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WalrusTheSailor

Member

Registered: 2014-10-22

Posts: 10

Sshguard: directly ban instead of blocking first

I'm trying out sshguard to ban some IPs that fail to login after a couple of attempts.

On the wiki page it suggests to add -a 1 -b 10:(...) to make it aggressive, which means banning IPs after a single attempt:

ExecStart=/usr/lib/systemd/scripts/sshguard-journalctl "-a 1 -b 10:/var/db/sshguard/blacklist.db" SYSLOG_FACILITY=4 SYSLOG_FACILITY=10

However, sshguard won't start using this, as it tells the minimal abuse threshold (-a) should be at least 10. The problem is that I don't want it to first block someone; I want it to ban without first blocking an IP.

Does anyone know a way to ban an IP after, say, three consecutive failed SSH login attempts?

Thanks,
TheSailor

WalrusTheSailor

Member

Registered: 2014-10-22

Posts: 10

Re: Sshguard: directly ban instead of blocking first

I've asked the question at the sshguard mailing list.

I'll post any updates here.

Last edited by WalrusTheSailor (2016-04-12 13:28:47)

WalrusTheSailor

Member

Registered: 2014-10-22

Posts: 10

Re: Sshguard: directly ban instead of blocking first

It's solved!

The solution is setting the abuse threshold (-a) to the same value as the ban threshold (-b):

ExecStart=/usr/lib/systemd/scripts/sshguard-journalctl "-a 30 -b 30:/var/db/sshguard/blacklist.db" SYSLOG_FACILITY=4 SYSLOG_FACILITY=10

OlafLostViking

Member

From: Lost

Registered: 2013-01-30

Posts: 59

Re: Sshguard: directly ban instead of blocking first

Thanks for posting your solution. Could you be so kind to add "[SOLVED]" to the title of your first post so that others know that they won't need to drop in to help? Thank you!

Last edited by OlafLostViking (2016-04-18 19:05:12)