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Date:      Thu, 7 Dec 2006 12:44:34 -0500
From:      "Erik Richards" <erikr@magnetsusa.com>
To:        <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   RSA/DSA authentication
Message-ID:  <2150E71679C07E419BDA4250480BCF2202508A58@adonis.magnetsusa.com>

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Greetings,

I'm not sure if this is the right place for this or the security mailing =
list,
but I am extremely confused by RSA/DSA authentication and using it with =
OpenSSH. =20
My current setup is that I have a freebsd box at home acting as a =
firewall/gateway/webserver.
I'd like to access it from work using Putty on Windows 2000.  Right now =
I have password
authentication with a good strong username/password, Denyhosts and I =
feel safe.  I just wanted
to try a little extra security (for kicks) so I started reading and =
implementing RSA.
Well now after reading what there was in the handbook, freebsddairy, and =
a really
nice article about it on IBM I have no idea how to get this to work and =
am just
a little frustrated. I believe I'm getting messed up on the public and =
private key
and where they should go on the computer i'm trying to connect to or =
connect from?
I used ssh-keygen and putty to generate a key (RSA w/passphrase) and =
both times I've gotten=20
neither to work from what I've been able to tell.

One time I was close and got something saying that my key's permissions =
had to be changed
because they were to open so I fixed that warning and then it said that =
my key was accepted
and I entered my passphrase. But then just to play around I removed my =
key (wanted to see
if it wouldn't let me connect).  It did and asked for my password not =
passphrase. What I was
hoping for was that the server would see that i didn't have a key and =
deny my access but
saddly it didn't.

Now I'm editing some of my /etc/ssh/sshd_config file like uncommenting:
(correct? I shouldn't be editing /etc/ssh/ssh_config?)

RSAAuthentication yes
PubkeyAuthentication yes
AuthorizedKeysFile      /root/.ssh/authorized_keys=20
(I did rename the key I was using this and made sure it was all on one =
line)

PasswordAuthentication no

but I still don't have anything working.  I've restarted sshd by doing:

/etc/rc.d/sshd restart

each time as well. Am I wrong to assume the server should deny
me access if I don't have the key or is using RSA/DSA authentication =
just to assure
myself that I'm actually connecting to my server and not some other =
person's trying
to get my passwords?

Thank you for reading this mess, as you can tell I'm pretty bewildered.

Erik



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