Re: Mass Machine Login

[Nick Owen <nickowen () mindspring com>]

Adam Kane wrote:
>  Ryan Cummings wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Ryan Cummings [mailto:ryan.r.cummings () gmail com] 
> > Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2006 10:06 PM
> > To: security-basics () securityfocus com
> > Subject: Mass Machine Login
> >
> > I've been beating my brains out trying to find a solution for this but
> > can't.  Has anyone seen software or a script that will allow you to send a
> > login to multiple machines at one time?  Say for an entire room, for sake of
> > an example, has 75 computers all on the same vlan and we would like to login
> > to all the computers without touching each one of them individually with a
> > specified username.
> >
> > Ryan
> >   
> I feel having the same login/password on all 75 computers is a bad
> security practice.
>
> Are you talking about logging into all the computers via SSH or FTP or
> something like that or are you talking about having the computers
> automatically log in when booted?

Here's a thought (maybe not well thought-out ;):  Could you set up a SSH
'gateway' box that acted as an SSH-agent for the other boxes and proxied
requests to the other servers?

So, the gateway box would have private keys for all the users on all the
other boxes, which would only require key authentication.  The gateway
box would also require a password or strong authentication.  Perhaps you
could only allow SSH logins from the gateway IP or lock it down in some
similar manner?  Effectively the users login once to the gateway box and
then have access to all the others.  Does that make sense?

Nick

-- 
Nick Owen
WiKID Systems, Inc.
404.962.8983 (desk)
404.542.9453 (cell)
http://www.wikidsystems.com
At last, two-factor authentication, without the hassle factor
Now open source: http://sourceforge.net/projects/wikid-twofactor/

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