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layout: post
title: Gameserver hack (the falcon has fallen)
---

Hello friends,

our beloved game server (*falcon.socialnerds.org*) has been compromised by a hacker. I learned about it when network access was blocked by the hosting provider today. We don't know exactly how this came to pass but *falcon* was infected by malware which installed the so called **Bill Gates Botnet** ([here](https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-of-the-internet/bill-gates-botnet-threat-advisory.pdf) is a very detailed report about it).

Usually these attacks try to brute-force their way into the root account. Though i cannot see how this was possible since we had password authentication and root login disabled right from the beginning.

In the end i was able to clean out the malware and recover all game server data. Though since the attacker could have left more mailicious code i decided to get rid of *falcon* and setup a brand new server at [endeavour.socialnerds.org](https://endeavour.socialnerds.org).

Also i hardened the ssh config of all other machines and implemented stronger passwords (i'm also thinking fail2ban).

Cheers!