Ban IP address based on X number of unsuccessful login attempts?

You can do this with powershell and task manager. It's probably not perfect solution, but it works quite well and i have about 100 blocked IP addresses in two months. I wrote script, that select from EventLog specified events ("audit failure"). If there are many failed logins from any IP address, then it's added to firewall rule (created manually) named "BlockAttackers" which blocks any traffic to specified ip addresses.

PS1 Script:

$DT = [DateTime]::Now.AddDays(-1) # check only last 24 hours

$l = Get-EventLog -LogName 'Security' -InstanceId 4625 -After $DT | Select-Object @{n='IpAddress';e={$_.ReplacementStrings[-2]} } # select Ip addresses that has audit failure 
$g = $l | group-object -property IpAddress  | where {$_.Count -gt 20} | Select -property Name # get ip adresses, that have more than 20 wrong logins

$fw = New-Object -ComObject hnetcfg.fwpolicy2 # get firewall object

$ar = $fw.rules | where {$_.name -eq 'BlockAttackers'} # get firewall rule named 'BlockAttackers' (must be created manually)

$arRemote = $ar.RemoteAddresses -split(',') #split the existing IPs into an array so we can easily search for existing IPs

$w = $g | where {$_.Name.Length -gt 1 -and  !($arRemote -contains $_.Name + '/255.255.255.255') } # get ip addresses that are not already in firewal rule. Include the subnet mask which is automatically added to the firewall remote IP declaration.

$w| %{$ar.remoteaddresses += ',' + $_.Name} # add IPs to firewall rule

Create task in scheduler and set trigger to event 4625 (windows login including terminal services). But you can set trigger to run e.g. twice per hour to avoid unnecessary loading the server.

and after trigger run powershell script. You must also set higher privileges to run this script, otherwise it will fail with security exception.

You can also bind this script to other security events.

I know this question is old but it was actually the first forum post I stumbled across when I started trying to do this exact same thing a couple weeks ago. I've managed to come up with a working script that will parse the event logs 24 hours back for only bad login event log entries, grab the ones that have more than 10 bad logins, and then put them into an ipsec filter list using the netsh command. Then I wrote a batch file with this line powershell .\*scriptname.ps1* and created a scheduled task to run the batch file every 24 hours (for some reason it wouldn't execute directly).

$DATE = [DateTime]::Now.AddDays(-1)

$EVS = Get-EventLog Security -InstanceId 529 -after $DATE

$EVS | select-string -inputobject {$_.message} -pattern "Source Network Address:(.)*\.*\.*\.*"  -allmatches | foreach-object {$_.Matches} | foreach-object {$_.Value} | foreach-object {$_.replace("Source Network Address:", "")} | group-object -property $_ | where-object {$_.count -gt 10} | select-object -property name | format-list | out-file c:\rdpblock.txt 

get-content -path c:\rdpblock.txt | foreach-object {$_.replace("Name :", "")} | out-file c:\rdpblockcleaned.txt 

get-content -path c:\rdpblockcleaned.txt | select-object -unique | out-file c:\rdpblocknospaces.txt

$RDPIP = get-content -path c:\rdpblocknospaces.txt | select-object -skip 1

$RDPIP | foreach-object {$_.replace("     ", "")} | foreach-object {netsh ipsec static add filter filterlist=RDP_BLOCK srcaddr=$($_) dstaddr=any}

I know that this script is probably inefficient but when I started working on this I had absolutely no experience in powershell, so my ability to optimize scripts leaves alot to be desired. However, despite this fact I thought I would share this with anyone who could use it.

I thank Remunda for giving me the initial idea, that poster is the one that turned me on to the idea of using powershell to search the event logs.

This script builds on remunda's answer and goes a little further https://serverfault.com/a/397637/155102 It accounts for the "BlockAttackers" rule not have any IPs entered yet (which returns a "*" as a string). It also writes a comment to a log file to let you know when the IP was added to the rule.

A good tip is to create the "BlockAttackers" rule that blocks the IP addresses BUT make it disabled at first. Then, run this script once manually so it can populate the "RemoteAddresses" field with actual IP addresses that should be blocked. Take a look at those IP addresses to make sure nothing critical has been added and then enable the firewall rule. Add this rule to your firewall as remunda described.

