The issue is that shared keys make revocation and auditing messy. Multiple people effectively share the same identity, and rotating keys across many servers becomes painful.
Modern access models handle this differently by brokering SSH sessions based on individual identity rather than distributing private keys. Each session is scoped to a specific user and server, and access can be revoked centrally.
I wrote a breakdown focusing on the operational trade-offs rather than a product pitch:
https://www.lynxtrac.com/ssh-access-without-sharing-private-keys
Curious how others here manage SSH access in growing teams.
Bender•1h ago
Servers and workstations (clients of the LDAP server) should be configured to only use authorized keys from LDAP and not locally as they can contain multiple public keys which quickly gets harder to audit and harder to catch someone slipping a public key into the local authorized_keys.
[1] - https://serverfault.com/questions/653792/ssh-key-authenticat...