SSH is great. But it does mean typing longer commands than you otherwise would have done.
For example, if your local user name is joe but your user name on a
remote server is jbloggs, then you have to specify the user name
whenever you use SSH to communicate with …
When you use SSH to log into a server, the server wants to make sure you really are who you claim to be: It needs to authenticate you. By convention, this is done using your password.
But entering your password every time you log into a remote server is annoying …
Sometimes companies' security policies dictate the use of "bastion hosts": Hosts that you have to "jump through" to get to the network behind the host - i.e. you cannot connect directly to a host "behind" the bastion host.
This does improve security a bit, but the most visible effect is …
SSH is great. But it does inevitably introduce some delays as whenever you use it, SSH has to:
Although I live in the UK, I often get questions about what is different about Christmas the Danish way.
Well - that deserved a blog post.
First of all, Christmas in Danish is Jul - cognate to the old English word Yule - they're pronounced almost the same way.
Keeping the pre-christian name …
As you may have noticed, we appear to have a lorry driver shortage in the UK. This is causing lack of petrol deliveries to various petrol stations - a number of stations had to close as they ran out of fuel.
In a sane world, this would normally be a temporary …
Password are awful.
Unfortunately, it is the "least worst" solution to the problem of authentication in most cases.
Sure, there are lots of other authentication methods out there, each with their own problems which (on balance) usually ends up being worse:
If you follow the good advice of not re-using passwords you end up with a lot of passwords.
If you make them reasonably secure by making them longer then you still have a lot of passwords. But they are much more difficult to guess. (which is really the point of …
Every site (or every account) you use should have a different, distinct password. Every single one. Never re-use passwords.
That way: if one site gets hacked (and your password leaked on the darker parts of the web), only that account is leaked. The potential damage is reduced. The bad guys …
Many places have password policies. And they often prescribe that your password MUST include things like:
The problem is: That advice is wrong.
Or at least: the advice guides people towards difficult-to-remember passwords and it does not increase security.
The single …