Using sftp to Copy Many Files Between Machines
sftp is a mix between ftp and scp. Connecting to the server uses the same syntax as scp — you can just specify an IP address to connect to using your current username, or you can specify a username using username@ipaddress. You can optionally add a colon and a directory, as with scp. After you are connected, the commands are the same as ftp: cd, put, mput, get, quit, and so on.
In one of the scp examples, we copied a remote file locally. You can do the same thing with sftp through the following conversation:
[paul@susannah ~]$ sftp 10.0.0.1
Connecting to 10.0.0.1...
[email protected]'s password:
sftp> get remote.txt
Fetching /home/paul/remote.txt to remote.txt
/home/paul/remote.txt 100% 23 0.0KB/s 00:00
sftp> quit
paul@susannah ~]$
Although FTP remains prominent because of the number of systems that do not have support for SSH (Windows, specifically), SFTP is gaining in popularity. Apart from the fact that it secures all communications between client and server, SFTP is popular because the initial connection between the client and server is made over port 22 through the sshd daemon. Someone using SFTP connects to the standard sshd daemon, verifies himself, and then is handed over to the SFTP server. The advantage to this is that it reduces the attack vectors because the SFTP server cannot be contacted directly and so cannot be attacked as long as the sshd daemon is secure.
Using ssh-keygen to Enable Key-Based Logins
There is a weak link in the SSH system, and, inevitably, it lies with users. No matter what lengths system administrators go to in training users to be careful with their passwords, Post-it notes with 'pAssw0rd' written on them are attached to monitors around the world. Sure, it has a mix of letters and numbers, but it can be cracked in less than a second by any brute-force method.
Even very strong passwords are no more than about 16 characters; such passwords take a long time to brute-force but can still be cracked. The solution is to use key-based logins, which generate a unique, 1024-bit private and public key pair for your machine. These keys take even the fastest computers a lifetime to crack, and you can back them up with a password to stop others from using them.
Creating an SSH key is done through the ssh-keygen command, like this:
ssh-keygen -t dsa
Press Enter when it prompts you where to save your key, and enter a passphrase when it asks you to. This passphrase is just a password used to protect the key — you can leave it blank if you want to, but doing so would allow other people to use your account to connect to remote machines if they manage to log in as you.
After the key is generated (it might take up to 30 seconds depending on the speed of your machine), change the directory to .ssh (cd ~/.ssh), which is a hidden directory where your key is stored and also where a list of safe SSH hosts is kept. There you will see the files id_dsa and id_dsa.pub. The first is your private key and should never be given out. The second is your public key, which is safe for distribution. You need to copy the public key to each server you want to connect to via key- based SSH.
Using scp, you can copy the public key over to your server, like this:
scp id_dsa.pub 10.0.0.1:
This places id_dsa.pub in your home directory on 10.0.0.1. The next step is to SSH into 10.0.0.1 normally and set up that key as an authorized key. So you can SSH in as yourself and then type the following:
touch .ssh/authorized_keys
cat id_dsa.pub >> .ssh/authorized_keys
chmod 400 .ssh/authorized_keys
The touch command creates the authorized_keys file (if it does not exist already); then you use cat to append the contents of id_dsa.pub to the list of already authorized keys. Finally, chmod is used to make authorized_keys read only.
With that done, you can type exit to disconnect from the remote machine and return to your local machine. Then you can try running ssh again. If you are prompted for your passphrase, you have successfully configured key-based authentication.
Now the current machine is secured, but what about every other machine? It is still possible to log in from another machine using only a password, which means your remote machine is still vulnerable.
The solution to this is to switch to root and edit the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file. Look for the PasswordAuthentication line and make sure it reads no (and that it is not commented out with a #). Save the file, and run kill -HUP `cat /var/run/sshd.pid` to have sshd reread its configuration files. With that done, sshd accepts connections only from clients with authorized keys, which stops crackers from brute-forcing their way in.
For extra security, consider setting PermitRootLogin to no in /etc/ssh/sshd_config. When this is set, it becomes impossible to SSH into your machine using the root account — you must connect with a normal user account and then use su or sudo to switch to root. This is advantageous because most brute-force attempts take place on the root account because it is the only account that is guaranteed to exist on a server. Also, even if a cracker knows your user account, she has to guess both your user password and your root password to take control of your system.
Remote X
Everything we have looked at so far has been about command-line remoting, with no mention of how to bring up a graphical user interface. There are two ways of doing this in Linux: the X Display Manager Control Protocol (XDMCP) and Virtual Network Computing (VNC). The former is specific to the X Window System and is very tightly integrated with the rest of the graphical system but is also very insecure. VNC is more modern and very widespread but insecure in some implementations. Both are being used with Fedora, so we cover both here.
