12-15-2018, 02:33 AM
@KGIII I went through the same experience with my HostUS VPS a few months ago and worked on all kinds of things to lock it down. One thing that I learned through a hard lesson was that there's a good chance you can lock yourself out of your VPS with some of the techniques. Such as what happened to me when I tried to implement keyless entry and set it up such that my VPS login was disabled. It worked perfectly for a while until something happened (I still don't know what it was) that got me locked out of my VPS. Fortunately my HostUS VPS comes with an excellent Admin Panel so I was able to load an OS and start from scratch again.
What I learned through hard experience with the above situation was the most important thing to do is to change the SSH Port number (that is by default always 22). That got rid of almost all of the failed login attempts. Since changing the port number I very rarely get a notification that there are any failed login attempts.
When one changes the number of the port it has to be a different random number that is unique and greater than 1023. Ideal numbers are from 49152 through 65535. Refer explanation of the port numbering in the article below.
http://www.linuxlookup.com/howto/change_...t_ssh_port
I also use a very long and complicated password and try to change it from time to time by inserting and replacing digits etc. I use this Website to generate the random passwords:
https://passwordsgenerator.net/
Here is a very good article about how to change the port number and which numbers to choose for the port:
http://www.linuxlookup.com/howto/change_...t_ssh_port
In summary you do it with the vi edit command line:
I always have to refresh my knowledge of the vi codes to use as it's an editor and uses very old fashioned key strokes - most important one for me is ESC and :qw to save and get out of the edit screen. At the end of saving it I redo the vi edit command just to check the change has been made. You make the change at the following line:
#Port 22
Remove the # and then replace the 22 with the new port number.
Keyless entry is also easy to do and it did work well for a little while. Lots of literature online how to do it. I did it with my Putty Dashboard and Keygen. I don't think I really needed it however as my VPS is mostly passive, I don't have comments enabled for my blogs, nor e-mail and I don't think people are really that interested in my Websites as I don't advertise them as such. I think keyless entry is probably more suited for people who have very busy games servers or servers with plenty of intense traffic and interest and interaction with members with e-mail, chat, forums etc.
What I learned through hard experience with the above situation was the most important thing to do is to change the SSH Port number (that is by default always 22). That got rid of almost all of the failed login attempts. Since changing the port number I very rarely get a notification that there are any failed login attempts.
When one changes the number of the port it has to be a different random number that is unique and greater than 1023. Ideal numbers are from 49152 through 65535. Refer explanation of the port numbering in the article below.
http://www.linuxlookup.com/howto/change_...t_ssh_port
I also use a very long and complicated password and try to change it from time to time by inserting and replacing digits etc. I use this Website to generate the random passwords:
https://passwordsgenerator.net/
Here is a very good article about how to change the port number and which numbers to choose for the port:
http://www.linuxlookup.com/howto/change_...t_ssh_port
In summary you do it with the vi edit command line:
Code: (Select All)
vi /etc/ssh/sshd_configI always have to refresh my knowledge of the vi codes to use as it's an editor and uses very old fashioned key strokes - most important one for me is ESC and :qw to save and get out of the edit screen. At the end of saving it I redo the vi edit command just to check the change has been made. You make the change at the following line:
#Port 22
Remove the # and then replace the 22 with the new port number.
Keyless entry is also easy to do and it did work well for a little while. Lots of literature online how to do it. I did it with my Putty Dashboard and Keygen. I don't think I really needed it however as my VPS is mostly passive, I don't have comments enabled for my blogs, nor e-mail and I don't think people are really that interested in my Websites as I don't advertise them as such. I think keyless entry is probably more suited for people who have very busy games servers or servers with plenty of intense traffic and interest and interaction with members with e-mail, chat, forums etc.
