If you are a sysadmin, now's a good time to make sure your firewall rules are up to spec and possibly making a backup of important system and data files.
If you are a CGI programmer, I'd highly recommend avoiding doing any changes to scripts on publically accessable servers for the possibility of opening a hole for these crackers to use to gain access to the system.
Certainly nothing may come of these attacks, but given the number of news sites with which I respect that are posting warnings of this, I'd definitely take their advice.
Update : As to respond to questions of "why not secure at all times?", generally, a script kiddie or one that is cracking a system is going to take whatever steps to keep his work quiet and untracable as he can. This is the hardest type of attack to secure against, and it's one that you must keep ever viligent on. However, with this potental attack, we are talking about full blown DDOS attacks, or people that are brute forcing their ways into systems, caring not whether they are detectable or tracable, since it's unlikely they will be punished for it. And while these tend to be the most rudamentary attacks, they are also the ones that tend to get forgotten or overlooked by security because "well, no one would brute force a crack on a system!". But as others have stated, security should be a primary concern for all computer users; I'm sure here at PM that lesson is not at lost, but with some of the possible attacks, even the most vigiliant person may find themselves under attack.
In reply to Be Very Wary Next Week... by Masem
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