So I get up in the morning, ready to face the challenges of the day. I stretch, scratch a few places, and I’m off to the computer.

First, I read the postings for the OTR Digest that have come in overnight. I used to save this as a “treat,” but as you’ll see if I don’t do it now, I won’t enjoy it at all. After reading the messages, I open the server log report; every morning, my server sends me a report of what’s happened the day before, and especially with the routines I added, it usually isn’t pretty. First, I have to deal with the attempted break-ins…these are generally trying to crack the SSH server, but lately the mail server has been taking a pretty hard hit with machines trying to crack a known vulnerability (yes, I’m patched, why?). Even though I know this is the work of a zombie machine which is part of a botnet, I report these to the upstreams, and depending on the severity of the attack and location of the server, I might firewall off that machine or its netblock (sorry, folks, but large parts of Russia, China, and other countries can’t even see this server - it might not be right, but it’s the only thing keeping the server on-line).
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