The git for this script

#Checks for IP addresses that used incorrect password more than 10 times
#within 24 hours and blocks them using a firewall rule 'BlockAttackers'

#Check only last 24 hours
$DT = [DateTime]::Now.AddHours(-24)

#Select Ip addresses that has audit failure
$l = Get-EventLog -LogName 'Security' -InstanceId 4625 -After $DT | Select-Object @{n='IpAddress';e={$_.ReplacementStrings[-2]} }

#Get ip adresses, that have more than 10 wrong logins
$g = $l | group-object -property IpAddress | where {$_.Count -gt 10} | Select -property Name

#Get firewall object
$fw = New-Object -ComObject hnetcfg.fwpolicy2

#Get firewall rule named 'BlockAttackers' (must be created manually)
$ar = $fw.rules | where {$_.name -eq 'BlockAttackers'}

#Split the existing IPs into an array so we can search it for existing IPs
$arRemote = $ar.RemoteAddresses -split(',')

#Only collect IPs that aren't already in the firewall rule
$w = $g | where {$_.Name.Length -gt 1 -and !($arRemote -contains $_.Name + '/255.255.255.255') }

#Add the new IPs to firewall rule
$w| %{
  if ($ar.RemoteAddresses -eq '*') {
    $ar.remoteaddresses = $_.Name
  }else{
    $ar.remoteaddresses += ',' + $_.Name
  }
}

#Write to logfile
if ($w.length -gt 1) {
  $w| %{(Get-Date).ToString() + ' ' + $_.Name >> '.\blocked.txt'}
}

I can't take credit for this answer, but https://serverfault.com/users/7200/evan-anderson has mentioned his project http://opensource.wellbury.com/projects/windows_sshd_block/newest-release/

It's generally not a good idea to let somebody else control your firewall rules. That's basically what you're asking for here.

This is an old thread. I was using the script provided by kevinmicke in 2014-2015. Then it just stopped working. So I had to edit it a bit to adopt to Windows Network Security authentication that does not leave IP addresses in the security log. Also, since I don't have regular FTP running I removed that part as it was causing errors because there was no log folder. The main change is in the source of RDP events.

    $current_date_utc = (Get-Date).ToUniversalTime()

    # Set number of failed login attempts after which an IP address will be blocked
    $int_block_limit = 10

    # Time window during which to check the Security log, which is currently set to check only the last 24 hours
    $dat_time_window = [DateTime]::Now.AddDays(-1)

    $arr_new_bad_ips_all = (get-winevent -filterhashtable @{ logname='Microsoft-Windows-RemoteDesktopServices-RdpCoreTS/Operational'; starttime=$dat_time_window; id=140 }).message |
        % { if ($_ -match "of (.+) failed") { $Matches[1] }} |
        Group-Object |
        Where {$_.Count -ge $int_block_limit} |
        Select -property Name

    # Sort the array, selecting only unique IPs (in case one IP shows up in both the Security and FTP logs)
    $arr_new_bad_ips_all = $arr_new_bad_ips_all | Foreach-Object { [string]$_.Name } | Select-Object -unique

    # Get firewall object
    $firewall = New-Object -comobject hnetcfg.fwpolicy2

    # Get all firewall rules matching "BlockAttackers*"
    $arr_firewall_rules = $firewall.Rules | Where {$_.Name -like 'BlockAttackers*'}

    # If no "BlockAttackers*" firewall rule exists yet, create one and set it to a variable
    if ($arr_firewall_rules -eq $null) {
        $str_new_rule_name = "BlockAttackers (Created " + $current_date_utc.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss") + " UTC)"
        netsh advfirewall firewall add rule dir=in action=block name=$str_new_rule_name description="Rule automatically created." enable=yes remoteip="0.0.0.0" | Out-Null
        $arr_firewall_rules = $firewall.Rules | Where {$_.Name -like 'BlockAttackers*'}
    }

    # Split the existing IPs from current "BlockAttackers*" firewall rule(s) into an array so we can easily search them
    $arr_existing_bad_ips = @()
    foreach ($rule in $arr_firewall_rules) {
        $arr_existing_bad_ips += $rule.RemoteAddresses -split(',')
    }

