[elmo2you]

> It’s an useless anecdote because SSH bruteforce attempts are not a threat and cost you nothing.

I can say from personal experience that this anecdote is both accurate (20 years ago and up till today) and meaningful.

No idea where you get this notion that brute force attack are no threat or without cost.

They certainly do pose a security risk (takes only one insufficiently trained employee/intern for a potential breach) and they certainly come at a cost (way beyond dirty just logs).

[fmajid]

Botnets and fast networking stacks like DPDK have made port scanning the entire Internet a much more viable proposition than 20 years ago. Depending on your sshd settings you can be effectively locked out of your machine by a brute-force attack. Running on IPv6 and/or having a secondary sshd instance that only accepts connections from whitelisted IPs is cheap insurance.

[mercer]

That doesn't invalidate the observation (which I share) that these attempts are almost 0 when using a different port. It reduces logspam and if I start getting lots of brute force attempts on my non-standard port, this is useful and meaningful information (someone cares enough to do this).

[elmo2you]

> Botnets and fast networking stacks like DPDK have made port scanning the entire Internet a much more viable proposition than 20 years ago

True indeed, yet even today I have seen little evidence of scanning beyond standard ports (pretty much the same as in the past). Criminals are opportunistic by default and tend to go for low hanging fruit (standard ports, with standard server config). I certainly did see in increase on standard ports. Even while full range scanning has become more feasible, I have not seen much evidence of its use.

[iso1631]

> takes only one insufficiently trained employee/intern for a potential breach

How? If they've leaked their key, why do you assume the port hasn't leaked too? On the other hand if they haven't leaked their key how would they get in?

Or are you allowing password authentication like it's 1999?

[elmo2you]

> Or are you allowing password authentication like it's 1999?

That is assuming you have such authority or technical means. If you're maintaining systems for a company, there's a good change that the product vendor simply won't allow fucking around with their system like that (ergo: yes, in practice you are indeed stuck with your 1999 authentication).

I'm not saying that it is good security (that's why layers security is often paramount), but it is situation I've encountered more than a few times.

Great for you, if you are GOD on all the systems you work with. Even then, your client/employer might simply tell you to stuff your objections and accept the bad authentication policy, because to them the risks are simply not worth the business disruption. I totally agree that is a flawed argument. But decisions usually aren't always (if ever) called on valid arguments.

Good for you, if you are in a position where you never had to deal with such real life situations.

[scaryclam]

Heck, some cloud providers have password logins by default. Since the instances are easy to setup I'd imagine many companies operating with a no-ops situation are vulnerable and don't even know it.

And then there are side projects. I remember being educated enough to know better, but doing it anyway as the server was a $5 digital ocean droplet, used to run a tiny minecraft server for some friends. Got brute forced and spent the next two weeks red-faced, trying to get DO to allow network access again so I could at least grab a backup before nerfing the droplet.

Now I use a basic ansible setup to automate changes to sshd so I don't have any excuse to be stupid again.

[deckard1]

Not sure what you're arguing here. You either have control over sshd or you don't. Or are you really suggesting you can change the port of sshd but aren't allowed to disable password auth?

I'm a software engineer, so if my company gets hacked via ssh that's really not my problem. Worrying about such things would make me a busybody. But if you're a system admin and can't properly do your job, then I would seriously start looking for a new place to work. They will get hacked and you will be the guy that gets blamed.

[elmo2you]

> Not sure what you're arguing here. You either have control over sshd or you don't. Or are you really suggesting you can change the port of sshd but aren't allowed to disable password auth?

First, you'll have to separate two things here. One is the technical ability to control sshd, the second whether a company will allow you to tinker with the auth policy (whether that is password login, password login with only strong passwords, or rsa/ecdsa key access only).

The latter has nothing to do with control and only with what decision makers allow you to do (that sometimes is a large product vendor, not allowing anything beyond what they ship). If you work in a place where you have full control over the systems you work on, great for you. I can ensure you that it is not the norm (unless we're talking about hobby projects or projects with exclusive personal ownership).

As for the technical aspect, keep in mind that changing the public facing ssh port might not even be done on the host itself, but e.g. in port forwarding table in a router/firewall. This might not even always happen because it's technically impossible to do it on the box itself.

