how to turn off password-less login for ssh?

Question

I had setup password-less SSH login from my desktop to my laptop following the steps here. Now I want to turn off the password-less login so that when I ssh from my desktop to my laptop, it will ask for the password. How do I do it?

Jakuje · Accepted Answer · 2016-03-13T18:29:37.333

9

Disable pubkey authentication on the client where you don't want to use it.

ssh -o PubkeyAuthentication=no your_host

or in your ~/.ssh/config:

Host your_host
  PubkeyAuthentication no

If you want to remove the public key from the server, you need to remove the appropriate line from ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on server.

edited Mar 13 '16 at 18:29

answered Mar 13 '16 at 11:24

Jakuje

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Can the public key from the server be deleted? – In78 Mar 13 '16 at 16:45
Yes. You will remove it the opposite way as you added it there. The file is ~/.ssh/authorized_keys. – Jakuje Mar 13 '16 at 18:12

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 13 '16 at 11:35

1

As

ssh -o PubkeyAuthentication=no your_host

can easily be reverted by anyone who has access to the client to login to your laptob without needing a password at all, it may be a better choice to use a password encrypted private-key for those destinations, where you want to be asked for a password before login.

answered Mar 13 '16 at 11:35

cmks

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Or remote the key entirely. But it is not clear what is the OP intention. – Jakuje Mar 13 '16 at 12:05
Can the public key on the laptop(the host) be deleted? – In78 Mar 13 '16 at 16:42
yes, it can. the public keys are stored on the host in the file $HOME/.ssh/allowed_keys - one key each line. – cmks Mar 13 '16 at 16:46

how to turn off password-less login for ssh?

2 Answers2