Paul Baran, one of the geniuses working for RAND corporation, conceived of a distributed packet switching network in which information could broken up at the source, be transmitted across multiple paths and reassembled at the far end, preventing the message from being disrupted if the ‘network’ took a big hit (such as one or more nuclear blasts). This concept of a distributed message system paved the way for the ARPANET, the grand-daddy of today’s Internet.
He died today from lung cancer at age 84.
You can read the New York Times Article here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/28/technology/28baran.html?src=me&ref=technology
SSH (Secure SHell) is a common tool for setting up a “VPN tunnel” using port forwarding, or secure remote access to the command line; thus it is not uncommon for servers providing SSH connections to be directly accessible from the Internet.
Hackers are constantly testing defenses looking for configurations that missed something important and therefore allow access. SSH daemon configurations that improperly turned off keyboard-interactive logons but forgot to enable the “ChallengeResponseAuthentication no” are being attacked.
From SANS:
Friday, the InetDaemon.Com website crashed. HTTP 500 errors all over the place and no WordPress, just blank error pages. Oh, NO! What do I do!?!