    # Clean subnet masks off of IPs that are currently blocked by the firewall rule(s)
    $arr_existing_bad_ips_without_masks = $arr_existing_bad_ips | ForEach-Object {$_ -replace "/.*", ""}

    # Select IP addresses to add to the firewall, but only ones that...
    $arr_new_bad_ips_for_firewall = $arr_new_bad_ips_all | Where {
        # contain an IP address (i.e. aren't blank or a dash, which the Security log has for systems that failed FTP logins)
        $_.Length -gt 6 -and
        # aren't already in the firewall rule(s)
        !($arr_existing_bad_ips_without_masks -contains $_) -and
        # aren't the local loopback
        !($_.StartsWith('127.0.0.1')) -and
        # aren't part of the local subnet
        !($_.StartsWith('192.168.')) -and
        !($_.StartsWith('0.0.'))
    }

    # If there are IPs to block, do the following...
    if ($arr_new_bad_ips_for_firewall -ne $null) {
        # Write date and time to script-specific log file
        [DateTime]::Now | Out-File -Append -Encoding utf8 C:\Security\blockattackers.txt
        # Write newly-blocked IP addresses to log file
        $arr_new_bad_ips_for_firewall | Out-File -Append -Encoding utf8 C:\Security\blockattackers.txt

        # Boolean to make sure the new IPs are only added on one rule
        $bln_added_to_rule = 0

        # Array to hold bad IPs from each rule one at a time, so we can count to make sure adding the new ones won't exceed 1000 IPs
        $arr_existing_bad_ips_current_rule = @()

        # For each "BlockAttackers*" rule in the firewall, do the following...
        foreach ($rule in $arr_firewall_rules) {
            if ($bln_added_to_rule -ne 1) {
                # Split the existing IPs from the current rule into an array so we can easily count them
                $arr_existing_bad_ips_current_rule = $rule.RemoteAddresses -split(',')

                # If the number of IPs to add is less than 1000 minus the current number of IPs in the rule, add them to this rule
                if ($arr_new_bad_ips_for_firewall.Count -le (1000 - $arr_existing_bad_ips_current_rule.Count)) {
                    # Add new IPs to firewall rule
                    $arr_new_bad_ips_for_firewall | %{$rule.RemoteAddresses += ',' + $_}

                    # Write which rule the IPs were added to to log file
                    echo "New IP addresses above added to Windows Firewall rule:" $rule.Name | Out-File -Append -Encoding utf8 C:\Security\blockattackers.txt

                    # Set boolean so any other rules are skipped when adding IPs
                    $bln_added_to_rule = 1
                }
            }
        }

        # If there wasn't room in any other "BlockAttackers*" firewall rule, create a new one and add the IPs to it
        if ($bln_added_to_rule -ne 1) {
            $str_new_rule_name = "BlockAttackers (Created " + $current_date_utc.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss") + " UTC)"
            netsh advfirewall firewall add rule dir=in action=block name=$str_new_rule_name description="Rule automatically created." enable=yes remoteip="0.0.0.0" | Out-Null
            $new_rule = $firewall.rules | Where {$_.Name -eq $str_new_rule_name}

            # Add new IPs to firewall rule
            $arr_new_bad_ips_for_firewall | %{$new_rule.RemoteAddresses += ',' + $_}

            # Write which rule the IPs were added to to log file
            echo "New IP addresses above added to newly created Windows Firewall rule:" $new_rule.Name | Out-File -Append -Encoding utf8 C:\Security\blockattackers.txt
        }
    }

The above script will work on Windows 2012. If you are still using Remote Desktop with network access level authentication on Windows 2008 then you might need to do the following trick. Windows 2008 does not have IP addresses in the security log and does not seem to have them in the Microsoft-Windows-RemoteDesktopServices-RdpCoreTS log either. So I had to actually use 2 logs - match events from the security log to successful access attempts to port 3389 in the firewall log. This is a guess work, but it seems to be detecting password attacks. Here is the part that collects violating IPs:

    $current_date_utc = (Get-Date).ToUniversalTime()

