python结构如何保护ssh凭据？

Question

So I've recently stumbled upon python fabric api and have been really happy with how it can help me with day-to-day sysadmin tasks. I would like to start using it at work but it is a very security-conscious environment. I was wondering how fabric handles the ssh password you provide to it while it runs it's tasks? I'm assuming it plonks it in memory somewhere and pulls it out when required to login to the next host in env.hosts ? How does it protect this password while in memory?

I can see I'm going to be asked lots of questions along these lines so I'm looking for a nice way to explain to security-minded type of people that fabric is nice and friendly and doesn't pose a risk or at least no more of a risk than anything else we already have :)

Answer 1

I looked briefly through the source @dm03514 referenced and I believe you are correct in that if and when fabric needs to prompt interactively for a password, it will read it into memory and store it for the duration of the fabric python process. The way to address your concern is not with fabric itself but with ensuring your ssh infrastructure is using keys instead of passphrases and ssh agent forwarding where appropriate. Use enrypted ssh keys and ssh-agent to unlock them and fabric will be able to utilize that same mechanism and thus avoid ssh passwords getting involved at all. For sudo passwords, you'll either have to allow passwordless sudo or accept the risk of fabric having the sudo password in memory while it is working.