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weyhan
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Joined: 27 May 2003
Posts: 245

PostPosted: Wed Oct 13, 2004 4:46 pm    Post subject: strange sshd logs entry Reply with quote

Hi, I have found the following log entries appearing in my syslog even when I have disable password authentication for my sshd and only allowing key base authentication.
Code:
Oct 13 16:28:51 myhost sshd[20808]: Illegal user admin from 134.174.176.76
Oct 13 16:28:53 myhost sshd[20810]: Illegal user admin from 134.174.176.76
Oct 13 16:28:56 myhost sshd[20812]: Illegal user user from 134.174.176.76
Oct 13 16:29:07 myhost sshd[20820]: Illegal user test from 134.174.176.76

The strange thing is that I cannot reproduce it by trying to login without a key. Apparently when I try to ssh into my system without the keys, I don't get any logs entry at all. All I get is fail ssh attempt on the client side. So how does the end up in my logs? Should I be concern?

The following is my sshd_config. Comments and empty lines omitted.
Code:
Protocol 2
PermitRootLogin no
PasswordAuthentication no
PermitEmptyPasswords no
ChallengeResponseAuthentication no
Subsystem       sftp    /usr/lib/misc/sftp-server

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asv
Tux's lil' helper
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Joined: 25 Jul 2003
Posts: 138
Location: State College, PA United States

PostPosted: Wed Oct 13, 2004 4:59 pm    Post subject: Re: strange sshd logs entry Reply with quote

weyhan wrote:
Hi, I have found the following log entries appearing in my syslog even when I have disable password authentication for my sshd and only allowing key base authentication.
Code:
Oct 13 16:28:51 myhost sshd[20808]: Illegal user admin from 134.174.176.76
Oct 13 16:28:53 myhost sshd[20810]: Illegal user admin from 134.174.176.76
Oct 13 16:28:56 myhost sshd[20812]: Illegal user user from 134.174.176.76
Oct 13 16:29:07 myhost sshd[20820]: Illegal user test from 134.174.176.76

The strange thing is that I cannot reproduce it by trying to login without a key. Apparently when I try to ssh into my system without the keys, I don't get any logs entry at all. All I get is fail ssh attempt on the client side. So how does the end up in my logs? Should I be concern?

The following is my sshd_config. Comments and empty lines omitted.
Code:
Protocol 2
PermitRootLogin no
PasswordAuthentication no
PermitEmptyPasswords no
ChallengeResponseAuthentication no
Subsystem       sftp    /usr/lib/misc/sftp-srver


I guess the first question would be is
Code:
134.174.176.76
the ip your logging in from or is that somebody else? If its somebody else, its most likely a bot or someone trying to log in with random usernames/passwords.
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weyhan
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Joined: 27 May 2003
Posts: 245

PostPosted: Wed Oct 13, 2004 5:11 pm    Post subject: Re: strange sshd logs entry Reply with quote

asv wrote:

I guess the first question would be is
Code:
134.174.176.76
the ip your logging in from or is that somebody else? If its somebody else, its most likely a bot or someone trying to log in with random usernames/passwords.

That IP is someone else's and I know it's either a bot or someone attempting to break in. However, I am interested to find out how that bot or person is able to get that far because I have disable password login and only allow key based logins. I have also seen entry showing the attempts goes as far as trying to launch the shell which is /dev/null:
Code:
Oct 13 16:28:48 myhost sshd[20806]: User guest not allowed because shell /dev/null is not executable

What is more interesting is that I can't reproduce this types of log entry when I try to login without the key to forcing a password login. All that happened is that the ssh client exit with a fail attempt to authenticate without the keys. No entry in the syslog.

So how did the bot or person get so far?
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weyhan
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 14, 2004 9:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

anyone?
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asv
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Joined: 25 Jul 2003
Posts: 138
Location: State College, PA United States

PostPosted: Thu Oct 14, 2004 1:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

weyhan wrote:
anyone?


I don't think they got far, its just a bot that tried to use a login that didn't exist.
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weyhan
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Posts: 245

PostPosted: Thu Oct 14, 2004 4:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
I don't think they got far, its just a bot that tried to use a login that didn't exist.

My bad. :oops:
Should have tried with non-existing username.

Thanks. I feel better now. :)
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