News: 0000832857

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OpenSSH 8.4 released

([Security] Sep 28, 2020 15:44 UTC (Mon) (ris))


OpenSSH 8.4 is out. The SHA-1 algorithm is deprecated and the "ssh-rsa" public key signature algorithm will be disabled by default " in a near-future release. " They note that it is possible to perform chosen-prefix attacks against the SHA-1 algorithm for less than USD$50K.

From :

Damien Miller <djm-AT-openbsd.org>

To :

lwn-AT-lwn.net

Subject :

Announce: OpenSSH 8.4 released

Date :

Sun, 27 Sep 2020 03:37:07 -0600

Message-ID :

<2a5a384b015c8542@openbsd.org>

OpenSSH 8.4 has just been released. It will be available from the

mirrors listed at https://www.openssh.com/ shortly.

OpenSSH is a 100% complete SSH protocol 2.0 implementation and

includes sftp client and server support.

Once again, we would like to thank the OpenSSH community for their

continued support of the project, especially those who contributed

code or patches, reported bugs, tested snapshots or donated to the

project. More information on donations may be found at:

https://www.openssh.com/donations.html

Future deprecation notice

=========================

It is now possible[1] to perform chosen-prefix attacks against the

SHA-1 algorithm for less than USD$50K. For this reason, we will be

disabling the "ssh-rsa" public key signature algorithm by default in a

near-future release.

This algorithm is unfortunately still used widely despite the

existence of better alternatives, being the only remaining public key

signature algorithm specified by the original SSH RFCs.

The better alternatives include:

* The RFC8332 RSA SHA-2 signature algorithms rsa-sha2-256/512. These

algorithms have the advantage of using the same key type as

"ssh-rsa" but use the safe SHA-2 hash algorithms. These have been

supported since OpenSSH 7.2 and are already used by default if the

client and server support them.

* The ssh-ed25519 signature algorithm. It has been supported in

OpenSSH since release 6.5.

* The RFC5656 ECDSA algorithms: ecdsa-sha2-nistp256/384/521. These

have been supported by OpenSSH since release 5.7.

To check whether a server is using the weak ssh-rsa public key

algorithm, for host authentication, try to connect to it after

removing the ssh-rsa algorithm from ssh(1)'s allowed list:

ssh -oHostKeyAlgorithms=-ssh-rsa user@host

If the host key verification fails and no other supported host key

types are available, the server software on that host should be

upgraded.

We intend to enable UpdateHostKeys by default in the next OpenSSH

release. This will assist the client by automatically migrating to

better algorithms. Users may consider enabling this option manually.

[1] "SHA-1 is a Shambles: First Chosen-Prefix Collision on SHA-1 and

Application to the PGP Web of Trust" Leurent, G and Peyrin, T

(2020) https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/014.pdf

Security

========

* ssh-agent(1): restrict ssh-agent from signing web challenges for

FIDO/U2F keys.

When signing messages in ssh-agent using a FIDO key that has an

application string that does not start with "ssh:", ensure that the

message being signed is one of the forms expected for the SSH protocol

(currently public key authentication and sshsig signatures).

This prevents ssh-agent forwarding on a host that has FIDO keys

attached granting the ability for the remote side to sign challenges

for web authentication using those keys too.

Note that the converse case of web browsers signing SSH challenges is

already precluded because no web RP can have the "ssh:" prefix in the

application string that we require.

* ssh-keygen(1): Enable FIDO 2.1 credProtect extension when generating

a FIDO resident key.

The recent FIDO 2.1 Client to Authenticator Protocol introduced a

"credProtect" feature to better protect resident keys. We use this

option to require a PIN prior to all operations that may retrieve

a resident key from a FIDO token.

Potentially-incompatible changes

================================

This release includes a number of changes that may affect existing

configurations:

* For FIDO/U2F support, OpenSSH recommends the use of libfido2 1.5.0

or greater. Older libraries have limited support at the expense of

disabling particular features. These include resident keys, PIN-

required keys and multiple attached tokens.

* ssh-keygen(1): the format of the attestation information optionally

recorded when a FIDO key is generated has changed. It now includes

the authenticator data needed to validate attestation signatures.

