Script kiddies with too much time on their hands

So, I wanted to be able to access Haruka from outside of my home.  When I first set that up, Haruka was getting "hit" by hundreds of login attempts per minute from all over the world.

At first, I was intrigued and kept stats, but over time, I was blocking bigger and bigger portions of the Internet from Haruka.  So I decided to simply move the ssh port to a non-standard number.

That worked and worked for quite some time.  But that ended about 4:50am today.

Someone, with way too much time on their hands decided to do a big port scan looking for non-standard ssh ports and finally stumbled on mine.  So back to their really lame attempt at logging in as root (hint: root's not allowed to ssh in to my server - so that isn't going to go too far.  And for the person doing a dictionary attack, and the other person doing a rainbow attack, there's exactly 2 user IDs that can log in and you can't guess what they are - let alone guess the passwords).

But I'm tired of getting emails saying "there's an attacker!" and having logs filled with their lame attempts.  So I've moved the ssh port again.  Good luck finding that port.  There are only 65535 ports.  If it took them 2 years to find the last one, I figure it should take them about 10 to find the new one.

R.I.P. Mad Magazine

I just saw in the news today that Mad magazine is effectively no more.  It will no longer be sold on the "news" stands and starting in Dec. will no longer have new content - instead rehashing the old content that is has in its vault from the last almost 70 years.

I was sad to see it go, but it was time.  Magazines just aren't that useful when people get their content from the Internet.  But I think it was more than that.

While Bill Gaines was head of Mad, all of Mad's owners had 1 rule "make money".  As long as Mad made money (and they usually made quite a bit), the owner left it alone to do what it knows how to do.

But Bill passed away.  The magazine got new editors and a new owner.

It was about this time that I noticed a change in Mad - which was expected with new editors - but the change was not a good one.

Bill's magazine was an equal-opportunity-satire magazine.  Your politics made no difference.  If they could make fun of you, they did.  The new editors, however, were certainly more left-wing and, so, they focused on making fun of those on the Right, but making fun of those on the Left was frowned upon.

Being purchased by DC was not a good thing either.  DC already has a terminal infestation of SJWs and will likely be out of business soon.  I'm sure that purchase pushed Mad even more Left.

And the final nail was the fact that we all know:  The left has no sense of humor.  The magazine was simply no longer funny and, therefore, no longer entertaining.

I still have my Spy vs. Spy collection.  Antonio was always my favourite.
I know that Sergio will keep going - I highly doubt that he's reliant on Mad too much.

But for everyone else at Mad: Thanks for running a great magazine into the ground.  I'm sure Bill Gaines would be proud of you.  Not.