MFmfontani·Apr 30, 2020
I don't. Each agent gets one key, and that key alone. That's what helps.
https://github.com/ccontavalli/ssh-ident is what I use to manage those agents - one agent per key.
In SSH hacks – a little sanity for remote workersccontavalli
ssh-ident
Python2015–2020
ccontavalli / ssh-ident
ssh-ident
Different agents and different keys for different projects, with ssh.
2Distinct people
8Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
986GitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Different agents and different keys for different projects, with ssh.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 5:05:26 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year8 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2015-01-03 07:13:22 UTC to 2020-04-30 11:27:08 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
What Hacker News says
2 sourcesIf a bad guy gets root on one server you're currently connected via ssh with, and forwarding said key via, they can also access (unless otherwise firewalled) all systems that ssh key grants them access to.
See also: https://github.com/FiloSottile/whoami.filippo.io
Using a private key per system or set of systems means that such an attacker would only gain access to what that key grants them access to.
My "github" key only grants access to my github repos, not to my bitbucket repos or to my DigitalOcean servers, or my Scaleway servers.
I have an SSH key for each "thing", and each key is kept in a different keyring via https://github.com/ccontavalli/ssh-ident, _precisely_ to avoid that problem.
As an example, an attacker gaining root on my Oracle Cloud free server will not be able to clone all my Github repos with it: I only use that key to
Read the rest
connect to that server, and while I may have the github key unlocked at the same time - that's on a different keyring which the server has no visibility of.