I need to upload a file to a server.
The server uploads using SFTP. After authentication, any command execution is forbidden, so I cannot SSH directly in, I need to get directly into the SFTP subsystem.
For instance.
ssh -N user@example.com works fine, except I can't SFTP anything.
However, I can do sftp user@example.com just fine.
Problem: I need to automate this, the authentication is keyboard-interactive, not key-based. I don't own the server I'm connecting to, they simply said "Here's the password, upload the files every week." And nobody over there knows anything about keys or stuff like that.
sftp -b Batch scripts won't allow keyboard interactive auth.
I'm sick of manually uploading the file. They sent the 8-charecter password over unencrypted email and it contains 3 of the same numbers at the end and one dictionary word (ie "Words777") — lets pretend security really isn't an issue here.
Can I make the SSH key from just the password? Remember, I don't have access to the other server. Can I script this some way? I've attempted using different packages, and even rsync to do the upload, but they all want to access SSH directly instead of directly getting into the SFTP subsystem.
Best Answer
I think that if you create a ssh key without protecting it with a "passphrase", you can skip the keyboard interactive part and thus easily create the upload script you need. See for example here :
ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "Your Name" -f your_keyThis will create the necessary files, you then just have to copy the public one (*.pub) on the remote server.