I recently setup VSFTPD on my personal server for sharing files over FTP. In the vsftpd.log file, i see hundreds of failed attempts to login with usernames like "adminitrator" , "adminitrator1", "adminitrator2", "adminitrator123" etc.
I am surprised because i just setup my FTP server and i thought no one would know about its existence. I did not communicate it to anyone that my FTP server exists.
I guess with port scanning tools, one would have found FTP port is open. However i wonder how one would have got my IP.
I downloaded a torrent file, would that expose my IP address?
Is it quite common for the attacker to harvest the ip address from torrent trackers or some other service? Any idea how attacker gets IP address? (like for spamming - spambots are used to harvest the email ID)
Any general pointers for a new comer to secure the server (books, videos, totorials, blogs etc)