[Bug 2164] PermitRootLogin=without-password as default

[bugzilla-daemon at mindrot.org]

https://bugzilla.mindrot.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2164

--- Comment #2 from Philip Hands <phil at hands.com> ---
Just out of interest, was there a reason for choosing 'no' rather than
'without-password'?

For distros at least, I think they'll all have to change that to
without-password if there's any chance that people will get the change
as part of an upgrade, since anyone that's installed ssh keys will be
pretty upset when they stop working.

Also, given that on a new install there are not going to be any
authorised keys, and one would need to have root access to place
anything in root's authorized_keys, I'm wondering what the benefit of
having this set to 'no' is supposed to be.

The only distinction that I'd expect would be that people are forced to
modify it away from 'no' in order to get things working after putting
keys in place, which is a needless irritation but more importantly,
unless they've been paying attention, they'll not switch it to
'without-password' at that point, they'll switch it to 'yes', with a
resulting needless loss of security.

I'd suggest that if there's not deemed to be a significant security
advantage associated with 'no' that it should be set to
'without-password' if only to educate users to the existence of the
option (there are still _many_ ssh users who are surprised that such an
option exists)

Cheers, Phil.

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