I'm pretty certain that tinkering with a box is regularly discouraged (especially if it is managed by some orchestration or vendor specific control/update tool), while effectively the same can be done by changing a router/firewall. There's a lot more things to be said about that, but please take it from me that hacking around in a systems you have not build yourself isn't always a bright idea (and it happens to be a very common situation).

> But if you're a system admin and can't properly do your job, then I would seriously start looking for a new place to work.

That's an interesting theory, but frankly not how I think the real world (usually) works. As a system admin you are there to solve problems for a client or employer. You can (and should) of course always warn for potential dangers, but refusing work or quitting a job/assingment because you're not getting full control over a system .. good luck with that. It is simply not an acceptable position in many situation. You must be in really high demand if you want to pull stunts like those and still have any work after a while.

Maybe it works different in software engineering land, but I highly doubt it. When was the last time you quit a job, because you preferred a different library or framework over the one your superiors/client dictated?

Please don't get me wrong. On a personal level I'm very principled about what I choose to work on or with (and what I refuse to take part of). But at the end of the day we are professionals, here to solve problems. If we can and a client/employers is willing to accept the risks of an imperfect solution that fits in their requirements, it ultimately is their call and responsibility. All within reason, of course.

[iso1631]

> tinker with the auth policy (whether that is password login, password login with only strong passwords, or rsa/ecdsa key access only).

Or the port ssh works on

> that sometimes is a large product vendor, not allowing anything beyond what they ship

Surely you'd limit access to that on an IP level and bounce via a bastion (which you do control)

> tinkering with a box is regularly discouraged (especially if it is managed by some orchestration or vendor specific control/update tool), while effectively the same can be done by changing a router/firewall

"Tinkering" with a router/firewall sounds far more dangerous than a box -- you can knock out 2000 machines in one go.

> That's an interesting theory, but frankly not how I think the real world (usually) works

If the shit hits the fan, are you confident your management (which apparently refuse to allow you to implement basic security policies) will have your back, or will they pile the entire blame on your to save their skin.

Better to look for a company that respects your skills before you get pink slipped.

[elmo2you]

> Or the port ssh works on

Calling that part of the auth policy (in the context if was responding to) is a bit of a stretch, but okay.

> Surely you'd limit access to that on an IP level and bounce via a bastion (which you do control).

What percentage of organizations have you seen do it that way? In my experience it's more often directly behind an internet facing NAT router, through a port forward. I'm not saying that's a good thing, I'm saying it's reality.

> "Tinkering" with a router/firewall sounds far more dangerous than a box -- you can knock out 2000 machines in one go.

You again appear to be missing the point I tried to make. It's not so much about danger, but more about control. A box is regularly far more of black hole (especially if it's a vendor appliance or legacy system) than a company's router/firewall is. Sure not without dangers, but that's why you're a professional that (hopefully) knows what he/she is doing. How often did you work on a router/firewall that controlled 2000 machines? In my case, I can count those on one or maybe two hands.

> If the shit hits the fan, are you confident your management (which apparently refuse to allow you to implement basic security policies) will have your back, or will they pile the entire blame on your to save their skin.

It works a bit different if you're contracted or working for clients, but either way: that's why you document things and make clear to those who make decisions that the risks are theirs and not yours.

--

But seriously though .. I'm not sure if you genuinely missed the point(s) I tried to make, if you might be pedantic on purpose (just for the sake of it), if you might be just another armchair general, or maybe have only worked in very privileged positions where you had full control and authority over the systems you had to deal with. The latter is certainly not the reality I've experienced for over two decades.

Maybe you are experienced, just in a very different reality/industry than mine. Still, I find these kind of arguments about companies "not allowing you to do basic security" or "not respecting your skills" rather childish and out of touch with the reality. I have not seen many gigs/companies where sysadmins (or even -architects) have this kind of god-like status. When I did see such situations, it often meant a company would have serious (potential) issues if/when their "guru" would piss off (leaving a collection of equipment in "status unknown", i.e. the next guy would not be allowed to touch anything and ergo my point about tinkering with boxes being discouraged).

How long have you been doing this (professionally)? That's not a rhetorical question. I'm genuinely curious.