[LEDE-DEV] [PATCH v1 1/1] openssh: disable passwords for openssh server

[Yousong Zhou]

On 9 February 2018 at 08:28, Philip Prindeville
<philipp at redfish-solutions.com> wrote:
> From: Philip Prindeville <philipp at redfish-solutions.com>
>
> Allowing password logins leaves you vulnerable to dictionary
> attacks.  We disable password-based authentication, limiting
> authentication to keys only which are more secure.
>
> Note: You'll need to pre-populate your image with some initial
> keys. To do this:
>
> 1. Create the appropriate directory as "mkdir -p files/root/.ssh"
>    from your top-level directory;
> 2. Copy your "~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub" (or as appropriate) into
>    "files/root/.ssh/authorized_keys" and indeed, you can collect
>    keys from several sources this way by concatenating them;
> 3. Set the permissions on "authorized_keys" to 644 or 640.
>

If forgetting doing this means I may need physical connection like vga
monitor or serial connection to "unlock" the device, very likely I
will hate this security enforcement...  It's just the inconvenience
regardless of whether the said situation should happen.  As a user I'd
like to keep this level of convenience as using password
authentication and turn it off when I see it appropriate.

                yousong