Allow SSH access from a specific host using hosts.allow and hosts.deny on Linux

This is just a quick write on the hosts.allow and deny files. You can lookup “spawn” and/or “twist” for some advanced usage.

So to limit an IP address, or a IP range access to SSH, do the following

Deny all incoming request for SSH

Edit the “hosts.deny” file

vi /etc/hosts.deny

add the following line

sshd : ALL

Now edit “hosts.allow” and allow the client IP, or IP range to access SSH

vi /etc/hosts.allow

add the following line to allow a single IP

sshd : 192.168.1.182

If you want to allow the whole subnet, then replace the above line with this one

sshd : 192.168.1.

hosts.allow overrides hosts.deny. So you deny everything and then allow exceptions.

Incredigeek