🚀 go-pugleaf

I dial up to the U of MD via their ppp line. Turns out there are people who
try out the various annex machines in the pool to see what they can log
in to. I just happened to look in my /var/adm/messages and notice 
attempted connects and root logins from various machines on campus and 
around the world.

I contacted one, who admitted to fishing for people who hadn't set
their root passwords (I had). He claimed to have found such people 
(but didn't say what he did after he found them). So I guess the 
moral is: they really are out there. If you're using ppp, you
have to think about security even if you have an obscure dynamically 
allocated IP address. "Rule zero" might be: set a password for root.

I guess you all know this, but I was shocked to actually see it.

Judah Milgram
milgram@glue.umd.edu