> Hmm, that might work for a small scale setup or where users relatively
> infrequently login to bastions.
>
> Less so when you're talking hundreds to thousands of hosts, or where
> frequent logins are a part of the daily experience -- perhaps due to
> side effects of various organizational policies?

Question:: Why are you logging into that many hosts?  We have hundreds  
of systems, but I login to very few of them. Typically we login to an  
Admin host, which we can then jump to the other hosts, and have  
convenient  admin scripts- scripts that take action against many  
hosts.  Most of the time, most of our work is done by CFengine.


I'm in the middle of determining our Bastion host design, and I've got  
2 things in mind:

1) system that's an IP restricted ssh system, preferably w/ SSH keys.
2) system w/ no IP restrictions, but maybe 2 factor auth.  (Doesn't  
exist yet)

Neither box has any real admin scripts, or much on it.  It's supposed  
to serve as the system you login to, and then ssh to the correct admin  
box.   I'll have to look at jumpsh,  It might be nice to really limit  
the use of the box to a small number of hosts inside the perimeter.

Part of my reasoning for this is to have an external box we keep fully  
up to date on security patches, without worrying about it impacting  
any other services on it.   I might suggest the alternative port, just  
to keep the annoying script kiddies from filling up my logs, but it's  
not a huge issue.

What do  people think of  SSH with SSH keys *only* ?  Is it strong  
enough to be a non-IP locked system?
   -- I'd expect to have at most 8 users with SSH keys- the Linux SA  
group.  They could be counted on to notify the group in the event of a  
stolen laptop, which in mind is the only real attack vector.  We don't  
have any PCI issues anymore.


Also: does anyone have any decent suggestions for 2 factor systems  
that are free?  I'd prefer not to have to carry any kind of token.    
The group has Blackberries, and iphones, + laptops, basically.


Matthew

Matthew Barr
[email protected]
cell: 646-765-6878


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