Keep SSH Sessions Active, Or Reconnect?

borjonx writes "Is it safer to log out of an SSH session, and re-establish it later, or just keep the connection open? Like many of you, I use OpenSSH to connect to my Slackware Linux boxes remotely from Linux and WinXP (putty.exe) clients. At home and at work, I wonder if it would be safer to just leave the connection open (my clients are physically secured, the servers limit connections with hosts.allow). Is it more secure to re-establish the connection over an insecure link (big bad internet) where people can sniff that handshaking, or is it more secure to just remain connected? I connect 1 to 4 times per day, most days."

Re:screen

[Anonymous Coward]

Just drive a blue car if you want it to catch on fire, you mean. The ONLY time I have ever had a car catch on fire it was blue.

Depends...

[Monkeedude1212]

Are they using the interwebs to hack the mainframe, or crack the mainframe? You need to consider if they are after your Datasheets or your Hard-Diskette. Theres so many factors to consider. Perhaps they just want to plant a worm that will grow into a virus which will grow into a trojan, if you don't stop it in its Larval stages. You can use cyber worms and cyber Larva in some advanced Phishing techniques, so don't waste them if you come across them. I suppose the only way to be sure 100% secure is to encrypt your entire house on the molecular level. Before you head off to work, you should arrange each everything into 8 mol groups and hash into some kind of cipher, its the only way to be both virtually and physically secure.

Re:all of the above

[moonbender]

Are you crazy? Obviously the two encryptions would cancel out each other!

Or...

[DRAGONWEEZEL]

When you cross the two encryption streams you may get total protonic reversal, or you may get 1 REALLY POWERFUL STREAM.

Re:screen

[pookemon]

The only car I have ever seen on fire (in real life as opposed to on TV) was a Porsche - and it was blue.

And I currently have two laptops that I amd repairing - both of them have buggered screens.

Oh, and then there's the "Blue Screen of Death" - though I've only seen one PC burst into flames after a BSOD, so that was probably a coincidence...

Re:screen

[louzerr]

I've had two cars catch fire ... both blue!!! I think you're on to something ...

Ah, the feared ROT13 cypher?

[rsborg]

Are you crazy? Obviously the two encryptions would cancel out each other!

Yes, you are correct, but you may want to upgrade from ROT-13 to ROT-26.

Boring...

[brundlefly]

This is exactly the sort of question that Stack Overflow was created for....

Re:screen

[JustOK]

blue, brown and bi-colored all start with the letter b

Like many of us ...

[Lemming Mark]

Like many of you, I use OpenSSH to connect to my Slackware Linux boxes remotely

If many of us are connecting to your Slackware boxes, reconnecting is not your largest vulnerability!

(sorry, couldn't resist)

Re:Wat

[tobiasly]

Ideally, you would to verify that fingerprint with a version you get through alternate, presumably secure, means. E.g. an over-the-phone conversation with an administrator

So what if this administrator you're having such a secure conversation with has someone holding a gun to his head! Guess you're not so secure now, huh?