[Dovecot] limiting number of incorrect logins per connection

Hi Guys,

Running Dovecot 2 on my server. It is regularly getting dictionary auth attacked. What I have noticed is that once connected to a pop3/imap login session, you can send endless incorrect usernames+passwords attempts. This is a problem for me... I use fail2ban to try and stop these script kiddies. The problem is that fail2ban detects the bad auths, firewalls the IP, however, since it's an "established" session, the attacker can keep authing away... It's only on a subsequent (new) connection that the firewalling will take effect.

Why is there no configuration option such as "max auth attempts per connection"? This would be useful, so once the limit is reached, the connection is dropped.

is there a patch/workaround?