High Risk
IP 176.65.149.31 is a high-risk address based in the Netherlands, associated with sustained SSH brute-force and exploit activity detected over approximately eight months. With a threat level of 8/10 and 4,065 abuse reports from automated honeypot sensors, this Pfcloud UG-operated address (ASN AS51396) demonstrates persistent unauthorized-access scanning behaviour that poses a concrete risk to exposed SSH services worldwide.
The volume and consistency of reports are significant indicators of this IP's malicious intent. The address was first reported in October 2025 and remained active through June 2026, generating an average of roughly 500 reports per month across its active period. All 20 detection sources are automated honeypot sensors designed to catalogue hostile traffic patterns. The reported categories include Hacking (dominant at 20 instances), Exploited Host (4), IoT Targeted (1), and Email Spam (1). Suricata alerts linked to this address specifically flag SSH sessions established on unusual non-standard ports, SSH invalid banners characteristic of automated attack tooling, and protocol-detection anomalies consistent with scanning or exploitation frameworks. The combination of high report volume, consistent activity frequency, and honeypot-confirmed malicious signatures yields a confidence score of 89%, placing this assessment firmly in the credible range.
SSH brute-force and exploitation activity of this nature typically involves automated scripts that cycle through credential pairs against publicly accessible SSH daemons, particularly those running on non-standard ports to evade casual detection. The invalid SSH banners observed indicate the use of custom malware or modified clients designed to evade signature-based detection systems. Once access is obtained, threat actors deploy payloads ranging from cryptocurrency miners and botnet agents to ransomware or additional scanning tools, effectively converting the compromised target into a secondary attack platform. For network operators with SSH services exposed to the internet, even brief exposure to this address's scanning activity increases the risk of credential compromise or zero-day exploitation.
Administrators should block 176.65.149.31 at the network perimeter immediately and implement deny-by-default firewall rules for all untrusted inbound connections targeting SSH. Where feasible, authentication mechanisms should be hardened through public-key authentication exclusively, alongside tools such as fail2ban to dynamically ban repeated login failures. Moving SSH services to non-standard ports, while not a substitute for proper authentication controls, reduces exposure to opportunistic scanning. Continuous monitoring of authentication logs and integration of threat-intelligence feeds will help maintain an up-to-date defensive posture against similar high-risk sources.
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