I have been warned that my server broke its transfer limit. I thougt that my Tor node became popular so I chose to disable it this month (not the best choice for the community but I need to go down). Then I noticed that the server transferred around 4GBs this night. I have checked Apache logs with Awstats, no relevant traffic (and I don’t host so popular sites there). I have checked mail logs, no one tried to send garbage. I have checked messages logs and found tons of these
Apr 29 10:17:53 marcus sshd[9281]: Did not receive identification string from 85.170.189.156
Apr 29 10:18:07 marcus sshd[9283]: Did not receive identification string from 86.208.123.132
Apr 29 10:18:24 marcus sshd[9298]: Did not receive identification string from 85.170.189.156
Apr 29 10:18:39 marcus sshd[9303]: Did not receive identification string from 86.208.123.132
Apr 29 10:18:56 marcus sshd[9306]: Did not receive identification string from 85.170.189.156
Apr 29 10:19:11 marcus sshd[9309]: Did not receive identification string from 86.208.123.132
Apr 29 10:19:18 marcus sshd[9312]: Did not receive identification string from 101.98.178.92
Apr 29 10:19:27 marcus sshd[9314]: Did not receive identification string from 85.170.189.156
Apr 29 10:19:41 marcus sshd[9317]: Did not receive identification string from 86.208.123.132
Apr 29 10:20:01 marcus sshd[9321]: Did not receive identification string from 85.170.189.156
Apr 29 10:20:13 marcus sshd[9324]: Did not receive identification string from 86.208.123.132
Apr 29 10:20:32 marcus sshd[9327]: Did not receive identification string from 85.170.189.156
Apr 29 10:20:48 marcus sshd[9331]: Did not receive identification string from 86.208.123.132
Apr 29 10:21:07 marcus sshd[9336]: Did not receive identification string from 85.170.189.156
Apr 29 10:21:20 marcus sshd[9338]: Did not receive identification string from 86.208.123.132
Apr 29 10:21:35 marcus sshd[9341]: Did not receive identification string from 85.170.189.156
Apr 29 10:21:51 marcus sshd[9344]: Did not receive identification string from 86.208.123.132
Apr 29 10:22:06 marcus sshd[9349]: Did not receive identification string from 85.170.189.156
Apr 29 10:22:23 marcus sshd[9353]: Did not receive identification string from 86.208.123.132
Apr 29 10:22:39 marcus sshd[9359]: Did not receive identification string from 85.170.189.156
Apr 29 10:22:54 marcus sshd[9361]: Did not receive identification string from 86.208.123.132
Apr 29 10:23:10 marcus sshd[9367]: Did not receive identification string from 85.170.189.156
Apr 29 10:23:29 marcus sshd[9369]: Did not receive identification string from 86.208.123.132
Apr 29 10:23:45 marcus sshd[9375]: Did not receive identification string from 85.170.189.156
Apr 29 10:24:10 marcus sshd[9387]: Did not receive identification string from 86.208.123.132
Apr 29 10:24:16 marcus sshd[9388]: Did not receive identification string from 85.170.189.156
Every few seconds a bot is trying to hack my SSH, which is impossible because I require pubkey authentication. My question is: can this traffic, at this frequency, consume 4GBs (let’s say 3.5) in 10 hours of continuous attack?
I have changed my SSH port and stopped these attacks, but I’m unsure about my network consumption. I don’t have services out of control running -my firewall is kinda restrictive-, or share the server with someone abusively doing P2P or whatever. My concern is to go below 400GB/month.
Any tips?
4 GB is possible. I suggest installing OSSEC, it detects break in attempts and blocks the IP automatically for a certain time out.
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