Does Proxmox add authorized_keys on its own to root? Should I be worried?

[Panoramic]

Yesterday I installed Proxmox for the first time. I'm still learning how it works and watching tutorials.

I have a question though.

Today while adding my ssh key in authorized_keys, I found a new key, with the label

root@<MyHostname>

. I added my key, commented it out, rebooted, and the key came back. Is this proxmox? Or have I been compromised somehow?

I still barely did anything with Proxmox, no backups or clusters. I just created a VM and added the firewall. And all this is happening in my home network (no public access), which is also supposedly secure. I'm worried I messed something up. In what circumstances does Proxmox add authorized_keys to root? How can I track these keys?

Thank you.

 

[pvps1]

yes its proxmox, no need to worry.
pve needs the keys for cluster communication, migrations, shared pve-fs etc...

 

[esi_y]

See: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Cluster_Manager#_role_of_ssh_in_proxmox_ve_clusters

SSH setup​

On Proxmox VE systems, the following changes are made to the SSH configuration/setup:

• the root user’s SSH client config gets setup to prefer AES over ChaCha20
• the root user’s authorized_keys file gets linked to /etc/pve/priv/authorized_keys, merging all authorized keys within a cluster
• sshd is configured to allow logging in as root with a password

Yeah, so keep it on the private network.

How can I track these keys?

PVE is not concerned about security, so - keep it separate.

https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/show_bug.cgi?id=5060
https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/show_bug.cgi?id=4670

 

[Panoramic]

Thank you.