[wplug] Any tips against this kind of ssh break-in?

[Russ Schneider]

Occasionally, I get someone trying to break in via ssh, just hammering 
away, I'm assuming just trying to guess passwords automatically.

Example: http://www.sugapablo.net/docs/script-02.txt

I have a firewall, ssh is one of the few open ports.  The firewall 
(Netgear) does not let me block IP addresses or IP ranges.

I did notice that in sshd_config, root was allowed to login.  I just
turned that off.

Luckily, no one has gotten in with this kind of attempt yet.  But I was 
wondering if there were any further measures I could take to make sure it 
never happens.

Ideally, I would think there would/should be some kind of measure I could
take where if an IP address made X number of attempts to login and failed
in a Y hour period, that IP address would be blocked from further login
attempts.

Any such thing available/possible?

Any other suggestions to futher tighten things down?  What about other 
users in the system like http, mysql, ftp, etc?  I *assume* that since 
these users don't have (at least I don't think so) passwords associated 
with them and sshd_config will only allow users with passwords to login 
that they can't login.  (But I could be wrong.)


-- 
[ Russ Schneider (a.k.a. Sugapablo)                                           ]
[ http://www.sugapablo.net <--personal | http://www.sugapablo.com  <--music   ] 
[ http://www.2ra.org      <--political | http://www.subuse.net     <--discuss ]