Raspbian updated to disable SSH by default on the Raspberry Pi

Simon Long has just announced an update to Raspbian in which SSH will be disabled by default. For most people, this relatively minor change won’t cause any problem – you can use your Pi just as you did before. However, for those of you who use ‘headless’ Pis (i.e. without a keyboard and screen), this changes things. You will not be able to remotely connect to your Pi with SSH unless you enable it first. You can do this is two ways:

  • Use the raspi-config GUI (or command line version) to turn it on from the interfaces tab.
  • put a file called ssh in the /boot directory (accessible via Windows, for example – it’s the partition you can see natively). It can be empty.

This is all to do with keeping your Raspberry Pi more secure. It’s sure to annoy some people though, as these things do. Read more here.

3 comments for “Raspbian updated to disable SSH by default on the Raspberry Pi

  1. It will annoy some people.

    However the average person wont use it until they need it and its a bit silly leaving such a hole available. All it takes is to forget to change the default login and upon connecting to the wild internet your Pi is going to be hit.

    Also the majority of distros do not have it installed by default and require it to be installed when needed. Hopefully by the time you need it installing your going to be aware of the issues.

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