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Show HN: Invite friends to SSH into your laptop using their GitHub handle

gravitational.com

11–20 of 105 posts

Re: Show HN: Invite friends to SSH into your laptop using their GitHub handle

#11
post #4

I'm guessing the SSH session between me and my friend is not encrypted end-to-end because of proxies and what not in between?

It's very easy to get an authorized_keys file for a GitHub user account; just download (e.g.) https://github.com/geofft.keys .

Presumably all this does is spawn a local SSH server with the appropriate authorized_keys file, and forward the TCP connection through the company's servers for NAT traversal. The actual connection is encrypted end-to-end.

Re: Show HN: Invite friends to SSH into your laptop using their GitHub handle

#12
post #3

Yeah, what a great idea, let random "cloud" services authenticate who gets to login to your machine!

Being unconstructively snarky about a concept that another member of this forum has presented is both poor manners and defies the guidelines linked in the bottom of the page

Re: Show HN: Invite friends to SSH into your laptop using their GitHub handle

#13
post #11
post #4

I'm guessing the SSH session between me and my friend is not encrypted end-to-end because of proxies and what not in between?

It's very easy to get an authorized_keys file for a GitHub user account; just download (e.g.) https://github.com/geofft.keys . Presumably all this does is spawn a local SSH server with the appropriate authorized_keys file, and forward the TCP connection through the company's servers for NAT traversal. The actual connection is encrypted end-to-end.

Correct. Another thing it does is "merging" the incoming connections into the current bash session, so you can see each other type, the idea here was to work on the same machine together kind of like in Etherpad.

Re: Show HN: Invite friends to SSH into your laptop using their GitHub handle

#14
post #4

I'm guessing the SSH session between me and my friend is not encrypted end-to-end because of proxies and what not in between?

It is properly encrypted: Your machine, being an SSH server, gets to decide who can login. The encryption works just with any normal SSH session: between the end user and the server (your machine). The cloud bridge running on https://teleconsole.com simply acts as a proxy connecting sockets between two users who are behind NAT (without being able to decrypt). Disclaimer: I'm the author of Teleconsole. [edit: formatti…

Thanks for your reply. And apologies for my short attention span. I read "proxy", "NAT" and jumped to conclusions.

Re: Show HN: Invite friends to SSH into your laptop using their GitHub handle

#15
post #4

I'm guessing the SSH session between me and my friend is not encrypted end-to-end because of proxies and what not in between?

It is properly encrypted: Your machine, being an SSH server, gets to decide who can login. The encryption works just with any normal SSH session: between the end user and the server (your machine). The cloud bridge running on https://teleconsole.com simply acts as a proxy connecting sockets between two users who are behind NAT (without being able to decrypt). Disclaimer: I'm the author of Teleconsole. [edit: formatti…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Invite friends to SSH into your laptop using their GitHub handle

#16
post #3

Yeah, what a great idea, let random "cloud" services authenticate who gets to login to your machine!

Being unconstructively snarky about a concept that another member of this forum has presented is both poor manners and defies the guidelines linked in the bottom of the page

Just making a critique of the concept. Didn't think that was against any guidelines.

Re: Show HN: Invite friends to SSH into your laptop using their GitHub handle

#17
post #4

I'm guessing the SSH session between me and my friend is not encrypted end-to-end because of proxies and what not in between?

It is properly encrypted: Your machine, being an SSH server, gets to decide who can login. The encryption works just with any normal SSH session: between the end user and the server (your machine). The cloud bridge running on https://teleconsole.com simply acts as a proxy connecting sockets between two users who are behind NAT (without being able to decrypt). Disclaimer: I'm the author of Teleconsole. [edit: formatti…

Does it run as a proxy or does it just do the nat hole punching?

Re: Show HN: Invite friends to SSH into your laptop using their GitHub handle

#18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being unconstructively snarky about a concept that another member of this forum has presented is both poor manners and defies the guidelines linked in the bottom of the page

Just making a critique of the concept. Didn't think that was against any guidelines.

I agree with your opinion, and of course critiques are always welcome here, but your comment does seem unnecessarily snarky. Perhaps something like this would be more in keeping with the HN guidelines:

"It seems like a big risk to allow a little-known cloud service to authorise SSH access to your laptop. What are the use cases for this? What do you need to be careful of?"

Re: Show HN: Invite friends to SSH into your laptop using their GitHub handle

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is properly encrypted: Your machine, being an SSH server, gets to decide who can login. The encryption works just with any normal SSH session: between the end user and the server (your machine). The cloud bridge running on https://teleconsole.com simply acts as a proxy connecting sockets between two users who are behind NAT (without being able to decrypt). Disclaimer: I'm the author of Teleconsole. [edit: formatti…

Does it run as a proxy or does it just do the nat hole punching?

This page is good: http://gravitational.com/teleport/docs/architecture/

The proxy accepts two incoming connections: from your server and from the client, then it bridges them and allows the client to negotiate an SSH handshake with the server.

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