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by oxygen_crisis
652 days ago
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sshpass is a travesty of security. It has all the pitfalls of putting your front door key under your doormat. Except you're doing it in a world where everyone can materialize a unique key out of thin air, and you can always instantly tell your door which of those keys should or shouldn't be allowed to open it. sshpass is a curse, even calling it a crutch would be improper flattery. It's a dangerous cheat that accomplishes nothing except impeding people from otherwise spending the 20 minutes it takes to figure out SSH keys. |
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Any automation around passwords is a crutch and a mistake. But sometimes it is necessary.
You don't always control the remote systems. The remote systems are not always capable of key-based auth. And sometimes the remote system is not of high concern so the "danger" is null.
sshpass makes a reasonable effort to do the best-possible thing under these less-than-ideal circumstances. The other options suck more.
My most recent use of sshpass is to collect reports from a vendor over sftp. I would have preferred to use https with BASIC auth, but in truth that has exactly the same problems as sshpass, and I have other hills to die on.