[CentOS] Ideas for stopping ssh brute force attacks

nate wrote:
> I don't like/use OpenBSD for anything other than firewalls. But I
> do think as a firewall, pf really can't be beat, the configuration
> for typical rules just 'flows'. IPTables by comparison is so cryptic.
> (speaking as a past user of ipfwadm, ipfw, ipchains, iptables, pf,
> and Cisco PIX, which is probably the worst of the ones I've used).
>   

while I haven't personally used this, I've heard enough good things 
about it from folks I know and trust that I'll stick in a mention of 
pfSense...  pfSense is a turnkey BSD hybrid, which uses freeBSD's kernel 
with openBSD's pf, all wrapped up in a nice easy to use web interface 
(and you can still get into shell and manipulate the pf scripts directly). 

its optimized so it can run off as little as a 128MB flash card (CF).