Neil Aggarwal wrote:

[snip]
> I probably need to clarify this question.
[snip]

No, you had it right the first time, basically it is as you stated.

I also saw your question to the fail2ban list.

The "basic" configuration for DH only does one thing: protect sshd using
tcp-wrappers.  As has been answered, you can extend the protection using
your own regular expressions; most of us use it for ftp protection, not
much more, you also loose unban functionality with the second service
(when a user enters the right password his error count is reset).

With fail2ban you get the concept of jails, the "basic" configuration
has many such jails already installed so you can protect many services
(pop3s was not one of them... but its easy, I added a simple jail for UW
IMAP and use it with pop3).  Fal2ban does not currently have the
distributed database (which is optional on DenyHosts), some user has
said he is going to implement it (or he has already something) but is
not something that exists today (and you can ask Phil Schwartz how much
resources and maintenance it needs).  Jails also come with different
variations, one uses tcp-wrappers, another iptables, and so on with
different ways to protect the service; I believe something similar can
be done with DH but I've never needed it.

With both packages you can control things in detail but while DH allows
you to set 2 levels of protection (some accounts get the blocking
faster, for instance trying root I only give the attacker one
opportunity to test since root access is not allowed through ssh)
fail2ban doesn't.  On the other hand there's only one set of
configuration for all services in DH, while fail2ban has separate
configurations and white-lists for each jail.

Both DenyHosts and fail2ban are very good so the bottom line is which
one is more convenient.  I use both on different servers, one only needs
ssh and ftp protection, while the other needs ssh, pop3, sendmail.  The
DH database is a big plus if you don't want to see all the tries on your
log (both packages are scan time based, so you get the 10 sec of
attacker trying unless he is in the DB).  Both are good even with
distributed attacks (and those leave thousand's of log entries but
eventually repeat so if your configuration is well made they are caught).
-- 
René Berber


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