Summary
Elon Musk’s DOGE received approval to use PuTTY, a file-transfer software, at the Labor Department, raising alarm among employees over data security.
DOGE has sought access to various federal databases, prompting lawsuits from labor unions and privacy advocates.
A federal judge issued a restraining order against DOGE’s access to Treasury data, though not Labor’s. Critics fear AI analysis and unauthorized data sharing.
The case is now before U.S. District Judge John Bates, who expressed concerns but denied an immediate injunction.
I would guess they are looking to use it with pagent to support login with PIVs which is likely required by the servers they want to access. It’s a pretty standard login setup in federal IT honestly.
Do you really need pagent for that versus just ssh-agent?
Pagent can handle auth with openssh also. There’s no need to actually use putty itself. You can do PIV/CAC auth on windows without pagent too. Or even better, don’t use windows at all.