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Re: SSH Bruteforce blocking script


From: "Pedro Hugo " <fractalg () highspeedweb net>
Date: Fri, 2 Sep 2005 05:53:04 -0400

Hi,

I don't want to debate the goodness or badness of the strategy of
blocking hosts like this in /etc/hosts.deny. It works perfectly for me,
and most
likely would for you, so no religious debates thanks. It's effective at
blocking bruteforce attacks. If a host EXCEEDS a specified number of
guesses
during the (configurable) 30 seconds it takes the script to cycle, the
host is blacklisted.


Why are you doing this the wrong way ? You should whitelist hosts, instead blacklisting them.
Unless you have administrative reasons for such decision, hosts.deny should be set to ALL:ALL, and you should allow 
specifically in hosts.allow.
This way everything is dropped by default. Tcpwrappers should be configured the same way a firewall is, unless there is 
something against  it. 
Even if you have customers who need remote access, adding a few ip's is much better than having open by default.
Kind Regards,
Pedro Hugo
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