Unsecure Protocols

We had trouble with a hacker or better said a script-kiddy which had defaced some servers on our provider’s network. As he could freely access the network where our server is installed, he was able to sniff our server’s traffic and grab passwords from unencrypted protocols.

At that time, our provider didn't notice the fact that half ouf their client's servers had been attacked by this lonely hacker. We began to see strange intrusion attempts originated at the local network and using valid local usernames. We warned our provider and closed all services where users whose passwords could have been exposed could access.

Our provider was very slow in taking the defaced machines out of the net so we had to migrate protocols who use dangerous plain-text authentication to others who transfer all sensitive data encrypted.

FTP access was reduced to the minimum possible, SSH has been restricted to only some specific IP addresses and the Webmail system was moved to a secured channel.

Since then, I connect to our mail-server through a SSL-Tunnel which increased not only the security of my mail transfers but also the speed of them, because it compresses the data that is sent through the tunnel.

Gik.-