    # Set number of failed login attempts after which an IP address will be blocked
    $int_block_limit = 10

    $dat_time_window = [DateTime]::Now.AddDays(-1)

    $logfn = (netsh advfirewall show allprofiles | Select-String Filename | select-object -unique | % { $_ -replace "%systemroot%",$env:systemroot }).substring(10).trimstart().trimend()

    $badevts = Get-EventLog -LogName 'Security' -InstanceId 4625 -After $dat_time_window | foreach-object { [datetime]$_.TimeWritten } | sort-object

    $fwlog = Select-String -Path $logfn -Pattern "ALLOW TCP" |
        % {
            if ($_ -match "(201.-..-..) (.+) ALLOW TCP (.+) (.+) (.+) 3389") 
            {
                new-object psobject -property @{ 
                  dt = $Matches[1] + ' ' + $Matches[2]
                  ip = $Matches[3]
                }
            }
        }

    $ipa = @()
    $j = 0

    for ($i=0; $i -lt $fwlog.Count; $i++)
    {
        $conn = ([datetime]$fwlog[$i].dt).ticks
        while (($j -lt $badevts.Count) -and (($badevts[$j]).ticks -lt $conn)) { $j++ }
        if ($j -ge $badevts.Count) { break }
        if ((($badevts[$j]).ticks - $conn) -le 30000000) { $ipa += ,($fwlog[$i].ip) }
    }

    $arr_new_bad_ips_all = $ipa |
        Group-Object |
        Where {$_.Count -ge $int_block_limit} |
        Select -property Name

NOTE: Don't forget to enable firewall logs. NOTE 2: I am not a powershell expert so it would be nice if some gurus can correct/improve my code.

Using remunda's great script as a starting point, I added the one major thing that was missing: blocking IP addresses from failed FTP logins. Windows Server doesn't log the IP address to the Security log when someone fails to login via FTP, but instead sets the "Source Network Address" to a dash. FTP is a very common attack vector for brute force attacks, so I added to his script the ability to scan the current day's FTP logs for multiple login failures and block those IP addresses as well.

Update 2014/02/07: When I made some tweaks to this to process all my old FTP logs, I realized when they had immense numbers of attempts (50,000+), the arrays it created would be huge and make the processing incredibly slow. I've since rewritten it to make it much more efficient when processing FTP logs.

I also found out that there's an arbitrary hard limit of 1000 for how many IPs can be in one Windows Firewall rule. Because of that limit, I needed it to automatically create a new rule when the latest one fills up. It now does that, and also creates the initial firewall rule (if you don't create your own) so that the only setup to do is adding it to the Scheduler to run when there's an event 4625.

Here's the code, which has been tested on both Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7:

# This Windows Powershell script will automatically block IP addresses that attempt to login to the system
# and fail the number of times set below with the $int_block_limit variable or more. Is scans both the Security
# log, which covers Remote Desktop and other attempts, as well as the current day's FTP log. If the $int_block_limit
# limit is hit on either of those logs (separately, not combined), then the IP address will be added to the
# firewall rule.
#
# The script will automatically create a firewall rule named "BlockAttackers (Created yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss UTC)" using
# the current time if one with a name that includes "BlockAttackers" doesn't already exist. Because there's a hard
# limit of 1000 entries (IP addresses) you can block per rule, it will also create similarly-named rules once that
# limit is reached for the latest one.
#
# I recommend setting the script to run as a scheduled task triggered by event 4625 login audit failures from the
# Security log, or alternatively you could set it to run after some amount of time (i.e. every 10 minutes).
#
# Authors:
# Majority of script written by serverfault.com user kevinmicke
# Windows Security Log portion written by serverfault.com user remunda, which provided the starting point for kevinmicke
#
# Details: https://serverfault.com/questions/233222/ban-ip-address-based-on-x-number-of-unsuccessful-login-attempts


# Set number of failed login attempts after which an IP address will be blocked
$int_block_limit = 10

# Time window during which to check the Security log, which is currently set to check only the last 24 hours
$dat_time_window = [DateTime]::Now.AddDays(-1)

