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Auto-unlock private key: which implications?

Çağlar Arlı      -    3 Views

Auto-unlock private key: which implications?

On my system (Ubuntu 22.04) I have encrypted my private key with a passphrase and added it to the ssh agent with ssh-add. On use of the key, I am prompted with the option "Automatically unlock this key whenever I'm logged in".

In non-technical terms, what this would imply ? In particular:

  1. would be my passphrase saved somewhere on disk, or only in memory ?
  2. would be someone with my login credential be able to recover the passphrase and/or the unencrypted private key ?