this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2024
39 points (100.0% liked)

Linux

48208 readers
719 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Lately I noticed that when I want to ssh to a server using a password I need to specify -o PubkeyAuthentication=no or I won't be asked for a password and the authentication will fail (well, for all I know, setting some other option may work too).

I use password authentication only once on freshly installed servers/vms, so it's not a huge deal, but... it still bothers me (mainly because I don't remember which option to set).

Do you guys have any idea what it may be?

client's ~/.ssh/config

Host 127.*.*.* 192.168.*.* 10.*.*.* 172.16.*.* 172.17.*.* 172.18.*.* 172.19.*.* 172.2?.*.* 172.30.*.* 172.31.*.*
  LogLevel quiet
  Stricthostkeychecking no
  Userknownhostsfile /dev/null

Host *
  ForwardAgent no
  AddKeysToAgent no
  Compression yes
  ServerAliveInterval 10
  ServerAliveCountMax 3
  HashKnownHosts no
  UserKnownHostsFile ~/.ssh/known_hosts
  ControlMaster no
  ControlPath ~/.ssh/master-%r@%n:%p
  ControlPersist no

server's /etc/ssh/sshd_config (it's from the nixos install iso)

AuthorizedPrincipalsFile none
Ciphers [email protected],[email protected],[email protected],aes256-ctr,aes192-ctr,aes128-ctr
GatewayPorts no
KbdInteractiveAuthentication yes
KexAlgorithms [email protected],curve25519-sha256,[email protected],diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha256
LogLevel INFO
Macs [email protected],[email protected],[email protected]
PasswordAuthentication yes
PermitRootLogin yes
PrintMotd no
StrictModes yes
UseDns no
UsePAM yes
X11Forwarding no
Banner none
AddressFamily any
Port 22
Subsystem sftp /nix/store/78mv13w9mgh0s0rd7rnr6ff4d7a39bpd-openssh-9.7p1/libexec/sftp-server 
AuthorizedKeysFile %h/.ssh/authorized_keys /etc/ssh/authorized_keys.d/%u
HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key
HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

How would that improve security when all a bad actor has to do is add -o PubkeyAuthentication=no on their side?

Also, I'm pretty sure it used to just ask for a password?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

-o PubkeyAuthentication=no should only work if the server is configured to allow password auth at all. I believe the advice these days is to disable password auth completely for security.