Fear China. Unexpected ddos on your sshd deamon blocking china with ipset and iptables

block-china.md

Install ipset

sudo apt install ipset

Create folder

sudo mkdir -p /etc/block-china/

Create a bash script

sudoedit /etc/block-china/populate.bash

with the following content

# Create the ipset list
ipset -N china hash:net

# remove any old list that might exist from previous runs of this script
rm cn.zone

# Pull the latest IP set for China
wget -P . http://www.ipdeny.com/ipblocks/data/countries/cn.zone

# Add each IP address from the downloaded list into the ipset 'china'
for i in $(cat /etc/cn.zone ); do ipset -A china $i; done

# Restore iptables
/sbin/iptables-restore < /etc/block-china/iptables-firewall.rules

Save the file. To be clear, the full iptables-firewall.rules looks like this:

*filter

#  Allow all loopback (lo0) traffic and drop all traffic to 127/8 that doesn't use lo0
-A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -d 127.0.0.0/8 -j REJECT

#  Accept all established inbound connections
-A INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT

# Block anything from China
# These rules are pulled from ipset's china list
# The source file is at /etc/cn.zone (which in turn is generated by a shell script at /etc/block-china.sh )
-A INPUT -p tcp -m set --match-set china src -j DROP

#  Allow all outbound traffic - you can modify this to only allow certain traffic
-A OUTPUT -j ACCEPT

#  Allow HTTP and HTTPS connections from anywhere (the normal ports for websites and SSL).
-A INPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -p tcp --dport 443 -j ACCEPT

#  Allow SSH connections
#
#  The -dport number should be the same port number you set in sshd_config
#
-A INPUT -p tcp -m state --state NEW --dport 22 -j ACCEPT

#  Allow ping
-A INPUT -p icmp -j ACCEPT

#  Log iptables denied calls
-A INPUT -m limit --limit 5/min -j LOG --log-prefix "iptables denied: " --log-level 7

#  Drop all other inbound - default deny unless explicitly allowed policy
-A INPUT -j DROP
-A FORWARD -j DROP

COMMIT

Right now, nothing has changed with the server because no new rules have been applied; to do so, run the block-china.sh script: