re: ridiculous situation

[H C <keydet89 () yahoo com>]

Harley,

Perhaps I'm not seeing where your problem lies.  From
what you describe, you have 5 systems that you've
recently inherited, and they've been largely
unprotected since they were first turned on.  

"you can't simply firewall them off and leave them for
dead."

What are you saying?  Are they business critical?  If
so, determine what services each of them should be
providing, and then disable/restrict/limit the
available running services to just those.  Think about
adding tcpwrappers, as well.

Examine the configurations of the machines, and see
what's going on.  What is the level of the kernel? 
Would it be worth the time to upgrade?  If the systems
are business-critical, you'll likely have to schedule
maintenance for after hours.  Is the default kernel
image in place, or were the kernels recompiled
specifically for each machine?\

"how would you be sure there are no trojans, bots
etc...chkrootkit and so on, i suppose, but how
reliable will the results be?"

What do you mean?  You could always do the checks by
hand yourself...it would take more time, but perhaps
be more reliable.

If I were you, I'd start w/ a security assessment of
each machine.  Check for setUID files, running
services/processes, examine the configuration. 
Examine the syslogs, see what's currently there.  Once
you've completed your examination, develop a plan to
tighten things up...it may take a while, b/c you'll
have to determine the business processes that use
these systems.  You want to make sure that you don't
disrupt those processes in your efforts to secure
these systems.

Your situation isn't so much ridiculous as it is
pretty normal...





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