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Allow Or Deny SSH Access To A Particular User Or Group In Linux

Allow Or Deny SSH Access To A Particular User Or Group In Linux

openSSH default configuration file has two directives for both allowing and denying SSH access to a particular user(s) or a group.

Allow SSH Access to a user or group

First, we will see how to allow SSH access for a particular user, for example sk.

Please note that all commands should be run as root user.


Go to your remote server, and edit sshd_config file:

$ sudo vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Add or edit the following line:

AllowUsers sk

Replace “sk” with your username. You can also specify more than one user as shown below.

AllowUsers sk ostechnix

To allow an entire group, say for example root, add/edit the following line:

AllowGroups root

Those who are in the “root” group can be able to ssh to the remote server.

Save and quit the SSH config file. Restart SSH service to take effect the changes.

$ sudo systemctl restart sshd

Now, the users sk, ostechnix or all the users under the group “root” are allowed to ssh into your remote server. The other users (except sk, ostechnix and users of “root” group) can’t.

If you try to ssh to the remote server using any one of non-allowed user, you will get the following error message:

Permission denied, please try again.

Now, let us go ahead and see how to deny/disable ssh access to a particular user or group.

Deny SSH Access to a user or group

To disable or deny SSH access to any user or group, you need to add/edit the following directives in your remote server’s sshd_config file.

To deny SSH access to specific user called “sk”, edit sshd_config file:

$ sudo vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Add/edit the following line in sshd_config file.

DenyUsers sk

Similarly, to deny SSH access to multiple users, specify the usernames with space separated as shown below.

DenyUsers sk ostechnix

To deny SSH access to an entire group, for example root, add:

DenyGroups root

Save and quit the ssh config file. Restart ssh service to take effect the changes.

$ sudo systemctl restart sshd

if you try to ssh to server using denied users, for example sk:

ssh sk@192.168.1.150

You will get the following message:

sk@192.168.1.150's password: 
Permission denied, please try again.
sk@192.168.1.150's password:

More importantly you should disable Root user login too. Root ssh access is considered a bad practice in terms of security.

To disable root ssh login, edit sshd_config file:

$ sudo vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Find the following line, Uncomment it, and set the value to no.

PermitRootLogin no

Restart SSH service. Congrats! You have just disabled the ssh root login.

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