I've been reading up on ssh and I don't want anyone to connect to my computer. I am not interested in remote connectivity at all.

Should I uninstall ssh?
I ran
and debian returned "package ssh is not installed. 0 packages removed."

I also looked online and found out about /etc/ssh/ssh_conf but all of the lines on my computer were #'d out. I also added "PermitRootLogin no" at the end.

Am I safe from ssh attacks if I don't have ssh? Might be a stupid question but I don't want to fall victim.

Thank you for your replies.

edit: it seems as though I -do- have openssh-client and openssh-server installed.
Should I just leave my ssh config with PermitRootLogin no or apt-get remove openssh-client openssh-server.

I believe in debian you are going to want to type in:

1 members found this post helpful.

Instead of uninstalling you can remove it from the runlevels, so it will not be started.
see rcconf
However, you should consider to use a good firewall.

I'm not too keen on what a firewall is. I have a standard router but I've seen hardware firewalls on newegg for a few hundred dollars.
Are you talking about a software firewall? If so, what is a good software firewall for linux, or is this some set of settings in debian.

Firestarter isn't very complex. It should do what you need.

Actually not a stupid question. You're safe from ssh attacks if you don't have ssh running. If you follow repo's advice and simply turn it off, that makes you as safe as removing the software. If you're not interested in remote connectivity, then turning off ALL unneeded servers is probably a good idea. That includes things like Apache, Samba and several others. If you run the command lsof -i in a console, it will show you everything that is listening for a connection, and you can decide which ones you want to turn off.

Great. One other thing.

Now when I restart debian, in the list of services, it tells me
Thanks for the replies.

Did you run the configuration gui? Did you read what was in /usr/share/doc/firestarter/?

Evo2.

PS. Another easy to use firewall in Debian is arno-iptables-firewall: no gui just some simple debconf questions.

Are you directly connected to a DSL modem or cable modem ?
Or do you have a router connected so then your on a LAN , if so your blocking port 22 by default , also everyone is right you don't have to remove / purge the openssh package , depending on your distro for instance debian based
as root

vim /etc/ssh/sshd or whatever editor you use , you can go into sshd and # comment out the port number. also you can just down the services also.

/etc/services and put a comment # next to port 22 for ssh.

That's a) a very round-about way when all it takes
is to take the x-flag of the init script and b) removing
the lines for ssh from /etc/services will only stop
looking up which name port 22 has.



Cheers,
Tink