* The API between OpenSSH and the FIDO token middleware has changed

and the SSH_SK_VERSION_MAJOR version has been incremented as a

result. Third-party middleware libraries must support the current

API version (7) to work with OpenSSH 8.4.

* The portable OpenSSH distribution now requires automake to rebuild

the configure script and supporting files. This is not required when

simply building portable OpenSSH from a release tar file.

Changes since OpenSSH 8.3

=========================

New features

------------

* ssh(1), ssh-keygen(1): support for FIDO keys that require a PIN for

each use. These keys may be generated using ssh-keygen using a new

"verify-required" option. When a PIN-required key is used, the user

will be prompted for a PIN to complete the signature operation.

* sshd(8): authorized_keys now supports a new "verify-required"

option to require FIDO signatures assert that the token verified

that the user was present before making the signature. The FIDO

protocol supports multiple methods for user-verification, but

currently OpenSSH only supports PIN verification.

* sshd(8), ssh-keygen(1): add support for verifying FIDO webauthn

signatures. Webauthn is a standard for using FIDO keys in web

browsers. These signatures are a slightly different format to plain

FIDO signatures and thus require explicit support.

* ssh(1): allow some keywords to expand shell-style ${ENV}

environment variables. The supported keywords are CertificateFile,

ControlPath, IdentityAgent and IdentityFile, plus LocalForward and

RemoteForward when used for Unix domain socket paths. bz#3140

* ssh(1), ssh-agent(1): allow some additional control over the use of

ssh-askpass via a new $SSH_ASKPASS_REQUIRE environment variable,

including forcibly enabling and disabling its use. bz#69

* ssh(1): allow ssh_config(5)'s AddKeysToAgent keyword accept a time

limit for keys in addition to its current flag options. Time-

limited keys will automatically be removed from ssh-agent after

their expiry time has passed.

* scp(1), sftp(1): allow the -A flag to explicitly enable agent

forwarding in scp and sftp. The default remains to not forward an

agent, even when ssh_config enables it.

* ssh(1): add a '%k' TOKEN that expands to the effective HostKey of

the destination. This allows, e.g., keeping host keys in individual

files using "UserKnownHostsFile ~/.ssh/known_hosts.d/%k". bz#1654

* ssh(1): add %-TOKEN, environment variable and tilde expansion to

the UserKnownHostsFile directive, allowing the path to be

completed by the configuration (e.g. bz#1654)

* ssh-keygen(1): allow "ssh-add -d -" to read keys to be deleted

from stdin. bz#3180

* sshd(8): improve logging for MaxStartups connection throttling.

sshd will now log when it starts and stops throttling and periodically

while in this state. bz#3055

Bugfixes

--------

* ssh(1), ssh-keygen(1): better support for multiple attached FIDO

tokens. In cases where OpenSSH cannot unambiguously determine which

token to direct a request to, the user is now required to select a

token by touching it. In cases of operations that require a PIN to

be verified, this avoids sending the wrong PIN to the wrong token

and incrementing the token's PIN failure counter (tokens

effectively erase their keys after too many PIN failures).

* sshd(8): fix Include before Match in sshd_config; bz#3122

* ssh(1): close stdin/out/error when forking after authentication

completes ("ssh -f ...") bz#3137

* ssh(1), sshd(8): limit the amount of channel input data buffered,

avoiding peers that advertise large windows but are slow to read

from causing high memory consumption.

* ssh-agent(1): handle multiple requests sent in a single write() to

the agent.

* sshd(8): allow sshd_config longer than 256k

* sshd(8): avoid spurious "Unable to load host key" message when sshd

load a private key but no public counterpart

* ssh(1): prefer the default hostkey algorithm list whenever we have

a hostkey that matches its best-preference algorithm.

* sshd(1): when ordering the hostkey algorithms to request from a

server, prefer certificate types if the known_hosts files contain a key

marked as a @cert-authority; bz#3157

* ssh(1): perform host key fingerprint comparisons for the "Are you

sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no/[fingerprint])?"

prompt with case sensitivity.

* sshd(8): ensure that address/masklen mismatches in sshd_config

yield fatal errors at daemon start time rather than later when

they are evaluated.

