In today’s digital age, cyber attacks are becoming more and more prevalent, with brute-force attacks being one of the most common forms of such attacks. Brute-force attacks involve an attacker trying to gain unauthorized access to a system by trying multiple password combinations until the correct one is found. This can be a major security threat to any system, as it can result in sensitive data being compromised.

One way to protect your system from brute-force attacks is by using Fail2Ban, a popular security tool that monitors log files for suspicious activity and blocks IP addresses that appear to be involved in malicious activities. In this article, we will guide you through the process of setting up Fail2Ban on an Ubuntu 24.04 system to protect it from brute-force attacks.

First, you need to install Fail2Ban on your Ubuntu system. You can do this by running the following command in your terminal:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install fail2ban

Once Fail2Ban is installed, you need to configure it to protect your system from brute-force attacks. The configuration file for Fail2Ban is located at /etc/fail2ban/jail.conf. You can customize the settings in this file to suit your specific needs, but for the purpose of protecting against brute-force attacks, you can use the default settings.

To enable the SSH protection, open the Fail2Ban configuration file in a text editor:

sudo nano /etc/fail2ban/jail.conf

Find the section for the SSH service and change enabled = false to enabled = true. Save and close the file.

Next, you need to restart the Fail2Ban service for the changes to take effect. You can do this by running the following command:

sudo systemctl restart fail2ban

Fail2Ban will now monitor your system’s log files for any suspicious activity related to SSH login attempts. If it detects multiple failed login attempts from the same IP address, it will block that IP address from accessing your system for a specified amount of time.

You can view the status of Fail2Ban and see a list of blocked IP addresses by running the following command:

sudo fail2ban-client status

By following these steps, you can protect your Ubuntu 24.04 system from brute-force attacks using Fail2Ban. It is important to keep in mind that Fail2Ban is just one layer of security, and it is essential to have other security measures in place to fully protect your system from a variety of cyber threats. Stay vigilant and keep your system secure.