Ask HN: Is Connecting via SSH Risky?

Or how large companies actually think about this risk in the real world. Expose SSH ports to the public internet willy-nilly and count the seconds until their ops and security teams come knocking wondering what the heck. YMMV of course, but that's generally how it goes.

Are critical SSH vulns few and far between, as far as anyone knows? Yes.

Do large companies want to protect against APT-style threats with nation-state level resources? Yep.

Does seeing hundreds if not thousands of failed login attempts a day directly on their infrastructure maybe worry some people, for that reason? Yup.

You call it consultant distraction speak, I call it educating you about what Wireguard actually is, because in your original reply you suggested it was password-based.

>Further, they serve two different purposes so its comparing Apples to oranges in the first place.

Not when both can be used to protect authentication flows.

One is chatty and handshakes with unauthenticated requests, also yielding a server version number. The other simply doesn't reply and stays silent.

>Simple software can have plenty vulns, and complex software can be well tested.

In this case, both are among some of the most highly audited pieces of software on the planet.

SSH is a risk because you’re trusting the users and client to not be idiots or get compromised. In general, people tend to do stupid things. If it’s just you and your server, potentially a different story.

It’s like sharing secrets with people, the more who are involved, the less likely the secret will be kept.

>So what’s the difference in risk of ssh software vulns and other software vulns?

I proceeded to explain how large companies think about the issue and what their rationale is for not exposing SSH endpoints to the public internet. On the technical side, I compared SSH to WireGuard.

For that comparison, the chattiness of their respective protocols was directly relevant.

Likewise complexity: between two highly-audited pieces of software, the silent one that's vastly simpler tends to win from a security perspective.

All of those points seem highly relevant to your question.

>... but thats not going to make you correct in the original question.

If you can elucidate what I said that was incorrect, I'm all ears.

WireGuard is 4k LoC and is very intentional about its choice of using a single, static crypto implementation to drastically reduce its complexity. Technically speaking, it has a lower attack surface for that reason.

That said, I've been on your side of the argument before, and practically speaking you can expose OpenSSH on the public internet with a proper key setup and almost certainly nothing will happen because it's a highly-audited, proven piece of software. Even though it's technically very complex.

But, that still doesn't mean it isn't best practice to avoid exposing it to the public internet. Especially when you can put things in front of it (such as WireGuard) that have a much lower technical complexity, and thus a reduced attack surface.

Wireguard is a protocol. So what implementation is “very intentional about its choice of …”? Are you talking about my own WG client implementation? Or the one made by this other Chinese vendor?

I don’t care what software we are talking about, or who made it. All software has a risk of undiscovered/-disclosed vulnerabilities already existing, or when new ones introduced with an update.

If you really want to make this argument we can talk about the implementing organisations SDLC, including SW supply chain, and compare those.

But back to the OP/point above: its false to state that one piece of software has a “principle risk” of vulnerabilities that another piece does not. At least, not when both are internet exposed and accepting incoming data.

Lasty remember that I never disagreed with you point that a VPN solution is often a better solution, but that was never what I was arguing about. Simply that all code always has a risk of vulnerabilities. No piece of software is excempt from that.