Launching SSHblock

My latest software project is now available… where “latest” means “the latest thing I’ve launched, even if I actually wrote it over a year ago.”

The story is simple: I was tired of seeing “failed password” messages from sshd cluttering up my logs. I was also annoyed at the constant flow of dictionary attacks, even if I knew they’d never get in. So I whipped up a quick Perl script that acted as some glue between Swatch and iptables, and which would also give me some amount of reporting and history on who and what it was blocking.

Then I posted about it in my online journal, and a friend said it sounded useful. So I started getting it ready for release as a package that anyone could use…

And promptly realized that doing a decent, professional job of it would take more time than I had available. Fast-forward to now, when I’m unemployed and can only spend so many hours per day job-hunting — the result is that the world gets more software!

Originally published at Coyote Tracks. You can comment here or there.