Subject: bug#44808: Default to allowing password authentication on leaves users vulnerable

From: Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 07 Dec 2020 12:51:54 +0100

Hi Chris,

Christopher Lemmer Webber <[email-masked]> skribis:

> Ludovic Courtès writes:

[...]

>> Agreed.  There are several ways to do that:
>>
>>   1. Have the installer emit an ‘openssh-configuration’ that explicitly
>>      disables password authentication.
>>
>>   2. Change the default value of the relevant field in
>>      <openssh-configuration>.
>>
>> #2 is more thorough but also more risky: people could find themselves
>> locked out of their server after reconfiguration, though this could be
>> mitigated by a news entry.
>>
>> Thoughts?
>>
>> Ludo’.
>
> We could also do a combination of the above, as a transitional plan:
> do #1 for now, but try to advertise that in the future, the default will
> be changing... please explicitly set password access to #t if you need
> this!  Then in the *following* release, change the default.
>
> This seems like a reasonable transition plan, kind of akin to a
> deprecation process?

Sounds like a plan.  I went ahead and pushed
aecd2a13cbd8301d0fdeafcacbf69e12cc3f6138 which does this.

Thanks,
Ludo’.