[Nix-dev] Re: [PATCH] autofs: Allow mounting ssufs-fuse filesystem using ssh-agents of the users only. There is afuse as well which might do a better job but that doesn't unmount automatically AFAIK. Using the example should prevent other users which are logged into your machinge using your mounts.

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi Marc,

Marc Weber <marco-oweber at gmx.de> writes:

> The useful hack I wrote is a sshfs wrapper.
> It uses pgrep to identify all runing ssh-agents.
> It then defines SSH_AGENT_PID and
> SSH_AUTH_SOCK and tries to mount the location.
> If it fails the next ssh-agent is tried.
> (Usually you only have one on your computer anyway..)

OK, thanks for explaining.

> Using arbitrary ssh-agents is very dangerous:
> Consider someone else logging into your machine.
> If you add the key he could do:
>   cd /auto/you-remote-location

Indeed.

My feeling is that it’s something that ought to be discussed with
sshfs-fuse upstream, not hacked around in a distro, because there seems
to be a fundamental usability issue (using sshfs-fuse with
passphrase-protected keys), and there’s probably a wealth of security
pitfalls like the one you mention above.

What do you think?

Thanks,
Ludo’.