On Fri, 2011-11-18 at 10:20 -0600, Phong Nguyen wrote:

> Can't they just portscan you? 

Yes but all the opportunist hackers do not. Those people are searching
for carelessly set-up installations to break into.  Few, if any, hackers
are prepared to spend time searching for possible ports - all the way up
to 64,000+ - when lots of potentially easier standard 22 port
opportunities exist.

An installation which uses a non-standard SSH port is likely to be more
resilient to attacks than an installation using the standard SSH port.
Why would a hacker, keen on breaking-in, waste their time trying to hack
an installation where security is likely to be stronger than a basic
installation ?

Using non-standard ports does not make any installation immune from
attacks. It is merely the first of several security conscious attempts
to resist successful attacks.

Paul.