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Re:Port knocking by kelnos on Friday May 15, 2020 @12:05AM (#23188787)
The point is that most login attempts are automated, and the automated scripts just try port 22 and move on if they fail. If you run ssh on port 22, you see in your logs all the failed attempts from the giant sea of automated scanners, and will probably miss the one or two humans who might know something about you specifically (like your username) and are trying a targeted attack.

If you put ssh on another port, all of those automated login attempts disappear from your logs. The determined human attacker probably has port-scanned you and found ssh on another port, so you'll see just that attacker and can look into it more deeply if you feel the need. On port 22, you probably never bother to look at your failed-attempt log, because there's so much noise.

Re:Port knocking by belorn on Friday May 15, 2020 @08:33AM (#23191389)
I would be interested to read about peoples process and procedures from those that regularly read their ssh failed attempts, identify human attackers, and react to that information.

My question is basically: Do they exist? How is the work flow and how much time per year do they spend on it? What incident occurred and what value did they derive from the process. Was it cost-effective?

Re:Port knocking by kelnos on Friday May 15, 2020 @04:39PM (#23197129)
I don't read mine at all (talking about a personal server here[0]), because there's a huge amount of noise. The email alerts for it go to a mail folder that I literally never look at, because it gets hundreds of emails per day.

If I only got an email per week or so, I'd probably not filter them to a folder, and actually look at them.

[0] At work, other people deal with intrusion detection there, and ssh access is gated behind a VPN anyway.

Re:Port knocking by peterwwillis on Friday May 15, 2020 @10:21AM (#23192496)
About a decade and a half ago it was in vogue to constantly monitor your logs for attacks. There was sophisticated software to detect the latest attacks, and they would notify you constantly, and you'd run around chasing your tail for every unusual port scan. We spent tons of money on reporting software to try to stay on top of it all.

But we realized that as attacks increased, it was pointless to look at who or how often we were being attacked, because it wasn't making our systems more secure. What did make them more secure was actually securing them: patching systems, implementing firewall rules, blocking or slowing down multiple login attempts.

Non-sophisticated attacks are trivial to prevent, and sophisticated attacks won't show up in logs. Everyone needs to stop logging ssh attempts and just secure their boxes and move on with life.

And that's why port knocking is stupid.

Re:Port knocking by mirages on Friday May 15, 2020 @04:42AM (#23190135)
Actually I'm receiving about 10 attempts per minute on my non-22 ssh port that I've set up
Re:Port knocking by kelnos on Friday May 15, 2020 @04:40PM (#23197143)
Damn, that's a shame. From what other people say when they advocate non-22, they make me believe it would be a lot less. Oh well.
Re:Port knocking by EvilTerran on Friday May 15, 2020 @04:20AM (#23190051)
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re:Port knocking by peterwwillis on Friday May 15, 2020 @10:10AM (#23192387)
It was a response to their main point, but the subtlety was lost on people who don't think critically.

Just because you see or don't see attacks doesn't mean you are more or less secure. It just means you've finally noticed there is risk. It doesn't mean there is more or less risk. It's the same risk, it's just more visible.

Re:Port knocking by shoeffner on Thursday May 14, 2020 @11:43PM (#23188666)
The quote is not about logs making you unsafe. The quote is about ssh login and connection attempts on port 22 which clutter your log files.

Assume you move ssh to another port, say 23. In that case, anyone trying to connect to port 22 would find a closed port and the connection would fail, on a layer before login attempts get logged.

Re:Port knocking by femiagbabiaka on Thursday May 14, 2020 @11:36PM (#23188609)
The point is that 99% of all access attempts are done by simple skiddies or people simply crawling the internet with masscan or similar.