[deanhills]

Step 1  Choose a random number between 49152 and 65535

Step 2  SSH into your VPS - if you don't have NANO already loaded with CentoS - you can do it with this command:

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yum install nano

Step 3 Use this command to edit the port number

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nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

With nano you'll be able to scroll with your up and down keys to:

#Server 22

Delete # and replace 22 with your random number.  Remember to make a note of the new number.


Step 4 Save the change with 'ctrl o'  and exit with 'ctrl exit'

ctrl exit

Step 5 Change IP tables (replace "newnumber" with your new port number):

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iptables -A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport newnumber -j ACCEPT

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iptables -A INPUT -j DROP -p tcp --dport 22

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/etc/init.d/iptables save

If you have a Panel, you also need to go into the Panel and in the case of VestaCP there was a separate setting for Firewall SSH port number - which I changed from 22 to my new number.  I also had other issues with VestaCP which I reported in the last post of this tutorial.  VestaCP is still far from perfect, but I think it could possibly also be because of CentOS 7 (probbly still prefer CentOS 6) -  VestaCP httpd and nginx have error issues that come up when ports are changed over and above the ones that have been covered above that come up with this message - resulting in one can't restart either httpd or nginx and websites of course are down as a result:

See "systemctl status httpd.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.

Step 6

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service sshd restart

Feedback:  After the change of the port number I had no more bad login attempts.  This really works well.