Thanks for the explanation, but this was not exactly what I meant - maybe I was a bit short, I’ll give some more details:
I have been using Bitwarden for some time, a single vault, I just use the Browser plugin to connect to websites. Now I have to connect to a server via SSH, so I did some search in the Internet about security and learned:
- Password authentication is bad, one should use keys. So I generated keys and switched password authentification off.
- The key should be protected by a passphrase, which should comprise te least 5 words, special characters, numbers… I created this. Result: each time I log into my server via ssh I have to type a long passphrase, of course repeatedly because of typing errors etc.
- I then read Bitwarden now supports SSH keys and hoped this would help and have imported the keys with passphrases to Bitwarden. But now:
The Browser plugin does not help. The agent only runs when the desktop app is started (what I normally never do). So instead of connecting directly and typing my passphrase, I have to start Bitwarden, type my Bitwarden password and connect then. And additionally: the passphrase is stored in Bitwarden and protected by a normal password, so the additional security of the passphrase is lost. I could also directly define only a relatively short password for my key and login directly.
Therefore I wonder whether I misunderstand the complete Bitwarden / SSH concept, or whether it is simply not useful in my case.