On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 3:30 AM, Erik Anderson <erikerik at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 1:51 AM, Mike Miller <mbmiller+l at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I also like the sudo idea, but I see one shortcoming -- most people use
> > their own password to gain root permissions via sudo
>
> Well, this applies mostly to connecting to a host via ssh,


I don't think modern distros, unix included, ship with telnet and naked rsh
enabled anymore, do they?


> but you
> turn off PasswordAuthentication and authenticate instead with a
> keypair, where the private key is encrypted with a different
> passphrase than then one that is hashed in the remote system's
> /etc/shadow.
>
> I find it quite funny that so many people grouse (I'm speaking
> generally here, not trying to infer that you have anything against
> this) about turning off PasswordAuthentication when in reality, PKA is
> far easier to use and is far more secure once it's set up


Once it's set up it's the best of both worlds - secure and convenient.  I
hadn't though about going one step further and disabling password auths via
ssh.  I like the idea though - any system I'd need to possibly to get on
under "desparate circumstances" where ssh isn't viable, I can do it on the
console.

Thanks for sharing!

-Rob
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