Re: [TCLUG:15603] Possible attack?

[Mike Hicks <hick0088@tc.umn.edu>]

Kevin Bullock wrote:
> 
> Hey all --
> 
> Something very strange and suspicious just happened -- my box was brought
> to a grinding halt for a completely unknown reason. The only unusual thing
> I can find in my logs is:

By `grinding halt', do you mean that your hard drive was going nuts, as
if the swap was thrashing a lot?
 
> Apr  5 21:05:23 dysonsphere kernel: VM: killing process xscreensaver
> Apr  5 21:06:11 dysonsphere kernel: VM: killing process gnome-terminal
> Apr  5 21:09:11 dysonsphere kernel: VM: killing process communicator-sm

If `VM' stands for Virtual Memory, then this would be consistent with
what happens when the system runs out of memory -- it tries to kill the
offending processes.

It could have been an attack, but I bet some program just started a
memory gusher (as in, bigger than a `leak').

-- 
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 [ Mike Hicks | http://umn.edu/~hick0088/ | mailto:hick0088@umn.edu ]