Juan Convers

Sometimes you turn your head while walking and suddenly realize you’ve found the perfect photo spot. That’s exactly what happened yesterday along the shores of Lake Zug. The sun was out, the water was calm, and bare tree branches and the wooden posts framed a really nice view showing the edge of the lake, while the town of Zug and the surrounding hills were clearly in the background under a blue winter sky. It was really an amazing view!

I run a small VPS for some personal projects, and I often check the SSH logs to see who’s trying to break in. I have the standard setup: key-based authentication, password login disabled, non-default ssh port and fail2ban configured to block IPs after a few failed attempts. But that doesn’t stop the bots from trying.

This week, I decided to do a little analysis of the SSH logs to see where the attacks are coming from and the resutls are not surprising but still interesting.

Nearly 31,000 failed login attempts from the top 20 IPs alone. Russia takes the lead with 45% of attacks (20,742 attempts), followed by the US at 30% (8,163 attempts). One particularly persistent Russian IP tried over 9,600 times. Points for determination, I guess?

The geographic diversity is almost impressive: Russia, US, China, Brazil, South Korea all represented. It’s like a World Cup of “please let me into your server.”

This is just life when you have an ssh server exposed to the internet. I decided to add some additional security measures this week after seeing the data, but I wanted to share the conclusion of this analysis as a public service to anyone else who might be running a VPS with SSH access.

Stay safe out there.

Top 20 most common IP addresses

This morning the winter weather wasn't too bad, so I decided to grab my bike and do my commute using my favorite mode of transport. As I was passing by the Blancherie parking lot, I had to pull over and turn right—the sunset against the Alps in the background, reflecting off the calm waters of Lac Léman, was simply too beautiful to skip it. I took a moment to stop, wait a moment to admired it and then I shot the picture like you see above. As you can see with the lady on the foreground, I wasn't the only one taken by the view :)

🎾 🎾 🎾 🎾 🎾 🎾 🎾 🎾 🎾 🎾

When I was a kid, I used to play tennis on the rusty concrete court around the corner from our place. My friends and I spent countless hours there, which is why the sport has always stayed close to my heart—and remains the only one I truly enjoy watching.

This week, I’ve been following the Australian Open, which is still ongoing, and there have already been some great matches. That got me thinking about how dominance in tennis is measured over time. Many people agree that Djokovic sits at the top when it comes to total Grand Slam titles, but it made me curious about how those wins are distributed across each major. The table below summarizes that breakdown.

What stands out from the table is the contrast in geographic dominance between the two ATP and WTA tours. The women’s records are overwhelmingly held by American players across all four Grand Slams, while the men’s side is largely defined by European dominance.

Yesterday I was biking on my way to work, and when I started to climb the hill on the Route de Genève that takes you to the roundabout of Préverenges, I turned my head right and saw such a beautiful sunrise over Lake Léman, with the Alps in the background, that I had to stop to take the picture you see above.