<div dir="ltr">As Ted said in the 2nd sentence, it&#39;s running on a non-standard port.  Yes, it helps lot to reduce garbage in the logs.<div><br></div><div>Maybe it&#39;s not non-standard enough?</div><div><br></div><div>sshguard looks interesting.  Thanks!</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Jun 12, 2017 at 12:42 PM, Bruce Dawson <span dir="ltr">&lt;<a href="mailto:jbd@codemeta.com" target="_blank">jbd@codemeta.com</a>&gt;</span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
  
    
  
  <div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
    <p>I have to second this suggestion - changing the port did wonders
      for our servers. Of course, as Dan says, it works for script
      kiddies, not so much against a determined attack on your server.</p><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">
    <p>--Bruce<br>
    </p></font></span><div><div class="h5">
    <br>
    <div class="m_-418521647333471275moz-cite-prefix">On 06/12/2017 09:59 AM, Dan Garthwaite
      wrote:<br>
    </div>
    <blockquote type="cite">
      <div dir="ltr">If you can change the port number it does wonders
        against the script kiddies.
        <div><br>
        </div>
        <div>Just remember to add the new port, restart sshd, then
          remove the old port.  :)</div>
      </div>
      <div class="gmail_extra"><br>
        <div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Jun 11, 2017 at 1:53 PM, Ted
          Roche <span dir="ltr">&lt;<a href="mailto:tedroche@gmail.com" target="_blank">tedroche@gmail.com</a>&gt;</span>
          wrote:<br>
          <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Thanks,
            all for the recommendations. I hadn&#39;t seen sshguard before;<br>
            I&#39;ll give that a try.<br>
            <br>
            I do have Fail2Ban in place, and have customized a number of
            scripts,<br>
            mostly for Apache (trying to invoke asp scripts on my LAMP
            server<br>
            results in instaban, for example) and it is what it
            reporting the ssh<br>
            login failures.<br>
            <br>
            I have always seen them, in the 10 years I&#39;ve had this
            server running,<br>
            but the frequency, periodicity and international variety
            (usually<br>
            they&#39;re all China, Russian, Romania) seemed like there might
            be<br>
            something else going on.<br>
            <br>
            Be careful out there.<br>
            <div class="m_-418521647333471275HOEnZb">
              <div class="m_-418521647333471275h5"><br>
                On Sun, Jun 11, 2017 at 11:19 AM, Mark Komarinski &lt;<a href="mailto:mkomarinski@wayga.org" target="_blank">mkomarinski@wayga.org</a>&gt;
                wrote:<br>
                &gt; sshguard is really good since it&#39;ll drop in a
                iptables rule to block an IP<br>
                &gt; address after a number of attemps (and prevent
                knocking on other ports too).<br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt; Yubikey as 2FA is pretty nice too.<br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt; -------- Original message --------<br>
                &gt; From: Bruce Dawson &lt;<a href="mailto:jbd@codemeta.com" target="_blank">jbd@codemeta.com</a>&gt;<br>
                &gt; Date: 6/11/17 10:58 AM (GMT-05:00)<br>
                &gt; To: <a href="mailto:gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org" target="_blank">gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org</a><br>
                &gt; Subject: Re: What&#39;s the strategy for bad guys
                guessing a few ssh passwords?<br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt; sshguard takes care of most of them (especially the
                high bandwidth ones).<br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt; The black hats don&#39;t care - they&#39;re looking for
                vulnerable systems. If<br>
                &gt; they find one, they&#39;ll exploit it (or not).<br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt; Note that a while ago (more than a few years),
                comcast used to probe<br>
                &gt; systems to see if they&#39;re vulnerable. Either they
                don&#39;t do that any<br>
                &gt; more, or contract it out because I haven&#39;t see
                probes from any of their<br>
                &gt; systems in years. This probably holds true for
                other ISPs, and various<br>
                &gt; intelligence agencies in the world - both private
                and public, not to<br>
                &gt; mention various disreputable enterprises.<br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt; --Bruce<br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt; On 06/11/2017 10:17 AM, Ted Roche wrote:<br>
                &gt;&gt; For 36 hours now, one of my clients&#39; servers
                has been logging ssh<br>
                &gt;&gt; login attempts from around the world, low
                volume, persistent, but more<br>
                &gt;&gt; frequent than usual. sshd is listening on a
                non-standard port, just to<br>
                &gt;&gt; minimize the garbage in the logs.<br>
                &gt;&gt;<br>
                &gt;&gt; A couple of attempts is normal; we&#39;ve seen that
                for years. But this is<br>
                &gt;&gt; several each  hour, and each hour an IP from a
                different country:<br>
                &gt;&gt; Belgium, Korea, Switzerland, Bangladesh,
                France, China, Germany,<br>
                &gt;&gt; Dallas, Greece. Usernames vary: root, mythtv,
                rheal, etc.<br>
                &gt;&gt;<br>
                &gt;&gt; There&#39;s several levels of defense in use:
                firewalls, intrusion<br>
                &gt;&gt; detection, log monitoring, etc, so each script
                gets a few guesses and<br>
                &gt;&gt; the IP is then rejected.<br>
                &gt;&gt;<br>
                &gt;&gt; In theory, the defenses should be sufficient,
                but I have a concern<br>
                &gt;&gt; that I&#39;m missing their strategy here. It&#39;s not
                a DDOS, they are very<br>
                &gt;&gt; low volume. It will take them several millennia
                to guess enough<br>
                &gt;&gt; dictionary attack guesses to get through, so
                what&#39;s the point?<br>
                &gt;&gt;<br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt; ______________________________<wbr>_________________<br>
                &gt; gnhlug-discuss mailing list<br>
                &gt; <a href="mailto:gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org" target="_blank">gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org</a><br>
                &gt; <a href="http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman<wbr>/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/</a><br>
                &gt;<br>
                &gt; ______________________________<wbr>_________________<br>
                &gt; gnhlug-discuss mailing list<br>
                &gt; <a href="mailto:gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org" target="_blank">gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org</a><br>
                &gt; <a href="http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman<wbr>/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/</a><br>
                &gt;<br>
                <br>
                <br>
                <br>
              </div>
            </div>
            <span class="m_-418521647333471275im m_-418521647333471275HOEnZb">--<br>
              Ted Roche<br>
              Ted Roche &amp; Associates, LLC<br>
              <a href="http://www.tedroche.com" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://www.tedroche.com</a><br>
            </span>
            <div class="m_-418521647333471275HOEnZb">
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              </div>
            </div>
          </blockquote>
        </div>
        <br>
      </div>
      <br>
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    </blockquote>
    <br>
  </div></div></div>

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