One time passwords with Debian/Ubuntu for SSH
One time passwords are a very effective way to connect to an SSH server from an untrusted computer. Consider the following scenario I deal with almost daily.
The computers where I take classes are owned by a governmental organization. Sounds secure, right? Not really. Quite often other students will mess with the computers as they see fit. Plus, installing a keylogger is trivial, since the computers are Mac Minis running Windows Vista laid out on top of a desk, right next to their respective monitor.
Usually I would simply steal the network cable from a Mac Mini for my session on my secured laptop and plug it back in after, but unfortunately this behavior is forbidden by the administration. The biggest problem is not this, but that I need to get access to my remote server to copy a file off. And it cannot wait.
So, I simply fixed the problem by following this how-to and installing putty onto a removable medium, and using my laptop to generate the one time passwords. The linked guide isn’t to hard to follow, so I won’t bother creating my own version of it. However, I did notice some interesting things that could be done with the opie-client and opie-server packages that I plan to blog about later.
If you have any problems with following the how-to I linked to just post a comment here with your problem. I’ll do my best to help.
