[ale] 300,000 failed login attempts in 6 months!!!

[Brian Pitts]

Michael B. Trausch wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-08-19 at 12:12 -0400, Jim Popovitch wrote:
>> New?  No.  SSH brute force attempts are not new.  You, as a target,
>> might be new. ;-)
>>
>> Save yourself some trouble and run SSHD on a non-standard port.
> 
> I keep seeing this said over and over again, and I keep wondering:  Are
> the attackers _really_ that stupid?  Wouldn't a simple portscan prior to
> attempting to attack get rid of any benefit that this would provide?

I assume they scan... port 22. If ssh isn't there either it's not
running or there's a smart admin. Either way that system is not an
inviting target.

-Brian