How to Uninstall ssh / sshd on mac

Question

How to Uninstall ssh / sshd on mac

Hi, I noticed that ssh / sshd were installed on Mac OS High Sierra. Although they are not running by default, I thought it would be more secure to completely uninstall them since this a development machine and don't want any access. I'm afraid someone could even gain physical access and then enable them by default.

I looked for their location in command line, but could not find them. I tried to grep, but didn't find them yet.

Does anyone know where they are located? Could uninstalling cause any other ill effects?

Isn't this a vulnerability to have them installed by default? Most people will not use them and it's really easy to turn them on from the command line and tunnel someone's machine.

Mac mini, macOS High Sierra (10.13), iCloud extra features authenticatio

Posted on Jan 6, 2018 5:16 AM

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Answer 1

etresoft

Level 8

46,098 points

Jan 6, 2018 6:01 AM in response to superjos_high_sierra

Hello superjos_high_sierra,

They are part of the operating system. They cannot and should not be removed. There is no security risk unless you create one by enabling remote access and choosing a weak password. If anyone malicious had physical access to your machine, there is nothing you could do to stop them.

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Answer 2

BobHarris

Level 9

53,003 points

Jan 6, 2018 10:55 AM in response to superjos_high_sierra

If you let untrusted people have physical access to your Mac, ssh is the least of your problems.

As far as I know every Unix based systems currently shipping today, includes ssh, because it is a much more secure way of communicating between systems. The would include just about every cloud server around the planet (except maybe Windows based servers). And the world is not coming to an end.

If you are behind a home router, then unless you enable port forwarding on your home router for port 22, then no one outside your home will be able to ssh into your Mac, even if you enable ssh.

First keep untrusted people from having physical access to your Mac

Second, modify /etc/ssh/sshd_config and set PasswordAuthentication=no. This will force anyone trying to connect via ssh, if and only if ssh was enabled, to have an ssh-keygen key already stored on your Mac. Then it does not matter how secure your personal passwords are.

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