Is man-in-the-middle attack a security threat during SSH authentication using keys?

Posted by JP19 on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by JP19
Published on 2010-12-25T06:39:21Z Indexed on 2010/12/25 6:54 UTC
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Filed under:

security

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ssh

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ssh-keys

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openssh

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man-in-the-middle

Hi,

I am no expert in network security, so pardon if this question is not very smart :). I am automating logins to some machines using ssh. I am currently avoiding host-key warnings using StrictHostKeyChecking no.
I naively understand that someone can impersonate as the server and I risk losing my password to him if that were the case. However, if I am using only public/private Key based authentication ( using PasswordAuthentication no ), can the intruder still cause harm?

So basically, with ssh -o "StrictHostKeyChecking no" -o "PasswordAuthentication no" :

1) Can the intruder decipher my private key?

2) Are there any other security threats?

regards,

JP

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