Endlessh

0

Free

Updated 11 March 2025

Endlessh is an SSH tarpit that very slowly sends an endless, random SSH banner. It keeps SSH clients locked up for hours or even days at a time. The purpose is to put your real SSH server on another port and then let the script kiddies get stuck in this tarpit instead of bothering a real server. Since the tarpit is in the banner before any cryptographic exchange occurs, this program doesn't depend on any cryptographic libraries. It's a simple, single-threaded, standalone C program. It uses poll() to trap multiple clients at a time. Usage information is printed with -h. Usage: endlessh [-vhs] [-d MS] [-f CONFIG] [-l LEN] [-m LIMIT] [-p PORT] -4 Bind to IPv4 only -6 Bind to IPv6 only -d INT Message millisecond delay [10000] -f Set and load config file [/etc/endlessh/config] -h Print this help message and exit -l INT Maximum banner line length (3-255) [32] -m INT Maximum number of clients [4096] -p INT Listening port [2222] -s Print diagnostics to syslog instead of standard output -v Print diagnostics (repeatable) Argument order matters. The configuration file is loaded when the -f argument is processed, so only the options that follow will override the c