Crackers.
Most people have heard of crackers, or more commonly known as hackers. People who try to access things they aren't authorised to, like other people computers. Why they do this I have no idea.
There are basically three types.
- Script Kiddies - People who use pre-written bits of software to cause annoying havoc to the unsuspecting.
- Denial of Service peeps - those who use "acquired" proxies over the world (usually by being a script kiddie) and flood your connection so you can't use it.
- The hacker - these are the ones which will try to use software vulnerabilities and unchecked buffers to run code on insecure systems.
I have had a handful of the latter trying to attack my server... well that's what I thought at first but then I noticed they were actually really quite stupid. Browsing through my logs I see that they were trying to run Windows things. Crafty? No, they didn't even waste 100ms on finding out what operating system I am using on this. At least try dudes!
So where do these hackers come from? All foreigners. I have never had a hack attempt from anybody in the British Isles. I have had a few from China (although I don't know why they bother, they aren't allowed to view web sites out-side of China (ahahaha)) and a load from America. Most of the attacks worth paying attention to come from Europe. France, Belgium, Germany. All trying the same methods over and over again, and failing.