Re: OpenSSH is a good choice?

[Stian Øvrevåge <sovrevage () gmail com>]

This is my first post, so bare with me.

It is important to distinguish between motivated active attacks
performed by humans, and automated and often poorly crafted worms and
automated attacks. Even though the use of for example non-standard
ports will not stop an attack by intelligent people, the fact is that
most attacks and collection of target lists are based on fairly stupid
automated scripts etc. One might not think that this is something to
worry about, but according to statistics, worms and viruses account
for most of the economical loss.

- Stian


On Wed, 22 Dec 2004 21:02:25 +0200, Willem Koenings <infsec () gmail com> wrote:
> On Wed, 22 Dec 2004 02:40:25 -0600 (CST), Ron DuFresne
> <dufresne () winternet com> wrote:
>
> > I'd disagree in that the tools are getting to be well enough defined that
> > we are all targets.  Best game is to restrict who has access to the ports
> > being served whenever possible, openssh has a history that makes this a
> > good service to limit this way.  Little need to hide what's not openly
> > allowed to all.
>
> take a recent phpBB worm Santy for an example. worm seaches
> automatically targets via google - it searches
> viewtopic.php. if, for an example, you change that file name to
> something else (and also all the referrings inside the phpBB so that
> everything still works), then Santy does not find you phpBB as a
> target. this is only an illustration to my point.
>
> i wrote my post because you say "the non std port advice is not worth
> much". i have lot of cases, when non standard configuration reduces
> first impact greatly. of course you shouldn't rely only to non
> standard ports/configuration, but it is not totally worthless - it
> often helps you a lot.
>
> W.
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