT: FAT read failed (blocknr 8764)


After a couple of researches I noticed these start to happen when I move the USB cable.
And also these errors happen much often if I plug the hdd after the computer is started.
Another solution is to remove the ehci_hcd kernel module, but then the hdd will work in slow motion.

Moneybookers locked account again

This is the 3rd time they do this.
So if I already sent them my documents two times, why don't they just look in my records?
Why the hell they keep asking for the same thing ?
I tried to explain them this by email but I get copy&pasted responses, like they don't even bother to read my message. So now I have to call them or just send again a copy of my ID.

Your account is locked for all transactions therefore we cannot complete this transaction. To unlock your account, you must send a VERIFIED copy of your passport or national identity card to the following address