It is entirely possible it is survivor bias on my part but I get the suspicion that a global sort of 'cyberwar' that has been rumbling along for years is heating up rapidly. I've seen a 10x increase in various scripted attacks being attempted (patch early and often folks!) and a number of APT level compromises of systems either staging malware or deploying it (see the latest bulletin on the Afghan government compromise). And of course the whole Free Syrian Army / ISIS / terrorist nom de jure attacks.
I can't shake the analogy to pictures from WW II where shop keepers were huddled in the back while soldiers fought from the front of the store. I see innocent servers being 'occupied' by enemy malware so that it can launch attacks on other servers further into a protected network.
Fortunately in this modern version of war you can "kick the soldiers out" of your server by bringing it down and re-imaging it. And they won't turn around and shoot you, but that is not all that comforting somehow.
It is entirely possible it is survivor bias on my part but I get the suspicion that a global sort of 'cyberwar' that has been rumbling along for years is heating up rapidly. I've seen a 10x increase in various scripted attacks being attempted (patch early and often folks!) and a number of APT level compromises of systems either staging malware or deploying it (see the latest bulletin on the Afghan government compromise). And of course the whole Free Syrian Army / ISIS / terrorist nom de jure attacks.
I can't shake the analogy to pictures from WW II where shop keepers were huddled in the back while soldiers fought from the front of the store. I see innocent servers being 'occupied' by enemy malware so that it can launch attacks on other servers further into a protected network.
Fortunately in this modern version of war you can "kick the soldiers out" of your server by bringing it down and re-imaging it. And they won't turn around and shoot you, but that is not all that comforting somehow.