About The wiregrass farmer. (Ashburn, Ga.) 1984-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 31, 2014)
Wednesday, December 31,2014 ASHBURN,GA, 31714 VOL 109 - No. 53 • 500 www.thewiregrassfarmer.com (Around Town\ Subscribe to The Wiregrass Farmer Delivered in your mail every week Call 567-3655 for information. Coat drive The Sycamore Police Department is sponsoring a winter coat drive for needy people. Coats of all sizes may be dropped off at City Hall Potrait artist Portrait artist Julian Ter- ron's display has been held over at the Victoria Evans Memorial Library for the month of December. Do not miss this exciting exhibi tion! Test assistance Turner County Special Services is assisting anyone that needs a diploma that has not passed the GHSGT, or if you passed all portions of the test, but lack at least two classes. Please come Mon-Thurs 4-6pm at Spe cial Services School and let us help you. The time is now! Firefighting class Ashburn Fire & Emer gency Services will offer the Basic Firefighter: Mod ule One Course as part of its in-service training program. The course is a very fast paced course, which is the mandated training course required by Georgia Law to become a firefighter. The class will begin on Monday January 5th, 2014 at 6PM at Ashburn Fire & Emergency Services Station #2 located at 1070 Bridges Road in Ashburn. The (See BRIEFS Page 7) Obituaries Lawton Merriweather, 76, Ashburn Samuel Austin Law, III, Albany Complete obituary \information is on Page 5 Serving Turner County Since 1902 Tracking the hackers Ashburn man sets up experiment to track computer hackers. Results are scary There is no good news from the attack data on the conpot honeypot. It was attacked over 30,000 times and the hackers got in over 27,000 times. They were successful 90% of the time... by John McDuffie Hackers are actively stalk ing the internet looking for their next victim. They use websites and email designed to infect computers with mali cious software as their chief means of attack and takeover. Computer security compa nies have stepped up their de fense and research to help combat these kinds of attacks. The methods used by hackers have to evolve to defeat com puter security which forces computer security experts to evolve. It’s a back and forth battle with no clear winner, but hackers are smart and outnum ber the good guys. Websites and email are indi rect methods of hacking be cause the attack may or may not work. There is no hacker in the background actively work ing to make the attacks work. It’s a lot like fishing. Many hackers are resorting to more direct hacking methods to in crease their success. Four months ago I built sev eral virtual servers with one purpose in mind; researching direct hacking traffic and the tools used by the hackers. Using a variety of honeypots, software designed to pretend to be something else, I monitored internet traffic to the virtual servers beginning in late Au gust through Christmas of 2014. As a researcher, I was excited by the massive amount of attacks my fake servers re ceived over the four months they were active. ATTACKS VARY Some of the honeypots were attacked less than five times. The honeypots attacked the most were, in order of attacks received, kippo, conpot and wordpot. Kippo pretends to be an SSH server or secure shell. SSH is used as a secure way to login remotely to servers and computers. Many web server adminis trators use SSH to do remote maintenance on the server. Other uses include logging into office servers to do anything from adding a user to reboot ing to install server updates. Hacking into a SSH on a server would, in most cases, give the hacker complete con trol of that server and all the data on it. The fake SSH in this case was attacked more than (See HACK Page 2) cost is expected to be $6,850,000, one of the most expensive single-item projects in Turner County’s history. The apartments will be in come-based. Freezing temperatures come to Ashburn. The fountain at Elrod Park froze over creating a sheet of ice that covered the waterfall and the sidewalk and out to the road. One adult flu death was re ported in South Georgia. In sports the Rebels traveled to Ocilla to face off in the Area Duals. The Rebels finished 1st place in the tournament. The wrestling team also competed in two other tournaments dur- (See YEAR Page 2) HOW COLD WAS IT? January 2014 started COLD. Turner County and most of the nation went to bed Monday night with below freezing tempera tures or temperatures ex pected to drop below freezing. In Turner County some people set up their water system to drip all night creating some natu ral ice sculptures like the peach tree at right. Above the fountain at Elrod-Veter- ans Park also froze over, creating a sheet of ice that covered the waterfall and the sidewalk all the way out to the road. JANUARY Week 1 The Eureka Heights project is a go. The $5 million apartment com plex is set to go into construc tion in late spring/summer 2014. The location is 1060 West Washington in Ashburn. The Ashburn City Council, County Commission and the Board of Education have been working for years to get a housing development at this property. The Sycamore City Council lacked a quorum for a called meeting the last week of De cember. A new police depart ment policy was approved at an earlier called meeting and City Council member Brenda McNair accused a Sycamore property owner of “spying” on her. In other Sycamore news a new Clerk was hired. Ap proved by the Council in De cember Ashley Topley replaced Janice Varnadore, who has worked as Clerk for 15 years and is leaving City Hall. In sports the 2nd annual Ronalda Pierce Holiday Hoopfest was held, however, a fight ensued during the semifi nal match between the Rebels and Vikings of Lowndes County after a foul by senior Nate Martin. Fans and players were on the court and police were eventually called and after several minutes order was restored. The game was canceled. The revised tourna ment was set to conclude later. Week 2 Shelley Zorn leaves the Chamber after 14 years to take a job as economic developer in Thomasville. Turner County is now a Tier 2 County in state economic rankings. Local officials say this is wrong. They say the data the state used for this ranking is skewed and Turner County is not a Tier 2 county. Tier ranking has a direct effect on how grant applications, tax incentives for business and in dustry and other economic in centives for the county. In short, it makes such help harder to get. This is a major matter for new business and in dustry because Tier 1 counties are able to offer significant tax credits to new industry and business and expansions. Tax credits exist for Tier 2 coun ties, but the amount offered is much smaller. Ashburn has submitted parts of five roads in the City for resurfacing under a state program. Ashburn will have to contribute 30 percent, $12,900, of the cost. The Ashburn City Council were briefed about the coming Eureka Heights housing com plex. The apartments won’t be available until 2015. The entire HFRF'S TO A SAFF AND Find new roads PAimtm Chevrolet, Buick, GMC Inc 567-3306 • 517 Gorday Drive www.parkerchevrolet.com W Shop local Put local people to work and keep your tax dollars at work at home. Garbage can provide important details for hackers: names, telephone numbers, a company's internal jargon. Kevin Mitnick
