Edent,
@Edent@mastodon.social avatar

Hmmm. I have an SSH key which I use for both and .

GitLab has just warned me it will expire in 7 days (but no notification from GitHub!).

So, my wizard friends:

Is there a way to update my key? (I assume no and I need to create a new one.)

Should I have different keys for Hub/Lab?

What's the real danger to my personal repos of having never-expiring keys?

THANKS CLEVER PEOPLE WHO ALMOST CERTAINLY KNOW MORE THAN AN LLM!

acdha,
@acdha@code4lib.social avatar

@Edent just wanted to second the people using FIDO tokens (builtin now) or the Secure Enclave/TPM: my goal is not to copy keys across devices and to use something which simple file collecting malware couldn’t grab. That matters more to me than rotation because an attacker can likely accomplish whatever they’re interested in before any reasonable expiration window.

nogweii,
@nogweii@nogweii.net avatar

@Edent as others mentioned, this is a Gitlab specific "feature". Classic SSH keys don't have any date information. There's a thing called "SSH Certificates" that use X509 certs to if you want that pain. (Useful in other ways though.)

re: Same keys - its fine, IMO. Better to have different keys per computer. Also better to have different keys per security domain. (Personal servers vs corporate servers vs external companies.) But 'better' is relative and marginal.

Edent,
@Edent@mastodon.social avatar

@nogweii thanks, cat-shaped friend.

henryk,
@henryk@chaos.social avatar

@Edent I think you should just "delete" your key on the gitlab server and upload it again, without expiration date.

Personally, I don't believe in these kinds of expiration dates. They're for a) people who regularly move machines and forget to wipe/revoke old keys, or b) organizations with some churn that want to prevent old employee access lingering forever. Almost no-one[tm] needs this. There's no cryptographic/inherent danger from non-expiring keys, only organizational issues.

henryk,
@henryk@chaos.social avatar

@Edent (I usually have my SSH keys in hardware modules, either yubikey/smartcard or TPM/virtual smartcard, or secure enclave on MacOS X. This way they either move with me when I move machines, or they were bound to the decommissioned machine and cannot linger.)

Edent,
@Edent@mastodon.social avatar

@henryk cheers.
I have several YubiKeys - but I just can't be bothered to find them 🥴

ashok,
@ashok@mstdn.ca avatar

@Edent I don’t think SSH keys have a built-in expiration, so I suspect this is something defined on the Gitlab side.

You could generate a fresh key pair, and add it, or from a quick search, it looks like you can possibly delete and re-add it in GitLab.

The main reason to make a new key pair would be if your current one is using an older algorithm that’s less favoured nowadays, or a smaller key size than you’d choose now.

Edent,
@Edent@mastodon.social avatar

@ashok ah, you're right. It is something in the GitLab interface. I'll try deleting it and re-adding it.
Ta!

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