If there's one thing I really can't stand it's people who apparently have nothing better to do than port scan IPs. Actually, it's the people who do it without really knowing what they're doing who wind me up. No, that doesn't cover it either, it's the people who do it to me without really knowing what they're doing that get my goat.

I get automated mails from my server at home produced by logsentry, and this morning's was full of output from sshd where some idiot had scanned it for about 90 seconds between midnight and 1am UK time using Nessus. Of course, I reported it, with full log extracts to the ISP who own the IP it originated from.

The thing is what sort of idiot uses a tool that, precisely because it's intended to be used for legitimate security auditing identifies itself very clearly to the SSH server like that if they're trying to compromise a remote host? The person responsible for the scan last night should be taken out and shot, not for doing the scan, but for sucking so badly at it.