On 25/07/2011 22:07, tonjg wrote:
Tom Hendrikx wrote:
dovecot 2.x has an automatic backoff system (see auth_failure_delay config option).
When you're not interested in upgrading <snip>
I think with my old server upgrading to 2.x is not an option so I'll have to check out fail2ban. It looks a bit complicated though... I'll also have to look into restricting dovecot to just my ip address only. I might be able to do that at the router and that seems a better idea. Thanks for your help.
Fail2ban is not useful in your case since it only counts logins from ip addresses, not blocking user names
Upgrading to dovecot 2.0 ought to be way less scary than you think... Something is wrong with your installation if not... (backup /etc/dovecot, not much else can go wrong...)
The main thing you could investigate is some custom login handler, eg I think the pop before smtp is handled with some script - perhaps get that to be some more complex script which implements the behaviour you desire?
I think this is an interesting area to improve - Good luck
Ed W