SSH

Changing the default ssh listening port

By default secure shell (ssh) listens on tcp port 22. If you want to obfuscate it by changing the listening port from port 22 to port 31337, you can do so in the sshd_config file.

note: you can use your favorite text editor (e.g., vi, gedit, nano, emacs) to edit the sshd_conf file, but for the purpose of this example vi will be used.

sudo vi /etc/ssh/sshd_conf

Change the port to 31337

Perform a graceful restart on the ssh daemon so that it will now start listening on port 31337.

sudo killall -HUP sshd

Verify that ssh is listening on the new port.

netstat -nltp | grep sshd

note: make sure you allow the new ssh port in the ufw if you’re using the firewall.

sudo ufw allow 31337/tcp