crowdsec VS endlessh

Hey we actually built the second part as a product. Its a modern revamp of fail2ban combined with crowdsourcing aspect to deliver an up-to-date blocklist of active threats. You can check it out at https://github.com/crowdsecurity/crowdsec

Today we are pleased to announce the launch of CrowdSec Engine 1.5 - this is a huge milestone for the project and one that would not have been possible without the help of this community. You can read see the full change log over on GitHub here https://github.com/crowdsecurity/crowdsec/releases

wget https://github.com/crowdsecurity/crowdsec/releases/latest/download/crowdsec-release.tgz server:> tar xzvf crowdsec-release.tgz https://github.com/crowdsecurity/crowdsec/releases/latest/download/crowdsec-release.tgz server: > tar xzvf crowdsec-release.tgz server:> cd crowdsec-v* && sudo ./wizard.sh -i

This tool crowdsec.net is really interesting to mitigate and enact defense systems for different scenarios.

CrowdSec is licensed under MIT open source license, you can find a copy of the text here: “Copyright 2020, CrowdSec SAS (http://crowdsec.net), Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.” That’s all there is to it. Like in the case of Debian, you can do anything you want with it, for free, period. You just need to embed this license when you redistribute the product.

You should check out https://crowdsec.net. More advanced, uses crowdsources cti to block attacks even before they happen. Also both nginx and captcha is supported. Disclaimer: I am head of community. Visit /r/CrowdSec or our Discord at https://discord.gg/crowdsec if you have questions :-)

Do I need something like crowdsec, or is WireGuard secure enough on its own?

Before falling too much in love with Fail2Ban try taking a look at https://crowdsec.net. Similar functionality but way more advanced (but easier to configure). New project that leverages the power of the crowd and shares information of attacks among users so they help each other out protecting themselves.

You can reduce the noise a lot by moving ssh to a non standard port. Security through obscurity isn't actually security, but it will reduce the number of attempts you receive. Another thing I like to do is put Endlessh on the standard port 22. That way as bots go by they will get stuck or at least slow down on that connection.

SSH tarpit with Endlessh and for the hidden SSH: auth with both a key files (that need unlocking and is on the computer) AND an One Time Password on my phone.

If you change the ssh port, install https://github.com/skeeto/endlessh to slow down the attackers

Even this requires you to successfully guess the username and password correctly, and if it's just not the default most people won't bother brute forcing further. Sidenote: you can use endlessh on a computer and port forward port 22 to trap scanners that scan the entire internet for open ssh ports to exploit.

The fun way is moving your ssh port somewhere else and installing endlessh to f the bots.

Such as endlessh

But, as a prank to Chinese hackers, what I did on my system was to run endless ssh. It keeps the ssh client busy as it slowly sends the ssh banner. I modified the code to send strings like:

For hardening: I use lynis for some guidance, the VPS runs rkhunter, AIDE and other things nightly and mails me the reports, fail2ban manages the SSH port, having SSH on a custom port helps to keep things quiet. If you're into these kind of things, have a look at the Endlessh tarpit to learn about login attempts on port 22 on your machine - I found it eye-opening.