A user who is worried about theft of their private key could put a long [0] passphrase on it, but alas, the service provider who supports key auth can't enforce

A user who is worried about theft of their private key could put a long [0] passphrase on it, but alas, the service provider who supports key auth can't enforce that keys be passphrase-protected [1]. A user who does this is effectively creating a 2FA requirement for their account. But to your second point, the onus is on the user which isn't ideal. [0] It can be brute-forced offline -- https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/62455/find-passphrase-on-encrypted-ssh-private-key https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/62455/find-pass... -- so unlike online password checking that can be rate-limited, length is essential. [1] https://serverfault.com/questions/589680/disallow-ssh-keys-without-passphrase https://serverfault.com/questions/589680/disallow-ssh-keys-w...