I think what the author fails to realize is that this isn't a targetted attack by a single group, but rather a mass of unfocused attempts to catch low-hanging f

I think what the author fails to realize is that this isn't a targetted attack by a single group, but rather a mass of unfocused attempts to catch low-hanging fruit anywhere on the internet they can find it. Not to say that the hardening efforts aren't worth it, but that there's a difference between a bunch of automated attacks against "common" username and password combinations and a focused brute-force attack. I just disable password-auth, install fail2ban, and call it a day.