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Hackers from US university just tried to get in

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AdvHomeServer

Senior Member
I just had a little fun. We'll see what happens next, if anything.

DD-WRT OpenVPN server provides a verbose log. Included are details of who has tried to hack my router. This list is always busy whenever I look at it. Today some hackers with addresses that tracked back to a US university, UM-Ann Arbor, were noted. Just for grins I emailed the security department of the university with prints of what I found out on the trace. I included a couple of additional addresses from attempts a few minutes earlier.

Edit a few hours later: I received an email reply from another party at UM. This person stated I was a part of a research project by "computer scientists" and included verbiage that I interpreted as lacking precision, to put it delicately. I hope to get additional replies. This will probably make a great article for my web site later when the whole story is available to me. UM is now aware of my web site and my interest in writing about this.

Router logs are interesting things.

Edit next day: this is what they do ... scan and see what they find. Follow ups and inquiries elsewhere told me that this is a big yawn. Scans happen. live with it.
 
Last edited:
I just had a little fun. We'll see what happens next, if anything.

DD-WRT OpenVPN server provides a verbose log. Included are details of who has tried to hack my router. This list is always busy whenever I look at it. Today some hackers with addresses that tracked back to a US university, UM-Ann Arbor, were noted. Just for grins I emailed the security department of the university with prints of what I found out on the trace. I included a couple of additional addresses from attempts a few minutes earlier.

Edit a few hours later: I received an email reply from another party at UM. This person stated I was a part of a research project by "computer scientists" and included verbiage that I interpreted as lacking precision, to put it delicately. I hope to get additional replies. This will probably make a great article for my web site later when the whole story is available to me. UM is now aware of my web site and my interest in writing about this.

Router logs are interesting things.

Edit next day: this is what they do ... scan and see what they find. Follow ups and inquiries elsewhere told me that this is a big yawn. Scans happen. live with it.

they are legit. something to do with monitoring internet-wide TLS/SSL certificate usage and such. hey michiganders!
 
You are lucky they even responded to you. When I used to do both small PBX's and wireless routers the attacks on the PBX's were terrible. And most seem to come from China and Russia. If you ever tried to reply to the owners of the IP ranges with information it was just a signal to attack you more.
 
I just had a little fun. We'll see what happens next, if anything.

DD-WRT OpenVPN server provides a verbose log. Included are details of who has tried to hack my router. This list is always busy whenever I look at it. Today some hackers with addresses that tracked back to a US university, UM-Ann Arbor, were noted. Just for grins I emailed the security department of the university with prints of what I found out on the trace. I included a couple of additional addresses from attempts a few minutes earlier.

Edit a few hours later: I received an email reply from another party at UM. This person stated I was a part of a research project by "computer scientists" and included verbiage that I interpreted as lacking precision, to put it delicately. I hope to get additional replies. This will probably make a great article for my web site later when the whole story is available to me. UM is now aware of my web site and my interest in writing about this.

Router logs are interesting things.

Edit next day: this is what they do ... scan and see what they find. Follow ups and inquiries elsewhere told me that this is a big yawn. Scans happen. live with it.
When I used to do both small PBX's and wireless routers the attacks on the PBX's were terrible
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I get plenty of legitimate scans from colleges. Well... I assume they are by the hostnames and occasional HTTP server hosted by the scanner's IP explaining their project.


If you want a story, setup a honeypot/honeynet, track down those who infect your machine, document everything, then present your findings. You might even discover an unknown exploit or a new virus propogation technique.

lol, I have even ran into other researchers when doing this.

One of my favorite related Google Tech Talks is this www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GdqoQJa6r4

I forget the exact quote, but in that video, the security team estimated that during the week that they controlled the botnet, over $7million worth of financial data alone was logged. I think that was the conservative estimate too.
That was 2009. Imagine how much more powerful botnets are nowadays...
 

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