[Endlessh](https://nullprogram.com/blog/2019/03/22/) is a great idea that not only blocks the brute force SSH attacks, but also wastes attackers time as a kind of counter-attack. Besides trapping the attackers, I also want to visualize the Geolocations and other statistics of the sources of attacks. Unfortunately the wonderful original [C implementation of endlessh](https://github.com/skeeto/endlessh) only provides text based log, but I do not like the solution that writes extra scripts to parse the log outputs, then exports the results to a dashboard, because it would introduce extra layers in my current setup and it would depend on the format of the text log file rather than some structured data. Thus I create this golang implementation of endlessh to export [Prometheus](https://prometheus.io/) metrics and a [Grafana](https://grafana.com/) dashboard to visualize them.
If you want a dashboard of sources of attacks and do not mind the endlessh server, besides trapping the attackers, does extra things including: translating IP to Geohash, exporting Prometheus metrics, and using more memory (about 10MB), this is the solution for you.
If you want log like the [C implementation](https://github.com/skeeto/endlessh), you need to set both CLI arguments `-logtostderr` and `-v=1`, then the log will go to stderr. You can set different log destinations via CLI arguments.
If non-empty, add symbolic links in this directory to the log files
-logbuflevel int
Buffer log messages logged at this level or lower (-1 means don't buffer; 0 means buffer INFO only; ...). Has limited applicability on non-prod platforms.
Enable PROXY protocol support. This causes the server to expect PROXY protocol headers on incoming connections.
-proxy_protocol_read_header_timeout_ms int
Timeout for reading the PROXY protocol header in milliseconds. If the connection does not send a valid PROXY protocol header in this time, the header is ignored. (default 200)
| endlessh_client_open_count | count | Number of connections of clients. <br> Labels: <br> <ul><li> `ip`: Remote IP of the client </li> <li> `local_port`: Local port the program listens to </li> <li> `country`: Country of the IP </li> <li> `location`: Country, Region, and City </li> <li> `geohash`: Geohash of the location </li></ul> |
| endlessh_client_trapped_time_seconds | count | Seconds a client spends on endlessh. <br> Labels: <br> <ul><li> `ip`: Remote IP of the client </li> <li> `local_port`: Local port the program listens to </li></ul> |
The endlessh-go server stores the geohash of attackers as a label on `endlessh_client_open_count`, which is also off by default. You can turn it on via the CLI argument `-geoip_supplier`. The endlessh-go uses service from [ip-api](https://ip-api.com/), which may enforce a query rate and limit commercial use. Visit their website for their terms and policies.
You could also use an offline GeoIP database from [MaxMind](https://www.maxmind.com) by setting `-geoip_supplier` to _max-mind-db_ and `-max_mind_db` to the path of the database file.
