How to make ssh receive the password from stdin

Question

How can you make SSH read the password from stdin, which it doesn't do by default?

Answer 1

based on this post you can do:

Create a command which open a ssh session using SSH_ASKPASS (seek SSH_ASKPASS on man ssh)

$ cat > ssh_session <<EOF
export SSH_ASKPASS="/path/to/script_returning_pass"
setsid ssh "your_user"@"your_host"
EOF

NOTE: To avoid ssh to try to ask on tty we use setsid

Create a script which returns your password (note echo "echo)

$ echo "echo your_ssh_password" > /path/to/script_returning_pass

Make them executable

$ chmod +x ssh_session
$ chmod +x /path/to/script_returning_pass

try it

$ ./ssh_session

Keep in mind that ssh stands for secure shell, and if you store your user, host and password in plain text files you are misleading the tool an creating a possible security gap