As I put more virtual machines behind proxies and such, it became evident that 
my normal solution of ssh-ing into a gateway machine and hopping from there to 
the machines inside starts to lose it's charm when I want to allow some other 
people to get in as well. I was searching for a solution like a proxy for 
websites. I found it and it was kind of more than I was expecting.

What I found was sshproxy. I get to create users as data in the config files 
and they don't have direct access to the machine doing the proxy work. Plus, 
the accounts that are accessible inside the proxy are all configurable as well. 
Then you get to set rules on which logins can access which accounts and when or 
how. 

Part of what really started making me think how cool this is relates to how we 
have had to manage passwords at Base Systems. We would add peoples accounts to 
various machines, and then tell them the root passwords. With sshproxy, you can 
make strong user unfriendly passwords on the machine as they only need to be 
shared to the proxy. Then you can grant permissions to the various users to 
each of your internal machines, and to the accounts on them. When they leave 
the company, it is easy enough to remove the authorization from the proxy of a 
login. Since no one necessarily knew the passwords on the inside of the 
network, it means you don't have to worry too much about being compromised by a 
disgruntled former user. 

Right now, sshproxy supports ini style config files and mysql backed configs. 
Both should offer easy backup solutions. 

Seems it is mildly annoying to use from putty, and from a standard ssh client 
it isn't too bad. Documentation on some things is very sparse. But it is 
pluggable and written in python. So it isn't too hard for someone to just jump 
in and try and read the code to better understanding of the docs.

-- 
Steven Critchfield [email protected]

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