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Hacker tries to compromise and resell an internet-facing Linux server

morris.guru

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Re: Hacker tries to compromise and resell an internet-facing Linux server

#61

Post by dang »

TheyAreFine wrote: post #60
monochromatic wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only people who don't mind sounding ignorant.

"...including Chaucer, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Thackeray, and Shaw" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they

Oh yeah. Also Byron ("Every body does and says what they please"), Austen ("Nobody thinks of that when they fall in love"), Thackeray ("A person can't help their birth"), Wilde ("Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes"), Shaw ("It's enough to drive anyone out of their senses"),

Lewis Carroll: "'Whoever lives there,' thought Alice, 'it'll never do to come upon them this size: why, I should frighten them out of their wits!'"

C. S. Lewis: "She kept her head and kicked her shoes off, as everybody ought to do who falls into deep water in their clothes."

Doris Lessing: "And how easy the way a man or woman would come in here, glance around, find smiles and pleasant looks waiting for them, then wave and sit down by themselves."

E.B. White: "But somebody taught you, didn’t they?”

This is settled. Singular 'they' is good English and always has been. The rule against it was just made up by 18th century grammarians (including the fascinating Ann Fisher [4], who surely would regret it now) and they even got a law passed in 1850 prohibiting it, which only goes to show how widely used it was.

1. https://web.archive.org/web/20150328135337/http://www.crossm...

2. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002748.h...

3. http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/austhlis.html

4. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/magazine/26FOB-onlanguage-...

Re: Hacker tries to compromise and resell an internet-facing Linux server

#62

Post by pavel_lishin »

JosephRedfern wrote: post #57
pavel_lishin wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legitimate scripts that take a screenshot of your desktop every time you run bash?

I agree - if that's what the script was doing, then it would be dodgy. But that's not what the script does. `screenfetch` prints out system info in a pretty, ASCII-arty way, like this: http://i.imgur.com/TgaPHqa.png echo "screenfetch" >> .bashrc just causes system info to be printed to the screen with every new bash session.

Oh, derp, I completely misread the github repo. :/

Re: Hacker tries to compromise and resell an internet-facing Linux server

#63

Post by pavel_lishin »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #50

That provisioning script seems to install a screenshot utility that fires at every login. That definitely doesn't seem like a standard feature for a hosting provider to offer.

Ack, I completely misunderstood what screenfetch does. Disregard above comment.

Re: Hacker tries to compromise and resell an internet-facing Linux server

#64

Post by tankenmate »

chambo622 wrote: post #38

On another note, how many times does one need to chmod a file?

What I suspect you can't see is an attempt to use TAB to autocomplete the execution of the local script; when it fails the script kiddie tries to +x the script again. I suspect you'll also find that the script doesn't execute because bash isn't installed; only dash and/or busybox.

Re: Hacker tries to compromise and resell an internet-facing Linux server

#65

Post by mhurron »

monochromatic wrote: post #51
Somasis wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can be used singular. Most people use it without thinking about it in conversation.

Only people who don't mind sounding ignorant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They

"Alternatively, they as a singular pronoun can refer to an individual without strictly giving it a gender."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they

"Singular they is the use of they, or its inflected or derivative forms, such as them, their, or themselves, to refer to a single person or an antecedent that is grammatically singular. It typically occurs with an antecedent of indeterminate gender"

Re: Hacker tries to compromise and resell an internet-facing Linux server

#66

Post by tptacek »

Somasis wrote: post #18

On a slightly unrelated note, I like how the author referred to the attacker with she/her, a small detail I can appreciate since they normally refer to them with he/him.

I did the same thing in this paper me and Tim Newsham wrote in 1998:

http://cs.unc.edu/~fabian/course_papers/PtacekNewsham98.pdf

Partly it was a showy gesture, but after writing that way for a few days, I came to like how the distinct pronouns made it easy to track "attacker" and "defender" in the narrative, too.

I'd just use "they" now, though.

Re: Hacker tries to compromise and resell an internet-facing Linux server

#67

Post by monochromatic »

dang wrote: post #61
TheyAreFine wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...including Chaucer, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Thackeray, and Shaw" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they

Oh yeah. Also Byron ("Every body does and says what they please"), Austen ("Nobody thinks of that when they fall in love"), Thackeray ("A person can't help their birth"), Wilde ("Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes"), Shaw ("It's enough to drive anyone out of their senses"), Lewis Carroll: "'Whoever lives there,' thought Alice, 'it'll never do to come upon them this size: why, I should frighten th…

Hmm. Well, if Garner's[1] on board with it, I guess I can be too.

[1] http://www.lawprose.org/blog/?p=502

Re: Hacker tries to compromise and resell an internet-facing Linux server

#68

Post by Gigablah »

MichaelGG wrote: post #37
Gigablah wrote: post #19

Looks like the owner of Huthos doesn't even bother hiding the nature of his operations. The author mentions he has "poor operational security practices" which is rather charitable given that the "buy a vps" links on the website simply link directly to his Facebook profile.

Or maybe Huthos was hacked and being used to host these scripts. I'd want a bit more proof, like it actually being used by a Huthos customer, before going after them.

The domain name could have been hijacked, yes. The whole sales page and the "Vision Phreak" setup seens like a one-man operation so far though. (E.g. the facebook group has over 10k members but it seems like the owner just added them all by himself). And their Google+ profile is all about "phreaking" and posts from wannabe hackers.

So yeah, not sure about Huthos but Vision Phreak is definitely shady.

Re: Hacker tries to compromise and resell an internet-facing Linux server

#69

Post by qbrass »

cddotdotslash wrote: post #40
mhurron wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that the attacker is unknown, the correct term would be they or them. Gender is unknown, a gender neutral description should be used.

But they is plural, so wouldn't the author technically need to say "he or she" for each occurrence? Sadly, English has no singular gender neutral pronoun.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_%28pronoun%29

"One" works in some cases. Unfortunately, not when referring to something directly. I'd love to see "onesie" used for that, but it's not going to happen.

If nothing else, one could use "one" to establish singularity when they use "they" later on.

Re: Hacker tries to compromise and resell an internet-facing Linux server

#70

Post by blueskin_ »

JosephRedfern wrote: post #22
fragsworth wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because the script appears to be taking control of servers for hosting purposes. In other words, the simplest explanation is that Huthos is taking control of machines so that they can sell them to customers as their own VPS service.

A VPS provider having a server provisioning script available doesn't seem to be such a crazy thing to me - it still doesn't prove that Huthos are behind the attacks.

On their public site? It's also written in such an amateurish style anyway...
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