Sshguard/en

is Article description::an intrusion prevention system that parses server logs, determines malicious activity, and uses the system firewall to block the IP addresses of malicious connections. sshguard is written in C so it does not tax an interpreter.

How it works
sshguard is a simple daemon that continuously tracks one or more log files. It parses the log events that daemons send out in case of failed login attempts and then blocks any further attempts from those connections by updating the system's firewall.

Unlike what the name implies, sshguard does not only parse SSH logs. It also supports many mail systems as well as a few FTP ones. A full listing of supported services can be found on the sshguard.net website.

Emerge
Install :

Additional software
Depending on the init system and the desired firewall backend to be used by sshguard, additional software may be required to be emerged in order for sshguard to block malicious actors.

More information on various supported backends can be found by reading the setup manpage:

iptables
When iptables are being used as the system firewall.

More information about using and configuring IPtables can also be found on the IPtables article.

nftables
When nftables are being used as the system firewall:

Preparing the firewall
When blocks any malicious users (by blocking their IP addresses), it will use the  chain.

Prepare the chain with iptables and make sure it is also triggered when new incoming connections are detected:

Then verify that the appropriate path to the iptables backend library is set in :

Watching logfiles
The basic idea behind sshguard is that the administrator passes on the log file(s) to watch as options to the application - there is no native sshguard configuration file.

On Gentoo, the options can be best configured in the file:

Make sure that the log files are accessible for the runtime user that sshguard uses.

OpenRC
Have sshguard be started by default by adding it to the default runlevel, and then start it:

systemd
Use systemd's conventional way to enable it, and then start it:

Blacklisting hosts
With the blacklisting option after a number of abuses the IP address of the attacker or a IP subnet will be blocked permanently. The blacklist will be loaded at each startup and extended with new entries during operation. inserts a new address after it exceeded a threshold of abuses.

Blacklisted addresses are never scheduled to be released (allowed) again.

To enable blacklisting, create an appropriate directory and file:

While defining a blacklist it is important to exclude trusted IP networks and hosts in a whitelist.

To enable whitelisting, create an appropriate directory and file:

The whitelist has to include the loopback interface, and should have at least 1 IP trusted network f.e. 192.0.2.0/24.

Add the BLACKLIST_FILE and WHITELIST_FILE file to the configuration. Example configuration listed blocks all hosts after the first login attempt. To setup a less agressive blocking policy, adjust the THRESHOLD and BLACKLIST_FILE integer, and set it to f.e. 10 instead of 2:

Restart the daemon to have the changes take effect:

File '/var/log/auth.log' vanished while adding!
When starting up, sshguard reports the following error:

Such an error (the file path itself can be different) occurs when the target file is not available on the system. Make sure that it is created, or update the sshguard configuration to not add it for monitoring.

On a syslog-ng system with OpenRC, the following addition to can suffice:

Reload the configuration for the changes to take effect:

External resources
The sshguard documentation provides all the information needed to further tune the application.