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Date:      Mon, 2 Mar 2009 13:30:34 -0800
From:      David Wolfskill <david@catwhisker.org>
To:        Chris Palmer <chris@noncombatant.org>
Cc:        freebsd-security@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: OPIE considered insecure
Message-ID:  <20090302213034.GM65706@albert.catwhisker.org>
In-Reply-To: <20090302211932.GZ5602@noncombatant.org>
References:  <20090302021415.GU5602@noncombatant.org> <200903021410.00093.mail@maxlor.com> <20090302021415.GU5602@noncombatant.org> <87sklwiptp.fsf@jehiel.elehack.net> <20090302211932.GZ5602@noncombatant.org>

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On Mon, Mar 02, 2009 at 01:19:32PM -0800, Chris Palmer wrote:
> ...
> Benjamin Lutz writes:
>=20
> > Because the inconvience of not using whatever service or data the serve=
r is=20
> > providing is considered greater than the security risk.
>=20
> But isn't regular password authentication the most convenient of all?

Not in my experience, no.

I configure ~/.xsession to run "eval `ssh-agent`" and "ssh-add" very
early, so all processes run under that environment get the benefit of
the cached authentication credentials I thus set up.  Then I can login
to most machines I care about directly, without requiring additional
authentication.

To me, that's far more convenient than ensuring that I'm around & paying
attention whenever some random process (e.g., a CVS update) wants a
password.

And I strongly suspect that it's better security than a password.

For my externally-visible sshd, there's no way I'd use a reusable
password for authentication.  As things presently stand, I only permit
SSH public key authentication for that use.

> ...

Peace,
david
--=20
David H. Wolfskill				david@catwhisker.org
Depriving a girl or boy of an opportunity for education is evil.

See http://www.catwhisker.org/~david/publickey.gpg for my public key.

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