[Techtalk] Who to complain to?

[David Sumbler]

I run sshd on my Fedora Core 2 box.  Most mornings I check my root
mail and /var/log/secure files to see who, if anyone, has been trying
unauthorized log-ins.

Beacuse these occur so often, I've started fighting back by e-mailing
the ISP or whoever who supplies the offending IP, and I've had a
couple of gratifying results where accounts have been terminated as a
result.

But who do I contact in a case like this?  This morning over a 54
minute period there were 827 attempted log-ins, including 818 attempts
to log into the 'root' account.  (I'm not too worried: 'root' isn't an
"allowed user", and in any case I think my passwords are pretty
secure.)

When I do a "whois" on the offending IP, all I get is:

    [Querying whois.arin.net]
    [whois.arin.net]
    Pac Bell Internet Services PBI-NET-7 (NET-63-192-0-0-1)
                                      63.192.0.0 - 63.207.255.255
    County of Santa Cruz SBCIS990913-81 (NET-63-194-190-0-1)
                                      63.194.190.0 - 63.194.190.255

    # ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2004-11-02 19:10
    # Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN's WHOIS database.

How do I find out more, and, specifically, who to complain to about
this antisocial behaviour?  Incidentally, I'm not clear how to follow
the advice on the last line of the above.

David

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