SSH on by default? (Was: too many deamons by default - F7 test 2 live cd)

Nicolas Mailhot nicolas.mailhot at laposte.net
Wed Mar 21 22:31:34 UTC 2007


Le mercredi 21 mars 2007 à 20:42 +0100, Thomas M Steenholdt a écrit :
> Alexander Boström wrote:
> > 
> >> Lets settle for a default configuration with a good balance between 
> >> usability and security. Like perhaps disabling root login or something.
> > 
> > Taking over a user account is really almost as bad as root access. The
> > typical desktop user is thoroughly screwed regardless.
> > 
> 
> I agree that compromising a user account is still bad. But not nearly as 
> bad as root access (if one must choose), but if root access through ssh 
> is disabled by default, attack scripts would have to *guess* a user to 
> bruteforce and can't rely on bruteforcing "root" who exists on every 
> *nix system.

attackers *do* brute-force usernames, probably because root is usually
secured but you can hope hitting a user account with no password

install pam_abl. It will profile the attacks for you (for exemple on my
system root is the most attacked user but this is dwarfed by one-shot
dictionary-user tries)

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot




More information about the fedora-devel-list mailing list