Programming :: Script For Searching Through Messages For Multiple FTP Hits

My script looks really crap and messy, the logic isn't great and I'm not hugely happy with it. Also it echo's $i instead of an actual IP address (line 10). How to improve this. It basically searches through /var/log/messages for multiple FTP hits and when the hit count is higher than a specific number the IP is added to a config file and ftp is restarted. There are some obvious flaws in my script.

Code:
MAXHITS=0
TOPHITS=`grep "FTP session closed." /var/log/messages* | awk '{print $7}' | sed -e 's/^.*[//' -e 's/].*$//' | uniq -c | sort -nr`
HITNUMB=`echo $TOPHITS | awk '{print $1}'`
IPHIT=`echo $TOPHITS | awk '{print$2}'`
HIGHIP=`echo $TOPHITS | grep $HITNUMB | grep $IPHIT | awk '{print $2}'`

if [ $HITNUMB -gt $MAXHITS ]; then
for i in $HIGHIP;
do
echo $i
sed -i '78s/$/,$i/' /opt/etc/proftpd.conf
/root/ftp restart
done
else
echo "not greater than $MAXHITS"
fi

I'm not even sure what will happen if I get multiple responses for my $TOPHITS. It would be cool if it could search for IP's already blacklisted somehow, it might actually be easier to just create a file with a set of blacklisted IP's or something.