Stop using fail2ban/tallow/etc, and follow a sensible guide like https://infosec.mozilla.org/guidelines/openssh https://infosec.mozilla.org/guidelines/openssh t

Stop using fail2ban/tallow/etc, and follow a sensible guide like https://infosec.mozilla.org/guidelines/openssh https://infosec.mozilla.org/guidelines/openssh to harden your ssh configuration. This will result in about half the attempts failing at protocol negotiation, long before auth (though that ratio is decreasing over time). Wireguard is also very strong here, as it learned from this kind of problem in SSH and does not reply at all unless authentication succeeds. This makes debugging harder, but also makes leaving it openly listening quite a bit safer, as the protocol surface in pre-auth is absolutely minimal.