As an additional question to the above, would forcing users to log in with SSH keys rather than passwords avoid requiring any anti brute force attack measures to be put in place?
You are right, but that is not feasible for most shared systems.
Its hard enough to get customers to use SSH, SFTP, and SCP instead of telnet and FTP.
Getting them to use keys would be impossible.
Another problem to consider is what other ports are open on the machine. Are any of them prone to brute force attacks? I don't think you can use keys for them.
Neil
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