Yes I run a mail server. Yes I see spammers/scammers trying to relay their crap email through the server. But it gets serious when they start using a botnet and they throw dictionaries at working accounts, trying to guess passwords. So naturally as a professional paranoid I have to react.
https://www.markloveless.net/blog/2025/4/22/fail2ban-for-sendmail-auth
Mark LovelessFail2ban for Sendmail AUTH — Mark LovelessMail server admins always notice when spammers try to use an AUTH command to try to relay spam through a mail server. But when they start hammering away with a much more sophisticated botnet, things start to get serious - especially for the paranoid.
![Heather Cox Richardson National Labor Relations Board Hacked by Doge 4/21/2025
On April 15, Jenna McLaughlin of NPR reported on an official whistleblower disclosure that as soon as members of the DOGE arrived at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), they appeared to be hacking into secure data. While they claimed to be looking for places to cut costs, the behavior of the DOGE team suggested something else was going on. They demanded the highest level of access, tried to hide their activities in the system, turned off monitoring tools, and then manually deleted the record of their tracks, all behaviors that cybersecurity experts told McLaughlin sounded like “what criminal or state-sponsored hackers might do.” Staffers noticed that an IP address in Russia was trying to log in to the system using a newly created DOGE account with correct username and password, & later saw that a large amount of sensitive data was leaving the agency. Cybersecurity experts identified that spike as a sign of a breach in the system, creating the potential for that data to be sold, stolen, or used to hurt companies, while the head of DOGE himself could use the information for his own businesses. “All of this is alarming," Russ Handorf, who worked in cybersecurity for the FBI, told McLaughlin. "If this was a publicly traded company, | would have to report this [breach] to the Securities and Exchange Commission.” When the whistleblower brought his concerns to someone at NLRB, he received threats.](https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/114/381/942/584/507/537/original/fe1820a48cda2c76.jpeg "Heather Cox Richardson National Labor Relations Board Hacked by Doge 4/21/2025
On April 15, Jenna McLaughlin of NPR reported on an official whistleblower disclosure that as soon as members of the DOGE arrived at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), they appeared to be hacking into secure data. While they claimed to be looking for places to cut costs, the behavior of the DOGE team suggested something else was going on. They demanded the highest level of access, tried to hide their activities in the system, turned off monitoring tools, and then manually deleted the record of their tracks, all behaviors that cybersecurity experts told McLaughlin sounded like “what criminal or state-sponsored hackers might do.” Staffers noticed that an IP address in Russia was trying to log in to the system using a newly created DOGE account with correct username and password, & later saw that a large amount of sensitive data was leaving the agency. Cybersecurity experts identified that spike as a sign of a breach in the system, creating the potential for that data to be sold, stolen, or used to hurt companies, while the head of DOGE himself could use the information for his own businesses. “All of this is alarming,\" Russ Handorf, who worked in cybersecurity for the FBI, told McLaughlin. \"If this was a publicly traded company, | would have to report this [breach] to the Securities and Exchange Commission.” When the whistleblower brought his concerns to someone at NLRB, he received threats.")
GitHub expands Security Tools after 39 Million Secrets leaked in 2024.![The GitHub Advanced Security changes are summarized as follows:
• Standalone Secret Protection and Code Security – Now available as separate products, these tools no longer require a full GitHub Advanced Security license, making them more affordable for smaller teams.
• Free organization-wide secret risk assessment – A point-in-time scan that checks all repositories [public, private, internal & archived] for exposed secrets, free for all GitHub organizations.
• Push protection with delegated bypass controls – Enhanced push protection scans for secrets before code is pushed and allows organizations to define who can bypass the protection, adding policy-level control.
• Copilot-powered secret detection – GitHub now uses AI via Copilot to detect unstructured secrets like passwords, improving accuracy & lowering false positives.
• Improved detection via cloud provider partnerships – GitHub works with providers like AWS, Google Cloud & OpenAI to build more accurate secret detectors and respond faster to leaks.](https://nerdculture.de/system/media_attachments/files/114/381/642/432/437/863/original/4496e3fb7f323773.jpeg "The GitHub Advanced Security changes are summarized as follows:
• Standalone Secret Protection and Code Security – Now available as separate products, these tools no longer require a full GitHub Advanced Security license, making them more affordable for smaller teams.
• Free organization-wide secret risk assessment – A point-in-time scan that checks all repositories [public, private, internal & archived] for exposed secrets, free for all GitHub organizations.
• Push protection with delegated bypass controls – Enhanced push protection scans for secrets before code is pushed and allows organizations to define who can bypass the protection, adding policy-level control.
• Copilot-powered secret detection – GitHub now uses AI via Copilot to detect unstructured secrets like passwords, improving accuracy & lowering false positives.
• Improved detection via cloud provider partnerships – GitHub works with providers like AWS, Google Cloud & OpenAI to build more accurate secret detectors and respond faster to leaks.")
