Quoting Russ Allbery ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): > Celejar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > Just curious; anyone can forget a user account, but how did the > > attacker get root? > > There are a *lot* more privilege escalation attacks than there are remote > exploits. Just in the Linux kernel, a new one seems to show up every six > months or so.
Moen's First Law of Security ("It's easier to break in from the inside." http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/lexicon.html#moenslaw-security1 It's always worthwhile to audit one's system (on an _ongoing_ basis, as Russ suggests) for local weaknesses that allow privilege escalation, and especially for the ones that make it _easy_. It's a fact that most people's machines are cracked by canned 'sploits run via automated scripts by kiddies who don't even understand their tools -- which is a pretty ignominious thing to happen. Don't let it happen to you. And this is _another_ reason why a properly targeted file-based IDS is a really capital idea -- as is alertness about what is and is not aberrant system behaviour. I can even make this point in a Debian-relevant way. All hail to the Debian Project's sysadmins, who in November 2003 showed everyone how to do it right: http://linuxgazette.net/issue98/moen.html -- Cheers, English is essentially a text parser's way of getting Rick Moen faster processors built. [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- John M. Ford, http://ccil.org/~cowan/essential.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]