Strange String found on server terminal

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Jimmeh

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Yesterday I went to our data center to do some routine checks and found the following string on the screen after hitting Alt + F8

xT S7=45 S0=0 L1 V1 X4 &c1 E1 Q0
ATZ

Nothing else was displayed on the screen.

The server is running Ubuntu 8.04 64bit and is only running openssh as a service for the internal network. No packages except openssh-server and the security updates have been installed.

Anyone know what this could mean? No modem or serial cable has ever been connected to the machine. The server is located in a secure:confused: data center.

I have never seen this before and its bugging me as the server contains very sensitive data.
 
it's a modem init string

although the ATZ command makes it superflous as ATZ resets the modem to default settings.

maybe ubuntu runs a background check to check for modems?
 
Thanks for the response.

Any idea why it would pop up on a terminal on a server that has never been connected to a modem?
 
It could be a kernel message, and by accident the ATZ popped up.

What makes me think this is the other line.

Sometimes you get stuff that siffs out in the kernel but won't crash the server. These messages then usually gets logged to the monitor as well as /var/log/messages

Chances are you might need to do a kernel upgrade or find out what piece of hardware (kernel module) or software is causing this message.
 
Have you checked the logs?
less /var/log/auth.log and daemon.log, dmesg, and whatever looks interesting on your server.

The auth.log is CRITICAL to check at least once a day for people working with corporate servers, since this will show you hacking attempts and people who logged in and under what user.

daemon.log will tell you what daemon did what and when, so if there is a service running that you did not initiate you now know what to kill and fix.

dmesg you should know.
 
Thanks for all the responses.

The logs do not show anything suspicious but there are some gaps in the daemon log.
 
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