[tptacek]

If you have a small, stable number of hosts, an SSH PKI doesn't make a lot of sense. With a large fleet, and/or if you want to tie your fleet into an OIDC IdP, certificates are pretty common; the most common way of solving this problem, I think?

[palata]

I think it's the case in big companies. But most companies are not big :-), which means that a lot of people are using SSH without ever checking the fingerprint. That would be my intuition.

[tptacek]

SSH has always relied on key continuity for this problem; you're exposed when you're first introduced to a host (on a particular client) but then fine from that point on.

This of course breaks down with cattle fleets where ~most logins are to hosts you've never hit before, which is why cattle fleets tend to use SSH PKI.

[palata]

Over the years I have seen - repeatedly - colleagues just removing ~/.ssh/known_hosts when SSH showed the warning that says something like "YOU MAY HAVE BEEN HACKED!!!".

I think passkeys resolve that, even though it's more of a human issue than a technical issue :-).