Comment by somat
2 days ago
When I set up a client sftp drop I had the luxury of saying "key based access only"
Then it was a surprisingly customer service intensive process to get the keys from the customers. I never did manage to automate it fully. Weird enterprise systems I have never heard of with strange key formats. ssh1 keys, email mangling them. Their internal processes requiring a password.
And way to many "I am sorry but that was the private key you sent me, That key is now compromised and you will need to remove it and generate new keys anywhere it was used"
I almost regret not allowing passwords, almost, despite the headaches key based is still much better.
About to say, users just drop the key on their desktop and then download random exe's from the internet and run them.
Still safter in general, but not bulletproof.
At least in that case, if the account is compromised we definitely didn't leak the credentials. That we don't have them to leak is one of the advantages of key-based auth.
[of course not having the credentials to leak does not protect us from this sort of bug, it is just one factor in a multipart security stance]