[CentOS] SSH Question relating to Public and Private Keys

[Peter Kjellstrom]

On Tuesday 15 April 2008, Clint Dilks wrote:
> 1. Currently all of the key pairs we are using have empty passphrases is
> it worth the effort of changing this and setting up ssh-agent compared
> to what you gain in security by doing this ?

To get a clear idea of what keys with no passphrases are like consider the 
idea that users put their regular password in /home/$USER/my_passwd.txt

We try our very best to stop any use of key-pairs without passphrase. All 
modern distros have ssh-agents. Using it is trivial, not using it is lazy. 
For extra security use "ssh-add -c" and you'll know when your agent is 
actually signing stuff.

/Peter
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