# Select from the Security log all IP addresses that have more than $int_block_limit audit failures (event 4625) within $dat_time_window
$arr_new_bad_ips_security_log = @()
$arr_new_bad_ips_security_log = Get-EventLog -LogName 'Security' -InstanceId 4625 -After $dat_time_window |
    Select-Object @{n='IpAddress';e={$_.ReplacementStrings[-2]}} |
    Group-Object -property IpAddress |
    Where {$_.Count -ge $int_block_limit} |
    Select -property Name

# Get current time UTC to figure out filename for current FTP log
$current_date_utc = (Get-Date).ToUniversalTime()

# Set path to today's FTP log file
$str_log_file_name = "C:\inetpub\logs\LogFiles\FTPSVC2\u_ex" + $current_date_utc.ToString("yyMMdd") + ".log"

# Search today's FTP log file for "530 1326" to find lines that contain IPs of systems that failed to log in,
# get just the IP from each line, group the IPs by IP to count the attempts from each one, and select only the
# IPs that have $int_block_limit or more bad logins today
$arr_new_bad_ips_ftp = @()
$arr_new_bad_ips_ftp = Select-String $str_log_file_name -pattern "530 1326" |
    ForEach-Object {$_.Line.Substring(20,15) -replace " .*", ""} |
    Group |
    Where {$_.Count -ge $int_block_limit} |
    Select -property Name

# Concatenate the two arrays of IPs (one from Security log, one from FTP log)
$arr_new_bad_ips_all = @()
# $arr_new_bad_ips_all = @($arr_new_bad_ips_security_log) + @($arr_new_bad_ips_ftp_over_limit)
$arr_new_bad_ips_all = @($arr_new_bad_ips_security_log) + @($arr_new_bad_ips_ftp)

# Sort the array, selecting only unique IPs (in case one IP shows up in both the Security and FTP logs)
$arr_new_bad_ips_all_sorted = @()
$arr_new_bad_ips_all_sorted = $arr_new_bad_ips_all |
    Foreach-Object { [string]$_.Name } |
    Select-Object -unique

# Get firewall object
$firewall = New-Object -comobject hnetcfg.fwpolicy2

# Get all firewall rules matching "BlockAttackers*"
$arr_firewall_rules = $firewall.Rules | Where {$_.Name -like 'BlockAttackers*'}

# If no "BlockAttackers*" firewall rule exists yet, create one and set it to a variable
if ($arr_firewall_rules -eq $null) {
    $str_new_rule_name = "BlockAttackers (Created " + $current_date_utc.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss") + " UTC)"
    netsh advfirewall firewall add rule dir=in action=block name=$str_new_rule_name description="Rule automatically created by BlockAttackers Powershell script written by Kevin Micke." enable=yes remoteip="0.0.0.0" | Out-Null
    $arr_firewall_rules = $firewall.Rules | Where {$_.Name -like 'BlockAttackers*'}
}

# Split the existing IPs from current "BlockAttackers*" firewall rule(s) into an array so we can easily search them
$arr_existing_bad_ips = @()
foreach ($rule in $arr_firewall_rules) {
    $arr_existing_bad_ips += $rule.RemoteAddresses -split(',')
}

# Clean subnet masks off of IPs that are currently blocked by the firewall rule(s)
$arr_existing_bad_ips_without_masks = @()
$arr_existing_bad_ips_without_masks = $arr_existing_bad_ips | ForEach-Object {$_ -replace "/.*", ""}

# Select IP addresses to add to the firewall, but only ones that...
$arr_new_bad_ips_for_firewall = @()
$arr_new_bad_ips_for_firewall = $arr_new_bad_ips_all_sorted | Where {
    # contain an IP address (i.e. aren't blank or a dash, which the Security log has for systems that failed FTP logins)
    $_.Length -gt 6 -and
    # aren't already in the firewall rule(s)
    !($arr_existing_bad_ips_without_masks -contains $_) -and
    # aren't the local loopback
    !($_.StartsWith('127.0.0.1')) -and
    # aren't part of the local subnet
    !($_.StartsWith('192.168.')) -and
    !($_.StartsWith('10.0.'))
}

