[sshine]

I recently provisioned a VPS for educational purposes. As part of teaching public/private network interfaces in Docker, and as a debug tool, I run netstat pretty easily on.

Minutes after coming into existence, I have half a dozen connections to sshd from Chinese IP addresses.

That teaches the use of SSH keys.

[toyg]

Just put sshd on a nonstandard port, and 95% of the traffic goes away. Vandals can't be bothered with port-scanning, probably because the risk of getting banned before the scan is even complete is too high.

But I agree that keys are not optional anymore.

[sshine]

I do use non-standard ports and sshd on VPC/VPN interfaces. But for teaching purposes, you are dealt a hand and you have to learn to deal with it.

[esseph]

Fronting with ssh is not as secure as you could be.

Wireguard, tailscale, etc instead, THEN use ssh keys (with password on them mind you, then you have 2fa - something you have, and something you know).