Moving the ssh port to something else that 22 seems to help as well.

-- Juha

Port knocking is an interesting method of protecting your machine. If you're a debian user apt-get install knockd - comes with a fairly simple configuration file as well. The only problem with this is generating the knock sequences, especially when you are out and about and on a foreign machine (can still be done using the venerable telnet for syn packets but netcat or nemesis would be better). Regards, Anton Smith