Add user to SSH group safe?

Question

I want to control who can log in via SSH on my server. Is it safe to add the group 'ssh' to the users who are allowed to login in?

I see some distros use system groups in the user's ID and others recommend creating new groups. For example, some users will have the sudo group and other distros recommend creating a new group gSudo and adding it to the sudoers file.

Solution

The purpose of ssh group was described on Unix. There is no gain by adding user to ssh group, because the group is used only for pre-authentication process.

If you want to use a group to limit who can log in to your server using ssh, create a group sshuser, add AllowGroups sshuser to your /etc/ssh/sshd_config and restart your ssh service.

Comments

[Admin]

I am not sure off hand what the ssh group is for.. but it's not for that. So I suppose if you want to create a group, you should create a new user group. But you could also add individual users instead. So, you can set ssh up as a whitelist i.e. to not allow anybody except, those users or groups.