> On Feb 14, 2018, at 3:00 PM, Magnus Kroken <mkro...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On 14.02.2018 22.13, Michelle Sullivan wrote:
>> FWIW, I had misunderstood the intent of the original comments... OpenSSH
>> server vs Dropbear - if someone is using OpenSSH server they already
>> went in with advanced config as Dropbear is the default - I'd err on the
>> side of security as they should already know what they are doing....  it
>> should be recoverable by webinterface though (rather than worrying about
>> people 'fixing' by using something not secure.)
> 
> The opposite argument applies equally well IMO: they already know what they 
> are doing, they should know how to allow key authentication only if they want 
> that.


Well, right!  That was my first approach with a “config" option to do exactly 
that, but it was shot down:

https://github.com/openwrt/packages/pull/5520

I even defaulted the option to continue to allow passwords so that only people 
who (a) selected OpenSSH and (b) turned this option off would be affected… 
which has to be a small portion of the population.


> 
> Consider a scenario where a user builds an image with OpenSSH, without 
> Dropbear (because they have OpenSSH), and without a web interface (because 
> they want to save space). This is easily done by selecting and deselecting 
> packages in menuconfig/imagebuilder, no custom files needed today. With this 
> change, if the image is missing authorized_keys, the only way to log in is 
> serial console (failsafe will be locked out too), which requires soldering - 
> or using bootloader recovery features, which may also require soldering and 
> aren't consistently documented.


Actually, most of the boxes that *I* work on (Geos, Alix 2D, net5501, Xeon 1U 
servers, etc.) all have serial ports and most of them have VGA as well (or 
could if you install the optional header).


> 
> This is just about the default configuration, it's not a choice between 
> conflicting compile time options with varying security implications. While 
> key authentication may be best practice, allowing SSH password logins isn't 
> on the level of reimplementing LuCI in PHP 4. The change is *literally* a 
> handful of sed commands, why can't advanced users take care of that 
> themselves? Why do we want to make it easier to build a soft-bricking image 
> than it is today?


Conversely, why can’t advanced users have a clear, standardized way of doing 
this?  That they’re “advanced” doesn’t mean they don’t also appreciate 
convenience, an easy way to save and export/import configurations, etc.

In a perfect world, no one should ever have to build with patches, anything in 
files/, cherry-picked commits, etc.  Everything would be expressed in the 
.config (or kernel-config).

And again, not every box would be bricked.  Like I said, all of mine have 
serial consoles and most of them have VGA.


> 
> How about adding a configuration flag to menuconfig for OpenSSH, which runs 
> said sed commands if the flag is set (disabled by default, for the reasons 
> above). It makes it easier to set for those who want it, and it will also be 
> saved in a diffconfig output if they set that.


Did exactly that in the original PR but it was vetoed.

-Philip


> 
> Regards
> /Magnus

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