on hammer's, security, and centrifuges...

[Damien Fleuriot]

On 2/7/12 1:03 PM, Henry Olyer wrote:
> So I was coding along...
> 
> On my laptop, on session #1, and I get a notice that someone did an su.
>  Except I'm the only user and I didn't have an ethernet cord connected.
>  (And no, it wasn't me...)
> 
> I just built this laptop a few days ago.  Fresh.  I did have to get on the
> net to download/make/install a few critical packages.  I do development.
>  And research.
> 
> My guess, not one shred of evidence, is that someone got in while I was
> re-building packages.  Some, (for example Maxima,) take hours.  And because
> of problems with gnuplot and pdflib, won't build as packages without
> re-compilation.
> 

And how would they have done that:
- weak root password or something ?
- did you allow rootlogin at all through SSH ?

I work with dozens of FreeBSD boxes at work, all of which are under
heavy load and present juicy targets for attackers.

We've not had a single breach in security since I started.


You're looking for means of increasing security, it seems to me, once an
attacker already has the root.
I would suggest preventing said attacker from obtaining the root in the
first place.

Perhaps one of the packages you downloaded was backdoored ?