Extreme Threat
IP 152.53.198.76 is a critical-risk address originating from Germany's netcup GmbH network (AS197540) that has accumulated 254 abuse reports and has been definitively linked to sustained hacking activity, including unauthorized SSH connection attempts on non-standard ports. The maximum threat level of 10 out of 10 reflects the severity of the intrusion patterns observed emanating from this source during the February–March 2026 reporting window.
Automated honeypot sensors across multiple deployments recorded 254 independent reports attributing this IP to hacking behaviour, with 20 of the most recent reports specifically citing intrusion attempts and the detection of SSH sessions established on atypical ports. The origin infrastructure belongs to netcup GmbH operating within AS197540, a commercial hosting environment in Germany that is frequently utilized by both legitimate and malicious server operations. Despite the substantial cumulative report count, the activity frequency metric of 0 out of 10 indicates that observed attacks manifest in periodic concentrated waves rather than as a continuous stream.
The dominant threat category associated with 152.53.198.76 is general hacking activity, most notably characterized by SSH sessions initiated on non-standard ports—a technique routinely employed by threat actors to bypass security appliances that monitor only default service ports. This behaviour is consistent with unauthorized access attempts, credential brute-forcing, and vulnerability exploitation probing against exposed SSH services. Suricata intrusion-detection signatures specifically flagged the anomalous SSH session pattern, confirming that automated security monitoring identified the characteristic indicators of automated intrusion campaigns operating outside conventional attack signatures.
Site operators running publicly accessible SSH services should implement immediate defensive measures to neutralize the risk posed by this source. Enforcing key-based authentication exclusively, deploying fail2ban or equivalent dynamic rate-limiting daemons, and restricting SSH access to whitelisted IP ranges via firewall policy will substantially reduce exposure to automated intrusion attempts originating from addresses like 152.53.198.76. Regular audit of authentication logs for repeated login failures and consideration of permanent IP blocklisting based on the accumulated abuse reports provides an additional defensive layer against ongoing reconnaissance and intrusion activity from this high-risk address.