this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2025
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https://blog.thc.org/infecting-ssh-public-keys-with-backdoors

I am not a security expert and I wonder:

  1. Does the described method infect the remote or local machine (from which I connect)?
  2. Can this method be prevented? For example, correctly configuring your etc/ssh/ssh_config

It seems that every VPS supplier can hack you? The description shows that AWS does "harmless", but what if my hosting is a bad actor?

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[–] Shadow@lemmy.ca 13 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (3 children)

If your hosting is a bad actor, you're screwed no matter what. Why bother with this when they have direct access to your disk and ram

You could turn off authorized key files, or lock them down. This isn't really a big security risk though, there's countless ways to backdoor a system once you have access to do this.

This just targets a remote account, not your local pc.

[–] IronJumbo@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago (2 children)

In that case, it seems to me that the only threat is the mindless copying of public keys to other servers, as described in the article. But who does so? Do admins not create separate private-public keys for each server?

Thank you for the explanation!

[–] chonkyninja@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

No separate keys, use certificates with proper SSH-CA and you’ll never share a key again. It’s not a new thing.

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