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We had a security breach and some things were messed up on our Ubuntu servers. Now, when I log in to two of our servers using WinSCP and I double-click on a file to open it with my default application, WinSCP instead attempts to open it as a directory, which fails and I get an error message saying "Error listing directory" (of course, because it's not a directory...).

I can still edit the file by right-clicking and choosing "Edit", but that's a bit of a pain to do every time I open a file. I am fairly certain that this isn't an issue with WinSCP at all, since another of our servers which wasn't broken into still behaves properly in WinSCP. But I don't know what settings could be changed in the Ubuntu servers that would cause this behavior. Anyone have any suggestions? We are running Ubuntu Server 9.04 (Jaunty).

Please keep in mind that I'm pretty much a UNIX noob, so please use small words :-)

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It might be a permission issue, or maybe sshd has been tampered with by the people who broke into the server...

PS: if your servers were compromised, you should wipe & re-install them ASAP!

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Thanks for the suggestion. The servers that were broken into are both development servers with no important info on them (hence the lack of security) and will be going away soon when we switch to cloud servers anyways. Like I said, I'm a UNIX noob, so I don't know how to see if it's a permission issue or sshd issue...I know that I am still able to read, write, and execute files, it's just the default double-click action in WinSCP that I've noticed is different. How should I check to see if it's a permission issue or sshd issue? – Travesty3 Aug 23 '10 at 21:02
The servers could still be doing things they shouldn't (e.g. sending your data to a competitor, sending spam, participating in a DDoS attack, etc.), that's why you should reinstall or replace them. – JanC Aug 25 '10 at 3:03
I suppose WinSCP has a way to show you the file permissions? It might be useful to see if there is any difference between the permissions on the compromised server vs. on one that still works as expected. – JanC Aug 25 '10 at 3:05
Looks like it was an SSH issue. Uninstalled and reinstalled SSH and the issue is gone on both servers. Thanks for the help! – Travesty3 Sep 1 '10 at 14:45
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