logoalt Hacker News

traceroute66 • today at 2:22 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

> read my ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.

No excuse for doing that these days.

You can use a Yubikey or you can use your computer's secure enclave or TPM with FIDO at no extra cost.

A password is never, ever "strictly better". Seriously, you're just making shit up now.


Replies

kccqzy • today at 4:48 PM

Your comment is self-contradictory. In one sentence you say “these days” and in another you say “never, ever.” These are contradictory. What if your computer is so old that it doesn’t have a TPM?

I was already pointing out that if you have secure enclave for your private key you should use key-based authentication. That’s what I do on iOS. Otherwise a password is better than your private key in plain text on disk. So much malware steal your private SSH keys (along with your other saved passwords and browser cookies); no malware that I know of performs social engineering and tricks you into giving up your SSH passwords.