Cheers dude
I'm sure I'll laugh once my core temperature has gone down to double-digits, and I've received a grovelling apology from the colo!
As an aside, during this I found that /etc/shadow had permissions as
Code:
-rw-r--r-T 1 root root 328 Jun 23 2013 shadow
After my heart rate returned to something resembling normality I discovered this was a standard ESXi setting, not the result of all the .cn IPs managing to guess passwords and rooting the box. Although I didn't realise that was a default before the last 5 or so IPs that had been brute-forcing via SSH had been blatted off the net via some random dude with a pipe waaaaaay bigger than theirs. Something about best defence is a good offence?