# If there are IPs to block, do the following...
if ($arr_new_bad_ips_for_firewall -ne $null) {
    # Write date and time to script-specific log file
    [DateTime]::Now | Out-File -Append -Encoding utf8 C:\blockattackers.txt
    # Write newly-blocked IP addresses to log file
    $arr_new_bad_ips_for_firewall | Out-File -Append -Encoding utf8 C:\blockattackers.txt

    # Boolean to make sure the new IPs are only added on one rule
    $bln_added_to_rule = 0

    # Array to hold bad IPs from each rule one at a time, so we can count to make sure adding the new ones won't exceed 1000 IPs
    $arr_existing_bad_ips_current_rule = @()

    # For each "BlockAttackers*" rule in the firewall, do the following...
    foreach ($rule in $arr_firewall_rules) {
        if ($bln_added_to_rule -ne 1) {
            # Split the existing IPs from the current rule into an array so we can easily count them
            $arr_existing_bad_ips_current_rule = $rule.RemoteAddresses -split(',')

            # If the number of IPs to add is less than 1000 minus the current number of IPs in the rule, add them to this rule
            if ($arr_new_bad_ips_for_firewall.Count -le (1000 - $arr_existing_bad_ips_current_rule.Count)) {
                # Add new IPs to firewall rule
                $arr_new_bad_ips_for_firewall | %{$rule.RemoteAddresses += ',' + $_}

                # Write which rule the IPs were added to to log file
                echo "New IP addresses above added to Windows Firewall rule:" $rule.Name | Out-File -Append -Encoding utf8 C:\blockattackers.txt

                # Set boolean so any other rules are skipped when adding IPs
                $bln_added_to_rule = 1
            }
        }
    }

    # If there wasn't room in any other "BlockAttackers*" firewall rule, create a new one and add the IPs to it
    if ($bln_added_to_rule -ne 1) {
        $str_new_rule_name = "BlockAttackers (Created " + $current_date_utc.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss") + " UTC)"
        netsh advfirewall firewall add rule dir=in action=block name=$str_new_rule_name description="Rule automatically created by BlockAttackers Powershell script written by Kevin Micke." enable=yes remoteip="0.0.0.0" | Out-Null
        $new_rule = $firewall.rules | Where {$_.Name -eq $str_new_rule_name}

        # Add new IPs to firewall rule
        $arr_new_bad_ips_for_firewall | %{$new_rule.RemoteAddresses += ',' + $_}

        # Write which rule the IPs were added to to log file
        echo "New IP addresses above added to newly created Windows Firewall rule:" $new_rule.Name | Out-File -Append -Encoding utf8 C:\blockattackers.txt
    }
}

I'm using ts_block freeby.

Basically it's a "VBScript program that acts as a WMI event sink to receive events logged by Windows in response to invalid Terminal Services logons."

Seems to work perfectly, and the script is straightforward if you need to mod it. You can either let it log attempts and then ban based on your number of allowed attempts, and/or you can hard-code login names you don't want to give access to.

I got caught out by accidentally adding the same name twice and the service just goes into an endless loop restarting every 1500ms, but very easy to fix/mod if you're ok with vbs.

My current settings are just one retry and you're banned for 2 days, with logins like 'admin' 'Admin' 'Administrator' 'guest' etc automatically banned. Should be straightforward to change to ip?

Kinda addictive to go in and see which critters have been banned overnight...

Do you mean logging on to the server/domain or logging on to a web site running on the server? If you mean logging on to the server/domain then the answer is no. Windows has no concept of blocking ip addresses based on failed logon attempts as ip addresses aren't security entities. There may be third party tools that can do this, but I'm not aware of any as I've never looked in to it.

If there is a webserver that is being attacked you can install the dynamic IP restrictions extension. If this is for standard authentication to the server then you should be able to implement domain and server isolation which would limit the scope of the attacks to domain joined computers, and could be set to only allow attempts from the systems you need to have access to the server. In windows the prevention of brute force attacks is to set the account lockout policy to a setting like 10 mins and a bad password policy to 3 attempts - this means that the account being attacked would lock for 10 mins after 3 attempts. IP connections are not lockable by default in windows. ( As an aside I am also curious as to how many logon attempts it is taking per second to impact the system)