Odd behaviour - slow ftp today

[Bret Stern]

Good August too all.

One of my most trustworthy and reliable ftp servers, suddenly
has a case of the slows.

I looked at the mail messages which get generated nightly about
system status, there were a couple entries where some remote
sob tried to log into my machine 9997 times. Several days
in a row.

Accidentally deleted the message with the ip number, so I
couldn't add the deny entry to iptables.

Any suggestions on where to look for possible traces of
ill intent.

I've been looking at messages, secure, vsftpd logs, but don't
see any concern.

Thanks for comments, 

Bret Stern
Machine Management