For security reasons it's been suggested we move all of our system
logins to use SSH keys. Does anyone have any good solutions to make this
feasible without having to copy keys to individual accounts on multiple
machines?
Ideally it would be great to disable password based logins to help deter
sniffing and breaking. It would also make things more difficult once
someone was in as the password would not be known for sudo if they broke
in via key (technically possible but difficult).
Note: LDAP will still be used to enforce which accounts can login to
which machines, and your LDAP password will still work on https based
website logins.
For those who like to be pro-active, feel free to use ssh keys with your
current logins.
ssh-copy-id user@nameofmachine will copy your key over.
On Mon, Oct 03, 2011 at 01:50:11PM -0700, Alex Mandel wrote:
For those who like to be pro-active, feel free to use ssh keys with your
current logins.
ssh-copy-id user@nameofmachine will copy your key over.
Note: This command serves as a nice helper for those who didn't use any
SSH public key authentication before. If you already had a custom SSH
public key setup, I'd recommend to have a backup copy _plus_ a working
login shell before using 'ssh-copy-id' - just a convenience so you
still have a handle to roll the changes back.
BTW, as far as I understand the latest 'hack' was carried out using SSH
public key authentication. Thus we should emphasize that just public
key authentication alone is not the cure against all possible hacks.
Keeping the corresponding private key _really_ safe is an _essential_
requirement here.
Cheers,
Martin.
--
Unix _IS_ user friendly - it's just selective about who its friends are !
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For security reasons it's been suggested we move all of our
system logins to use SSH keys. Does anyone have any good
solutions to make this feasible without having to copy keys to
individual accounts on multiple machines?
Ideally it would be great to disable password based logins
to help deter sniffing and breaking. It would also make things
more difficult once someone was in as the password would not be
known for sudo if they broke in via key (technically possible
but difficult).
breaking in via key just means breaking in to a developer's
personal machine, which is near impossible to stop.
yes, key+sudo is nice as it is 2-factor (bring something + know
something). but if a developer's computer gets hacked, and pw is
plain text viewable in firefox's saved pw list that gets
defeated...
