The sys admin's daily grind: Whowatch et al.
On Patrol
For no particular reason, Charly occasionally patrols his server farm and hunts down attackers. He has put together a neat toolbox for this job.
Every server with an IP address on the Internet will receive uninvited visits at some point. The usual scans and scripted carpet bombing simply bounce off my machines thanks to clever firewalling, port knocking [1], and additional tools like Fail2ban [2]. To keep attackers from working around my defenses, I use two rootkit hunters: Rootkit Hunter [3] and Chkrootkit [4]. The latter, unfortunately, accuses my DHCP server of packet sniffing:
eth0: PACKET SNIFFER(/usr/sbin/dhcpd[28382])
This result is a known false positive, which I ignore. As an interim report, I can say that my varmint hunters have not seen any prey thus far.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
KDE Linux Alpha Available for Daring Users
It's official, KDE Linux has arrived, but it's not quite ready for prime time.
-
AMD Initiates Graphics Driver Updates for Linux Kernel 6.18
This new AMD update focuses on power management, display handling, and hardware support for Radeon GPUs.
-
AerynOS Alpha Release Available
With a choice of several desktop environments, AerynOS 2025.08 is almost ready to be your next operating system.
-
AUR Repository Still Under DDoS Attack
Arch User Repository continues to be under a DDoS attack that has been going on for more than two weeks.
-
RingReaper Malware Poses Danger to Linux Systems
A new kind of malware exploits modern Linux kernels for I/O operations.
-
Happy Birthday, Linux
On August 25, Linux officially turns 34.
-
VirtualBox 7.2 Has Arrived
With early support for Linux kernel 6.17 and other new additions, VirtualBox 7.2 is a must-update for users.
-
Linux Mint 22.2 Beta Available for Testing
Some interesting new additions and improvements are coming to Linux Mint. Check out the Linux Mint 22.2 Beta to give it a test run.
-
Debian 13.0 Officially Released
After two years of development, the latest iteration of Debian is now available with plenty of under-the-hood improvements.
-
Upcoming Changes for MXLinux
MXLinux 25 has plenty in store to please all types of users.