ssh-agent discard timeout behavior (too easy to hack)

[mouring at etoh.eviladmin.org]

On Thu, 17 Jan 2002, Peter Watkins wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 17, 2002 at 09:19:45AM +0200, Pekka Savola wrote:
> > On 16 Jan 2002, Aran Cox wrote:
> > > Ideally you could choose both, dump the keys after a fixed period no
> > > matter what and/or after a period of disuse.  At least, that's what I've
> > > always wanted.  I'd dump them all after 4 hours no questions asked and
> > > maybe an hour or two after their last use.
> >
> > What's the idea of such a short idle period?
> >
> > Me, for example, always xlock my workstation even if I go to talk to my
> > colleagues nearby.  If sufficient care is observed, the time periods
> > should be usably long.
>
> Same here. I can see why folks might want such a feature, but I personally
> would not need/want such behavior on some of my systems. I would personally
> prefer that *default* behavior be current behavior; let folks add command
> line arguments to request that certain keys be treated differently.
>
> Behavior question: let's say ssh-agent holds a key for sshd.example.com
> If ssh-agent were to dump that key, should it
>  - forget about the key entirely (in which case, if the user were to
>    connect to sshd.example.com, the user would likely be prompted for
>    a regular password *after* ssh had already connected; if the user
>    needed/wanted to use their key, they'd have to abort the ssh connection
>    and re-add the key to ssh-agent before reconnecting)

Why would it?  The authorization phase has pasted.  They would be prompted
at the next connection for a password.

- Ben