On the other hand, this was a blessing. The attacker blatantly announced himself when he could have easily installed a small-footprint root kit and hidden in the trenches of my system sucking confidential customer and network information. To reduce the possibility of this kind of attack, I highly advise making use of system integrity software such as chkrootkit and tripwire daily. These programs help detect stealthy intrusions. Other signs of a system in jeopardy may be log files that appear to have been spontaneously erased and unfamiliar occurrences in root's ~/.bash_history file.