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by pyre 5613 days ago
If I got an error about a modified footprint I wouldn't "just delete the entry" and re-connect... unless I know why it's complaining. If there's a reasonable explanation for why the keys are different then I might do that.

While 'security conscious people' might not verify the fingerprint out-of-band when adding it the first time, I'm sure most of them wouldn't just remove the authorized_hosts entry...
2 comments
gaius 5613 days ago
Yes, I often see this and it's almost always that a VIP has moved physical hosts for whatever reason (e.g. planned maintenance on the original box). Occasionally it's that someone's re-JumpStart'd the box. That's sufficient to create a false sense of security, if it ever happened "for real" I would likely dismiss it.
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riffraff 5613 days ago
but that is the case in which yoiu _already have_ the footprint. Parent^2 is talking about the first connection, which is when you validate the fingerprint the first time.
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apotheon 5610 days ago
Why don't people validate?

That doesn't make any sense to me. There are even free services that can perform the validation for you based on a "crowdsourced" approach to verification, like Perspectives:

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/security/perspectives-provi...

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