[ILUG] Accessing home computer from outside

[Timothy Murphy]

On Saturday 30 December 2006 15:22, Colm Buckley wrote:

> SSH is generally considered secure if you have good password choices -
> or better, only use pre-shared keys.  It's not a great idea to just
> leave the ssh port open to the outside world (you get a lot of
> dictionary attacks), so a combination of:
>
>    * Run ssh from a port other than 22
>    * Restrict the IP ranges from which connections can be made
>    * Implement port knocking

Thanks very much for all the advice.

Unfortunately I don't know the IP address I'll be calling from.

I presently use shorewall to (hopefully) protect my system
from external access.
(The ssh port is not open to the world.)
I see there is some documentation on port-knocking with shorewall,
at <http://www.shorewall.net/PortKnocking.html>,
so I guess I'll try to set that up.

One thing I guess I've never understood
is why it is so easy to set up an ssh connection internally,
eg if someone brings a laptop into the house.
My shorewall policy allows connection from LAN to firewall:
	loc             $FW             ACCEPT
Does that mean ssh does not look for any authentication in this case?

-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland