Hacker News Reader

I think you've missed the point. Ultimately, moving the port isn't securing the service but is just one more layer. It won't hold against a focused attacker but will hold against a majority of casual scanners just looking for a large number of SSH targets. The goal isn't to do keys OR move the port. The goal is to combine all the factors at your disposal to disrupt and discourage attacks.

View on HN

I completely agree, moving the port is a must just to change up the configuration from everyone else's. Configuration items like port numbers are meant to be tweaked, especially when you can just stick a unique SSH port in your ssh_config.

However, it's not hard to imagine these scanners have moved further past the days of the Morris worm and aren't just simple port scanners. Identifying what services are on what ports is a relatively easy process that doesn't remove much from the discovery phase of a bot or script kiddie. Hell, code review metasploit for a half hour and rip theirs out.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com