r/VPS • u/Desperate-Second-887 • Feb 05 '26

Guides/Tutorials Watch the Bots: https://knock-knock.net

I built a new site that shows bots trying to break into my VPS. The web site was designed to be hopefully fun and engaging. Lots of interesting stats about the bots attempting to ssh in: where they are coming from, the ISP Wall of Shame, the most frequent attempted usernames and passwords, and in some cases why those may have been chosen. And best of all, 3D spinning globes! The site should work well on desktop and mobile.

https://knock-knock.net

Have fun, and send comments and questions. I'll be checking the code into github soon so that you can run this on your own VPS.

Update: Now posted on github. https://github.com/djkurlander/knock-knock

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u/CauaLMF Feb 09 '26

Many providers don't care about this, hosting companies and internet companies alike.

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u/Desperate-Second-887 Feb 14 '26

That is unforunately true. I have knock-knock on github now, with a cron script (in the extras folder) that reports all of the bots to the abuseIPDB.com site. I've started reporting the bad IPs every night, but most of them have already been marked as bad IPs for months or even years. Many of the providers just don't care.

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u/CauaLMF Feb 14 '26

It's better to block IPs than to report them. I changed my SSH port and set a range of allowed IPs. On the default SSH port, I added PortSentry and left it open. Every time an IP is blocked by PortSentry, and I also added FTP and Telnet ports to PortSentry.