[ILUG] SSH dictionary attacks.

[Daniel Shaw]

Aine Douglas wrote:

> I've since found an easier way to stop this problem for debugging
> processes. I establish all the terminal sessions I need over SSH, and
> from one of them stop SSHD, and it doesn't kill my open sessions.

Just a comment on the above. Use it, don't' use it.. anyhow IMO that's a 
very bad idea. Yes, that doesn't kill your open sessions. However, if 
your network connection ever dies for whatever reason and your sessions 
time out... could be a slight problem to access your box again.

Fair enough, maybe walking over to it is an option. But this is not a 
good practice to get into. I speak from experience. Once an OpenSSH 
upgrade on an outdated server went awry, leaving me with no running sshd 
but a number of existing sessions. Then a satellite link died. The catch 
was that the server was on a different continent and the data centre 
staff on the other end of the phone didn't speak the same language..

So be careful :-)

Cheers,
Daniel