Strange MOTD on my Linux Box

Question

I'm setting up new Linux box, CentOS 4.9

LSB Version: :core-3.0-ia32:core-3.0-noarch:graphics-3.0-ia32:graphics-3.0-noarch Distributor ID: CentOS Description: CentOS release 4.9 (Final) Release: 4.9 Codename: Final

When I login to personnel account via SSH, it shows following welcome message.

Last login: Sun Apr 17 21:56:53 2011 from xx.xx.xx.xx

[sh]  w.e.l.c.o.m.e
[sh]  To The Virtual Reality
[sh]  Enjoy and behave !

Is my Linux box hacked? Should I have to reinstall CentOS?

Answer 1

This seems to be the signature of some guy named hexabyte in a hacker forum.

So, basically, I'd say your box is hacked or at least not an official version. Do a clean reinstall as soon as possible and make sure you download the latest official version!

Answer 2

I'm not convinced that there was a Centos 2.4.

I suggest you hire an operations engineer straight away. Consider all your data compromised and change all passwords (after you take the compromised system offline permanently). Restore backups with care.

Answer 3

I don't know what did you install to be honest, since this doesn't really sound like CentOS (whatever version it might be.)

Grab the offical ISO (and latest) from the official site: https://www.centos.org/
And do a clean install.

(If you really happened to install such an old release, yes it's really easy to hack it since if a Linux release goes outdate, it won't get security updates. That means, the attacker just have to get the version information of the services you run and find exploits for them.)