Ask HN: Alternatives to Fail2ban?

I'm administering a small number of Linux servers that run an ssh server exposed to the Internet. I usually connect using a cryptographic key, but I still allow password authentication in case of trouble (perhaps I'm being overly cautious). I've been using fail2ban with good results, but I'm annoyed at having to install a Python interpreter on every server.

Is there an alternative to fail2ban that is just a single binary? It doesn't need to have all of the features of fail2ban, blocking dictionary attacks against ssh is all I need.

4 points | by jech 8 hours ago

3 comments

  • laruss5 2 hours ago
    sshguard is exactly this - single C binary, no interpreter needed. It tails your logs (journalctl/syslog) and bans offenders via iptables/nftables/pf. No Python, no dependencies beyond the firewall backend: https://www.sshguard.net/
    [-]
    • jech 1 hour ago
      > sshguard is exactly this

      Thanks. I've replaced fail2ban with sshguard on one machine, we'll see how it goes.

  • Bender 8 hours ago
    This isn't for everyone and it will block old ssh libraries (libssh, go ssh, etc...), windows and others but if you only have OpenSSH 10+ and that's all you connect with then this method [1] has worked well for me. It gets botters to exclude my nodes that expose SSH on purpose (such as public anonymous SFTP). If trying it out test from an out of band console first.

    Edit: I should add, there will still be some syslog entries, but that can be filtered out using regex filters in rsyslog one so desired. Only do so once it is confirmed most of the brute forcing has stopped.

    [1] - https://nochan.net/b/Internet-Crap/20260108-Confuse-Some-SSH...

  • atmosx 4 hours ago
    [dead]