Re: [gentoo-user] SSH authentication attempts - serious issue

[Uwe Thiem]

On 05 June 2006 16:06, Leandro Melo de Sales wrote:
> Hi,
>
>    today when I was checking the server log I got many external
> attempts to connect to my sshd service:
>
> ...
> Jun  5 05:09:45 embedded sshd[4740]: Invalid user barbara from x.y.w.z
> Jun  5 05:09:46 embedded sshd[4742]: Invalid user barb from x.y.w.z
> Jun  5 05:09:48 embedded sshd[4744]: Invalid user barbie from x.y.w.z
> Jun  5 05:09:50 embedded sshd[4746]: Invalid user barbra from x.y.w.z
> Jun  5 05:09:51 embedded sshd[4748]: Invalid user barman from x.y.w.z
> Jun  5 05:09:53 embedded sshd[4750]: Invalid user barney from x.y.w.z
> ...
>
> this seems to be a brute force attack, but one thing that worried me
> is why sshd didn't disconnect the remote host after 3 unsuccessful
> attemps? If we see in the log, there are many attemps with time
> interval between attemps of 2 or 3 seconds meaning that the sshd
> didn't disconnect the remote host after 3 attempts.
>  So, first, Am I thinking correct about the sshd attempts?
>  Second, how can I setup sshd or the entire system to permit just 2 or
> 3 attempts of authentication? I was checking the /etc/login.defs file
> and I see the following option:
>
> #
> # Max number of login retries if password is bad
> #
> LOGIN_RETRIES           3
>
> but why this didn't work for the above connection attempts?

Because it wasn't a bad password. It never got to that stage. ;-)

Uwe

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