How can you change the default location of the .ssh folder

Question

My Uni's all ssh keys were stolen. The Sys admins decided to remove all .ssh folders and move the files to a folder which name I cannot say.

I am interested how the sysadmins changed the default SSH-key folder.

How can you change the default ~/.ssh -folder to the folder ~/TopSecret/, such that my computer detects that the keys are in a new folder?

Answer 1

Have a look at sshd_config(5) and edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config. Note that the path of relevant configuration files is set for each file individually (that is, it's not a matter of just changing the string .ssh to something else in one place in the config file).

Anyway, the setting you're looking for is AuthorizedKeysFile.

Answer 2

To reduce the impact of private key disclosure, it's advisable to password encrypt the key itself. Offline brute force attacks on specific keys are still possible, but it does throw a wrench in someone who makes off with a cartload of user keys.

More to the point, you shouldn't store private keys of value on anything you don't control. To connect to a server, storing the public key on the server is sufficient.

Answer 3

You can rename folders with the "mv" command. So you could rename TopSecret back to .ssh by "mv TopSecret .ssh".

The administrators can control where the sshd looks for your keys by changing the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file's AuthorizedKeysFile parameter. You can't change this.