Hi there,

I want to access a web application running on a web server behind my office firewall from an external machine.

We have a bastion host running sshd that is accessible from the Internet.

I want to know if this solution is a bad idea:

• Create an account on the bastion host with shell=/bin/false and no password ('testuser')
• Create a ssh RSA key on the external machine
• Add the public RSA key to the testuser's authorized_keys file
• ssh to the bastion host from the external host using: ssh -N 8888:targethost:80
• run my tests from the external host
• shut down the ssh tunnel

I understand that if my RSA private key were compromised then someone could ssh to the bastion host. But are there other reasons this solution is a bad idea?

thank you!