07-25-2005
Quote:
Originally Posted by hadarot
The only issue with the above outlined process is that you now have a totally unencrypted private key laying around your hard drive, which is a security risk. So you should not always use this method of no password on the key, depending on other security factors, such as if your home directory is on an NFS exported directory within a large network, thus more vulnerable to attack.
While this is certainly true, sometimes using unencrypted ssh private keys is the most secure way to carry out some tasks. For example, if I wanted to copy an file from one server to another server every night at 3am, that would be a good time to use an unencrypted ssh key.
To mitiage the risk, as mentioned above, you should make 100% sure that the directory containing the keys isn't being shared or served, and that the permissions on the private key are 0400 (user read-only). In the example above, where the user is only doing file copies, you should look into using a restricted shell like rssh, so that even if the key is compromised, the scope of attacks is much more limited.
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LEARN ABOUT FREEBSD
keyserv
KEYSERV(8) BSD System Manager's Manual KEYSERV(8)
NAME
keyserv -- server for storing private encryption keys
SYNOPSIS
keyserv [-d] [-D] [-n] [-p path] [-v]
DESCRIPTION
The keyserv utility is a daemon that is used for storing the private encryption keys of each user logged into the system. These encryption
keys are used for accessing secure network services such as secure NFS.
Normally, root's key is read from the file /etc/.rootkey when the daemon is started. This is useful during power-fail reboots when no one is
around to type a password.
If a client with no secret key calls keyserv, then the key of user nobody is used instead as the default key.
The following options are available:
-d Disable the use of default keys for nobody.
-D Run in debugging mode and log all requests to keyserv.
-n Root's secret key is not read from /etc/.rootkey. Instead, keyserv prompts the user for the password to decrypt root's key stored in
the /etc/publickey database and then stores the decrypted key in /etc/.rootkey for future use. This option is useful if the
/etc/.rootkey file ever gets out of date or corrupted.
-p path
Specify where to search for libdes.so.3. Default is /usr/lib.
-v Display status of DES support (enabled/disabled).
FILES
/etc/.rootkey
/usr/lib/libdes.so.3
SEE ALSO
keylogin(1), keylogout(1), publickey(5)
BSD
September 14, 1992 BSD