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Comment by nirui | Hacker News Reader

For the SSH case mentioned in the article, `ssh -R` trick should already resolve some one-time contingencies (assuming SSH connection is not blocked).

But if you find yourself requesting `ssh -R` too often, maybe just ask those datacenter people to setup a proper SSH Bastion for you. There are opensource solutions and enterprise-level ones (Teleport for example: https://github.com/gravitational/teleport), some also allows you to do audit and access control, which maybe important if you work for a enterprise client.

The DIY solution described in the article literally punched a hole in the firewall. The firewall people might not like it.

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Regarding SSH bastion hosts, apart from open-source and enterprise solutions that may add some valuable features, you can always get away with a properly configured SSH jump host using TcpForwarding to relay connections to the target host.

There is a problem on simple TcpForwarding: audition. Some SSH Bastion allows all input and output to be logged for later inspection and forensic while DIY solutions often just ignored it's importance.

Notice that I said "forensic"? Yeah, assuming some very unfortunate situation has occurred, police are called and there will be a full incident report on it, a DIY'ed apparatus without detailed logging records will make the deployer of that apparatus look really bad. This is especially true if you're a contractor, since your hirer might not fully trust you.

Also, at very least, you'll probably want to be mentioned as "the proficient and diligent from one of our employee/partner allowed us to collect detailed information on what the attacker has done on our systems" than "the lack of consideration on the use of remote access tool made it impossible for us to know what else the attacker has done". It's good for your resume.

Thorough auditing can still happen on the target host. If every single one of your hosts is properly configured to produce audit logs, maybe you can get away without auditing or even session recording on the SSH bastion host.

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