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Passworded ssh keys can be valuable - if I steal your laptop while it’s on, I can use DMA hacking or frozen ram kind of techniques to extract secrets out of mem
by hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago
Passworded ssh keys can be valuable - if I steal your laptop while it’s on, I can use DMA hacking or frozen ram kind of techniques to extract secrets out of memory. If your SSH keys have a password on them, I have a limited time to perform said attacks.
For that reason, I’d prefer passphrase backed keys, even if they had very long (36h+) expiry time.
Edit: one cool hack I use is a conplex FDE password, but relatively simple /etc/shadow password - this saves a huge amount of effort.
- dx034 5y agoIf you're a sysadmin for a large company or if you're a public person then I'd agree, but I believe for 99% of us, no one would spend the time to perform these attacks on stolen hardware. And even for large companies, they'd just look for the next sysadmin who has their password on a post-it on the laptop or in their bag (still happens enough).
- hsbauauvhabzb 5y agoYeah but op was questioning real security model without context. I don’t disagree with you, security and threat models are highly contextual.