Fail2Ban is a Python program that helps safeguard Linux systems and servers from brute-force attacks. This program can be configured to provide SSH protection for your server. With it, you can be sure that your server is secure from attacks that employ brute force. It also enables you to see how strong the attacks are in terms of how many authentication attempts are being made.
Brute-force attacks can be powerful and may result in thousands of failed authentication attempts each day. Understanding how to safeguard your server against these attacks and how to block IP addresses is essential.
Fail2Ban makes it easier to block brute-force attacks by restricting the number of failed authentication attempts a user can make before being blocked.
This is extremely useful for servers that have user accounts that utilize passwords for remote authentication, rather than SSH key-pair authentication.
First, update and upgrade your server to Ubuntu.
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgradeInstalling and Configure Fail2ban
Fail2Ban is completely free and works with most of the most popular software package managers.
- Please install Fail2Ban by running the following command:
sudo apt-get install fail2ban2. Please use the following command to ensure that Fail2ban runs at system startup:
sudo systemctl enable fail2ban.service3. After you have installed Fail2Ban, you can start setting up Fail2Ban to create a jail for your SSH server. The configuration files for Fail2Ban are in the directory /etc/fail2ban.
Fail2Ban uses the default configuration in the jail.conf file, but it’s not recommended to use the default configuration files. This is because the default configuration files can be overwritten by new updates to the Fail2Ban package. The preferred approach to creating configurations for a particular service is by creating a new configuration file in the /etc/fail2ban directory with the .local extension. For example :
path is /etc/fail2ban/jail.localCreating SSH Jails With Fail2Ban
- Begin by creating a new file within the same directory called
jail.local. You can then add the necessary security configurations for the sshd jail.
sudo nano /etc/fail2ban/jail.local2. You can explore the options that Fail2Ban provides to customize the security and blocking of the SSH service. Fail2Ban Configuration Options:
| Configurations | Function |
| enabled | Jail status (true/false) — This enables or disables the jail |
| port | Port specification |
| filter | Service specific filter (Log filter) |
| logpath | What logs to use |
| maxretry | Number of attempts to make before a ban |
| findtime | Amount of time between failed login attempts |
| bantime | Number of seconds an IP is banned for |
| ignoreip | IP to be allowed |
3. With the information in the table above, you can create the jail.local configuration for OpenSSH server (sshd). The values used in this guide example are listed in the sample file after you have entered the configuration options and I created file: /etc/fail2ban/jail.local and configured it for SSH ban if wrong Password 3 times.
[sshd]
enabled = true
port = ssh
filter = sshd
logpath = /var/log/auth.log
maxretry = 3
findtime = 300
bantime = 3600
ignoreip = 127.0.0.14. After you have specified the configuration options and their respective values, save the file and restart the Fail2Ban service with the following command:
sudo systemctl restart fail2ban.service5. After you restart the OpenSSH server service, Fail2Ban uses this new configuration, and the jail for the sshd service is activated and runs.