* ssh-keygen(1): ensure that certificate extensions are lexically

sorted. Previously if the user specified a custom extension then

the everything would be in order except the custom ones. bz#3198

* ssh(1): also compare username when checking for JumpHost loops.

bz#3057

* ssh-keygen(1): preserve group/world read permission on known_hosts

files across runs of "ssh-keygen -Rf /path". The old behaviour was

to remove all rights for group/other. bz#3146

* ssh-keygen(1): Mention the [-a rounds] flag in the ssh-keygen

manual page and usage().

* sshd(8): explicitly construct path to ~/.ssh/rc rather than

relying on it being relative to the current directory, so that it

can still be found if the shell startup changes its directory.

bz#3185

* sshd(8): when redirecting sshd's log output to a file, undo this

redirection after the session child process is forked(). Fixes

missing log messages when using this feature under some

circumstances.

* sshd(8): start ClientAliveInterval bookkeeping before first pass

through select() loop; fixed theoretical case where busy sshd may

ignore timeouts from client.

* ssh(1): only reset the ServerAliveInterval check when we receive

traffic from the server and ignore traffic from a port forwarding

client, preventing a client from keeping a connection alive when

it should be terminated. bz#2265

* ssh-keygen(1): avoid spurious error message when ssh-keygen

creates files outside ~/.ssh

* sftp-client(1): fix off-by-one error that caused sftp downloads to

make one more concurrent request that desired. This prevented using

sftp(1) in unpipelined request/response mode, which is useful when

debugging. bz#3054

* ssh(1), sshd(8): handle EINTR in waitfd() and timeout_connect()

helpers. bz#3071

* ssh(1), ssh-keygen(1): defer creation of ~/.ssh until we attempt to

write to it so we don't leave an empty .ssh directory when it's not

needed. bz#3156

* ssh(1), sshd(8): fix multiplier when parsing time specifications

when handling seconds after other units. bz#3171

Portability

-----------

* sshd(8): always send any PAM account messages. If the PAM account

stack returns any messages, always send them to the user and not

just if the check succeeds. bz#2049

* Implement some backwards compatibility for libfido2 libraries

older than 1.5.0. Note that use of an older library will result

in the loss of certain features including resident key support,

PIN support and support for multiple attached tokens.

* configure fixes for XCode 12

* gnome-ssh-askpass3: ensure the "close" button is not focused by

default for SSH_ASKPASS_PROMPT=none prompts. Avoids space/enter

accidentally dismissing FIDO touch notifications.

* gnome-ssh-askpass3: allow some control over textarea colour via

$GNOME_SSH_ASKPASS_FG_COLOR and $GNOME_SSH_ASKPASS_BG_COLOR

environment variables.

* sshd(8): document another PAM spec problem in a frustrated comment

* sshd(8): support NetBSD's utmpx.ut_ss address field. bz#960

* Add the ssh-sk-helper binary and its manpage to the RPM spec file

* Detect the Frankenstein monster of Linux/X32 and allow the sandbox

to function there. bz#3085

Checksums:

==========

- SHA1 (openssh-8.4.tar.gz) = 71675139df6807f396e6bd92ff8cb9b0356385d8

- SHA256 (openssh-8.4.tar.gz) = JhBgLYkyRge/zQK8ylBSRcOYvrV/tHwQcvVXfExGB70=

- SHA1 (openssh-8.4p1.tar.gz) = 69305059e10a60693ebe6f17731f962c9577535c

- SHA256 (openssh-8.4p1.tar.gz) = WgHSLkB+scBbqKj3xlTTiKE+nyJuTtM704dI2vodKyQ=

Please note that the SHA256 signatures are base64 encoded and not

hexadecimal (which is the default for most checksum tools). The PGP

key used to sign the releases is available as RELEASE_KEY.asc from

the mirror sites.

Reporting Bugs:

===============

- Please read https://www.openssh.com/report.html

Security bugs should be reported directly to openssh@openssh.com

Those who are mentally and emotionally healthy are those who have
learned when to say yes, when to say no and when to say whoopee.
-- W. S. Krabill