in reply to Firewalling brute-force spam attacks

A slightly different strategy, with slightly different tools: I was blocking for up to 4 hours all the noticed spammers, using this script:
#!/usr/bin/env perl use strict; $|++; my $MYDOOM = "/home/merlyn/mydoom"; my $MYSOBIGF = "/home/merlyn/sobig.f"; my $HOURS = 4; sub now { my @now = localtime; sprintf "%02d-%02d %02d:%02d:%02d", $now[4]+1, @now[3,2,1,0]; } use POE qw(Wheel::FollowTail Filter::Line); POE::Session->create (inline_states => {_start => sub { my($kernel) = @_[KERNEL]; $kernel->yield("initialize_ip_list"); }, initialize_ip_list => sub { my ($kernel, $heap) = @_[KERNEL, HEAP]; @{$heap->{ip_list}} = `pfctl -t spammers -T show` =~ /(\S+)/g; $kernel->yield("start_tailing"); $kernel->yield("unblock_an_address"); }, start_tailing => sub { my($kernel, $heap) = @_[KERNEL, HEAP]; $heap->{tailer} = POE::Wheel::FollowTail->new (Filename => $MYDOOM, Filter => POE::Filter::Line->new (InputRegexp => qr/(?<=\n)(?=[^ \t])/), InputEvent => 'tailer_got_line', ); $heap->{tailer2} = POE::Wheel::FollowTail->new (Filename => $MYSOBIGF, Filter => POE::Filter::Line->new (InputRegexp => qr/(?<=\n)(?=[^ \t])/), InputEvent => 'tailer_got_line', ); }, tailer_got_line => sub { my($heap, $line) = @_[HEAP,ARG0]; my ($name, $ip) = $line =~ /\((\S+)\s+\[([\d.]+)\]\)\s+by blue\. +stonehenge\.com/ or return; return if $ip eq "127.0.0.1"; print now(), ": BLOCKING $ip ($name): "; system "pfctl -t spammers -T add $ip"; push @{$heap->{ip_list}}, $ip; }, unblock_an_address => sub { my($kernel, $heap, $state) = @_[KERNEL, HEAP, STATE]; my $ip_list_ref = $heap->{ip_list}; if (my $ip = shift @$ip_list_ref) { print now(), ": UNBLOCKING $ip: "; system "pfctl -t spammers -T delete $ip"; } my $delay = @$ip_list_ref ? 60*60*$HOURS / @$ip_list_ref : 10; $delay = 1 if $delay < 1; $delay = 60 if $delay > 60; $kernel->delay($state, $delay); }, }); POE::Kernel->run;
Of course, the parts about what files to look for, what patterns to look for, and what commands to execute to disable and enable are all different, but maybe the design can be reused.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.