Having been on vacation, I'm coming in very late in this....
Les Mikesell wrote:
On Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 4:28 AM, Bennett Haselton bennett@peacefire.org wrote:
<snip>
OK but those are *users* who have their own passwords that they have chosen, presumably. User-chosen passwords cannot be assumed to be secure against a brute-force attack. What I'm saying is that if you're the only user, by my reasoning you don't need fail2ban if you just use a 12-character truly random password.
But you aren't exactly an authority when you are still guessing about the cause of your problem, are you? (And haven't mentioned what your logs said about failed attempts leading up to the break in...).
Further, that's a ridiculous assumption. Without fail2ban, or something like it, they'll keep trying. You, instead, Bennett, are presumably generating that "truly random" password[1] and assigning it to all your users[2], and not allowing them to change their passwords, and you will be changing it occasionally and informing them of the change.[3]
Right?
mark
1. How will you generate "truly random"? Clicks on a Geiger counter? There is no such thing as a random number generator. 2. Which, being "truly random", they will write down somewhere, or store it on a key, labelling the file "mypassword" or some such. 3. How will you notify them of their new password - in plain text?