Re:SSH: Best practices
by infinite8s on Sunday February 07, 2016 @09:38PM
(#11056111)
The parent comment is discussing encryption of the private key with a password, not passwords for connecting to the server.
Re:SSH: Best practices
by deathanatos on Monday February 08, 2016 @03:58AM
(#11057064)
The parent is discussing both, and I am too; specifically, the parent says,
> we're not allowed to use key auth.
i.e., they're using password based auth.¹ The point of my post is that while certainly users leaving the private key unencrypted isn't good, trading that for password auth leaves you in a worse state overall (IMO).
¹Of course, they could be using an auth scheme that is neither password nor key based. But given that the parent didn't come out and say that, my gut says that's not the case here.
Here's the thing: they say they can't enforce users to encrypt passwords (hogwash; you can have a local agent that checks that), but do they check that users are providing good passwords? I have much more faith in a randomly generated key than I do in a human-generated password. The former pretty much requires compromising the machine; the latter I can just take pot-shots at the server with. (They do rate limit your SSH password attempts, right? right?)
Even if we assume that the password is good, and that the server won't allow infinite tries to guess it, the security is only equivalent: compromise of the user's local account will reveal the password (just sniff the password) or the key (just read the keyfile, and sniff the password if it is encrypted). I don't see any world in which a password is more secure than a key.