>I am not sure about this. First, there is a built in MITM attack here.
This always sounds like a NSA shill argument to me. Sure, you can MITM, but then, you HAVE to MITM on the very first request of every user to make that work. That's much more expensive than vacuuming up passwords server side with gag orders.
>Second, ssh keys are somewhat limited... You cannot embed identity info in the public key.
That's ridiculous. Who would want to? You are looking for an authorization solution. SSH is for authentication.
Who said MITM isn't a threat? I'm talking about the difference between targeted surveillance (MITM) and dragnet surveillance. If you think you have any solution that would beat the NSA at targeted surveillance, you are dead wrong.
In the meantime, not trusting a third party server with a password would go a long way toward defeating dragnet surveillance. Read the reports. NSA defeats your SSL routinely, and they are MOST INTERESTED in the part where you supply a server with a password. They can only bust SSH some of the time. There is a very real security difference between the two.
Snowden got exiled bringing you the news. At least have the decency to read it.
Except the NSA almost certainly has the ability to MITM ssl connections, which means the whole CA thing doesn't gain you that much if NSA is what you care about.
Of course I can MITM something without CAs if you're on public wifi, provided I intercept the very first connection, so it's a valid question for defending againt less sophisticated attackers.
This always sounds like a NSA shill argument to me. Sure, you can MITM, but then, you HAVE to MITM on the very first request of every user to make that work. That's much more expensive than vacuuming up passwords server side with gag orders.
>Second, ssh keys are somewhat limited... You cannot embed identity info in the public key.
That's ridiculous. Who would want to? You are looking for an authorization solution. SSH is for authentication.