Re: Deliberately create slow SSH response?

Hi Kevin,

Here are a few solutions that I can think of at the moment;

-Change your sshd port from 22 to something less prone to scans/attacks. i.e. 122, 222, etc...
-Disable password authentication?
-TCP wrappers that spawn a script at every ssh connection and checks for IP and validate if it has been denied a connection before, and put the IP in /etc/hosts.deny if x amount of attempts is reached. You would script something and put it in /etc/hosts.allow in the following format: (your SSH should be compiled with libwrap)
sshd : all : spawn (/path/to/your_script.sh %a)&
- You can also use http://denyhosts.sourceforge.net/ which is a python script that should work fine with the Linux distros that you list.

Hope this helps.

-Ed

----- Original Message ----
From: "Zembower, Kevin" <kzembowe@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: secureshell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Wednesday, July 9, 2008 12:55:34 PM
Subject: Deliberately create slow SSH response?

This might seem like a strange question to ask, but is there a way to
deliberately create a slow response to an SSH request? I'm annoyed at
the large number of distributed SSH brute-force attacks on a server I
administer, trying to guess the password for 'root' and other accounts.
I think that my server is pretty secure; doesn't allow root to log in
through SSH, only a restricted number of accounts are allowed SSH
access, with I think pretty good passwords. But still, the attempts
annoy me.

I wouldn't mind if SSH took say 30 seconds to ask me for my password.
This would slow the attempts. Is there any way to configure OpenSSH to
do this? I searched the archives of this group with 'slow' and 'delay'
but didn't come up with anything on this topic. Please point it out to
me if I overlooked anything. In addition, I can limit the number of SSH
connections to 3-5 and still operate okay.

Ultimately, I need this solution for hosts running OpenSSH_3.9p1 under
RHEL ES 4 and OpenSSH_4.3p2 under Debian 'etch' 4.0 and Fedora Core 6.

Thanks in advance for your advice and suggestions.

-Kevin

Kevin Zembower
Internet Services Group manager
Center for Communication Programs
Bloomberg School of Public Health
Johns Hopkins University
111 Market Place, Suite 310
Baltimore, Maryland 21202
410-659-6139



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