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Timeline for SSH password vs. key authentication

Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0

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S Feb 5, 2018 at 17:27 history suggested Michael come lately CC BY-SA 3.0
Grammar improvements.
Feb 5, 2018 at 14:55 review Suggested edits
S Feb 5, 2018 at 17:27
May 12, 2015 at 17:11 comment added Tek Tengu You obviously didn't get the analogy... This is why security practitioners get the hairy eyeball from the rest of the world. While in a purely technical sense certificates are much stronger than passwords, badly implemented certificates are more swift/silent/deadly than passwords. How many organizations implement them perfectly, oh right, with the recent onslaught of hacks against them, not many.
May 12, 2015 at 13:10 comment added sleblanc Please, do not promote using passwords instead of keys. You can enforce key rotation. And keys should be locked down with passphrases in any case. A key is like a 2048-bit password protected by another password (the passphrase). What stops your vitriolic wife from installing snooping software (keylogger) on your son's phone, easily retrieving the 4-number combination?
Aug 14, 2014 at 14:03 comment added JDS I like this analogy. However, it isn't perfect. In a managed key situation, I think keypair auth would be more secure. By "managed" I mean, the user has no control over his authorized_keys file -- that file is overwritten by a config management system, managed by a central sysadmin team. if the user loses his key, the sysadmin changes the authorized_keys in much the same way as he would change the user's password. Thus you get the security benefits of PK auth PLUS the flexibility described in this analogy
Apr 2, 2013 at 8:53 vote accept Jan Hudec
Mar 29, 2013 at 15:21 history answered Tek Tengu CC BY-SA 3.0