Why is port 22 open by default?

[Derrick Ryalls]

> On Wednesday 07 May 2003 20:03, Brad Lisoweski wrote:
> > Would you rather have telnet open?
> >
> > IMHO, SSH is secure, and is fine to be open by default.  If you are 
> > paranoid, compile ipfilter or ipfw into your kernel and 
> block access 
> > to port 22.
> 
> Thanks for your reply.
> 
> I run a shell server, so I need SSH. 
> I'm still relatively new to all this, so I figured if it is 
> open by default, 
> it must be secure.
> Before I thought that easily exploitable holes are regularly 
> discovered in 
> SSH.
> 

I too am a security freak, so I limit what ips can ssh to my machines.
Read the man pages for your firewall, or do it the really simple way and
use /etc/hosts.allow:

sshd : 192.168.1. : allow
sshd : trusted.com : allow
sshd : all : deny