Individual skill

detecting-port-scanning-with-fail2ban

Configures Fail2ban with custom filters and actions to detect port scanning activity, SSH brute force attempts, and network reconnaissance, automatically banning offending IP addresses and alerting security teams to suspicious network probing.

skills/detecting-port-scanning-with-fail2ban/SKILL.md

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# Detecting Port Scanning with Fail2ban

## When to Use

- Automatically blocking IP addresses that perform port scans against internet-facing servers
- Defending SSH, HTTP, FTP, and other services against brute force attacks with automated IP banning
- Creating custom detection filters for organization-specific attack patterns in log files
- Reducing noise from automated scanning bots before traffic reaches IDS/IPS for deeper analysis
- Implementing defense-in-depth by adding host-based automated response to network monitoring

**Do not use** as the sole network security control, for protecting against distributed attacks from many source IPs, or as a replacement for proper firewall rules and network segmentation.

## Prerequisites

- Fail2ban 0.11+ installed (`fail2ban-client --version`)
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