[OT] SSH throttle - security

[Donald Lee <MacPPC2%caution.icompute.com@localhost>]

[sorry for the OT]

I have an ssh annoyance - my logs are FULL of cracking attempts.  This is
an externally visible server, so I can't simply shut off access.  They are
trying lots of random accounts, and I'm not worried that they'll get in,
but it's a pain, both because it generates huge logfiles, and also
because it burns non-trivial CPU.

Does anyone know of an option/method to "throttle" incoming SSH requests.
I would be more than happy to limit said requests to one every N seonds,
where N is in the range of 5-10 (or more?)

I don't see anything in the docs or on the web that will allow me to
do this.  I'm not anxious to write proxy software to do this. :-<

I figure this might be of general interest to anyone with an exposed
server.

Thanks,

-dgl-