Apparently I installed that thing in 2006 and I last updated it in 2016, then I quit updating it for some reason that I totally forgot. Probably laziness…
It’s been running for quite some time and we kind of forgot about it in the closet, until the SSH tunnel we use to get our mail outside our home stopped working because modern openssh clients refuse to use the antiquated key cipher I setup client machines with way back when any longer.
I just generated new keys with a more modern cipher that it understands (ecdsa-sha2-nistp256) and left it running. Because why not 🙂
Good thing there hasn’t been any remotely exploitable security bugs in any of the mail system components in the 6 years since Debian 7 went EoL
Genuinely surprised when I see people running mail servers without issue. I suppose getting in relatively early means you’re not immediately sent to junk mail lists by the big players.
Because why not 🙂
Because security.
Most ‘hackers’ are just mid tier (mediocre) IT level types who rely on existing exploits floating around in the wild. It’d probably be hard to find any still in circulation for such an old system.
We’re not talking about some punch card COBOL machine he jimmy rigged with network access, it’s an old Debian Linux box with SSH enabled.
It’s not like Metasploit would have a tough time finding unpatched vulnerabilities for it…
What makes it a even bigger target is the fact that it is a mail server
It’s behind a firewall. The only thing exposed to the outside is port 22 - and only pubkey login too.
And gee dude… It’s been running for 18 years without being pwned 🙂
It hasnt been pwned so far
without being pwned
How do you know?
There’s a file called /pwnedornot and it contains “no, you’re safe bro”
