Vandrad Research Labs have carried out major work last night.
Between 21:30 and 22:30 on 14 August 2013 AEST, the main server was upgraded and the following work was done:
- the Xen server was upgraded to Debian 7.0
- new version of Xen Hypervisor (Xen 4.1.4) was installed
- a new Linux kernel (3.2.46) and modules was distributed to all Xen virtual servers.
In addition to the regular maintenance, we have also noted a marked increase in slow but persistent probes against our hosted web application platforms and server ssh services.
To help curb this a little and keep us a bit safer from brute-force attacks we have deployed additional fail2ban jail recipes and added logging plugins to the various web application and CMS platforms to allow the server level fail2ban to block access from badly behaved IP addresses.
If you would like more details, drop us a line in the comments or contact us by the usual means.