Changing ports in WHM

bulewold

• February 03, 2015 01:11

Hello, I'm new to VPS & WHM. I hear on VPS, one of easiest and best thing to do for security is to change ports numbers so that it's not default number bots/hackers will look for. I tried searching for this topic with no luck. Can someone give guidance on how to change that without breaking my site? Or link me the topic if it was already covered? Thank you for your help in advance!

• 

  mageshm

  • February 03, 2015 09:28

  @bulewold, Are you referring WHM/cPanel port numbers or SSH port number ? For security purpose i advise you to install CSF, change ssh port number, disable direct root login, enable wheel user and enable ssh-key generation logoin. If you have static IP add that IP for server access.....that's it.

  0
• 

  cPanelMichael

  • February 03, 2015 17:07

  Hello :) You can change the "port=" value for cPanel in /var/cpanel/cpanel.config from 2082 to a new port number. The SSL port will be this value plus one. It's not possible to change the WHM port value. Thank you.

  0
• 

  bulewold

  • February 03, 2015 22:00

  Thanks for quick responses. Mageshm, would CSF take care of port change along with other security settings it seems like it provides? [url=http://configserver.com/cp/csf.html]ConfigServer Security & Firewall Also, if I install this, would it cause any reset of configuration that'll cause stop in currently running web services? I'm just being careful cuz I had my web service stopped recently when I changed setting on apache server configuration following more secure setting advice, had to restore to make it work again.

  0
• 

  cPanelMichael

  • February 04, 2015 16:00

  CSF takes over as a firewall management utility for iptables after you install it, so you can make all firewall changes through it's administrative interface. Changing the SSH port is completed separately. This thread will help: SSH Hardening Thank you.

  0
• 

  bulewold

  • February 05, 2015 06:15

  Thank you! I started following instruction but on port changing, it shows how to find available port but not on how to change...... So i found another tutorial that showed how to change using vim sshd_config and change port number on it... yet once i've done that, it didnt' let SSHD restart. Any way to get back into ssh when it's not restarting? And what did i do wrong?

  0
• 

  cPanelMichael

  • February 05, 2015 15:24

  You will need to ensure that you add the new port to the allowed ports list in your CSF configuration. Thank you.

  0
• 

  bulewold

  • February 08, 2015 08:19

  Is there any way to install CSF without using SSH? (plugin or add on options?) Just trying to be careful. :)

  0
• 

  cPanelMichael

  • February 13, 2015 16:02

  You will need to initially install it via SSH using their instructions:

  0
• 

  bulewold

  • February 13, 2015 16:13

  Yes, I actually found that guide and took care of it. It wasn't bad. :) Thank you! Although I'm considering moving to a new host that'll actually help me with setting up firewall.

  0

Please sign in to leave a comment.