Did any of those bots brute force a password? Because a 20 character random password is comparable in brute force complexity to an SSH key. The experiment you ran was just as valid for SSH keys on that port, and had no bearing on password vs key.
The point is they found the security by obscurity so-called "hidden" port in less than a couple of hours.
At that point, what they did is irrelevant. The point is that security by obscurity does not work in 2026.
> Because a 20 character random password is comparable in brute force complexity to an SSH key.
You can't be serious with your comment.
No its not.
And even then, SSH key is asymmetric, you're not sending the private key to the server. But with a password you are, which leaves you vulnerable to many attack vectors that simply do not exist with keys.
> You can't be serious with your comment. \n\n No its not.
If you differ in opinion, maybe provide evidence? Especially for a claim like long randomly generated value 1 being absurdly ("can't be serious"-level) weak as compared to long randomly generated value 2
If you mean it's log(62^20,2)≈119 bits of entropy instead of 128+ and so it's theoretically weaker when we build a Dyson sphere around the sun to brute force that key (after somehow obtaining the shadow file, since an online attack would be way too slow), then sure
I feel the opposite, note how most all AI vulns discovered use source code level analysis, empirically keeping source code hidden is more secure.
kerchoff’s principle is misconstrued by a voyeuristic internet that wants to see source code
(almost) No company actually has secret source code, only source code not publicly viewable. And the LLMs crawling those don't belong to people who make public disclosures.
In other words, conceptually, at the end if the day, isn’t a key just another name for a password, really?
SSH certificates are cool too.
but I guess that the hash is always the same unlike with pub priv key mechanism.
Kind of irrelevant what gets sent to the server and what happens on the server.
Password is already easily defeatable long before it even leaves your computer, thanks to keyloggers and/or password manager breaches and/or old-school shoulder surfing (assisted in the 2026 era by covert filming and AI).
All of which are not vulnerabilities with hardware-backed keys which you don't even need a Yubikey for these days since most modern computers and smartphones have secure enclaves and/or TPMs. (Yubikeys are still great though).
Keys are usually at least 128 bits of entropy, and it's easy to take them up to 256.
Yes, both are a shared secret, but password auth - even with challenge-response - is weaker than key auth exactly because key auth provides more guess resistance.
The best password in the world will still be defeated by a simple keylogger or breach of your password manager.
Worth noting that if you are running a remotely recent version of SSH it has everything you need built-in. No need for Fail2Ban on SSH these days if your config is fully modernised.
What cpu and especially what disk load are you talking about? Also not running out of sockets, not sure if that's RAM-dependent (the box has 2GB)
Even 5+ years ago, hardware-backed SSH keys were a thing (Yubikey). The only difference today is that its 100% easier to do keys properly because of the widespread commoditisation of secure enclaves in desktops and smartphones to support FIDO, its basically free of charge now because you're not obliged to buy a Yubikey.
It's not just the parent commenter. I'm sure somebody out there is going to remove their account password instead of editing their sshd_config in an attempt to "patch" this vulnerability, actually exacerbating the problem.
You > This particular bug works even with password authentication turned off.
No. The bug is related to password authentication. If you do not have password authentication then you are not affected.
What freaks some people out is they chose parameters where they do have password authentication but they expect to always fail. That's a bad choice, like OK you did fit a cheap manual keyhole, but you threw the keys away thinking now nobody can open that - you realise somebody with a cheap jiggler can open it right ?
Does it ?
Somebody here has already said "You can set PasswordAuthentication=no or update to remediate"
We don't use musl at $work anyway, so I've no means to test.
Why not ?
Even if you don't want to go all the way to SSH certificates, SSH public-key authentication is laughably easy to do.
I also don't buy the argument "but its on a ULA address". Attacker's old favourite these days is finding a way in (North–South) and then using that as a stepping stone (East–West). Also the general concept of "lower security is OK because its on the LAN" is so 1997.
No excuse for doing that these days.
You can use a Yubikey or you can use your computer's secure enclave or TPM with FIDO at no extra cost.
A password is never, ever "strictly better". Seriously, you're just making shit up now.