Re:Bastion hosts
by sneak on Thursday November 20, 2014 @08:07PM
(#8639222)
> "Single-packet authentication" is, I think, silly, and I've never recommended it to anyone. It's hard to think of a case where hand-rolled authentication in front of SSH has saved anyone with a proper SSH configuration (keys-only-no-passwords). You can skip that step.
I agree. I usually use simple port knocking for that purpose. Surely you can agree that "no ports listening" is a better circumstance than "tcp/22 open to the world, with key-based-auth only"?
A VPN is redundant (and requires special client), whereas port knocking to open a port for ssh (that only supports key-based auth) is a simple matter of a few "nc -w 1" lines in a script before you ssh...
EDIT: Saw your posts below. You presuppose that such OpenSSH-zero-day holding attackers are specifically targeting you, which is not invalid; however a spray-and-pray quickly after public release is much more probable in a lot of cases.
I agree. I usually use simple port knocking for that purpose. Surely you can agree that "no ports listening" is a better circumstance than "tcp/22 open to the world, with key-based-auth only"?
A VPN is redundant (and requires special client), whereas port knocking to open a port for ssh (that only supports key-based auth) is a simple matter of a few "nc -w 1" lines in a script before you ssh...
EDIT: Saw your posts below. You presuppose that such OpenSSH-zero-day holding attackers are specifically targeting you, which is not invalid; however a spray-and-pray quickly after public release is much more probable in a lot of cases.