[Courses] [Security] Terri's Laptop netstat

[Amanda Babcock]

On Thu, Mar 07, 2002 at 07:06:13PM -0500, Terri Oda wrote:

> >I ran netstat once, then realized I should probably run X to see if it was 
> >listening, so I ran X and this is the result.  I'm not sure why ssh-agent 
> >started up when X did, but I'm guessing it's something about about
> 
> About about, eh?  I was *going* to say that I'd guess it's something to let 
> me forward X connections over ssh.

Actually, no.  ssh-agent is a handy little program which is useful if you're 
doing lots of ssh-ing with public key authentication (RSA etc), aka you ssh 
someplace by typing your local private key, not the password of the account 
you're ssh-ing to.

Typing the same private key over and over can be annoying, so ssh-agent is
a good, secure way to store and serve the key.  It can only be accessed from
processes spawned from under ssh-agent, which is why one might run, for
example, "ssh-agent startx" (because then anything in that x-session will
have access to the ssh agent).  You add the key by typing "ssh-add" from one 
of the child processes (such as an X window in an X session started from 
ssh-agent), and from then on any ssh connections you make using public key
encryption from a child process of the ssh-agent can use that key.

When you log out of X, that particular ssh-agent will terminate and your
stored keys will be disposed of safely.

(Somebody let me know if I misused any terminology, like "child processes"
or anything...)

Amanda