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Date:      Fri, 16 Feb 2001 15:49:04 +0100 (CET)
From:      Jan Conrad <conrad@th.physik.uni-bonn.de>
To:        Kris Kennaway <kris@obsecurity.org>
Cc:        <freebsd-security@freebsd.org>, Ralph Schreyer <schreyer@th.physik.uni-bonn.de>
Subject:   Re: Why does openssh protocol default to 2?
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.4.33.0102161442540.51347-100000@merlin.th.physik.uni-bonn.de>
In-Reply-To: <20010215133000.A12807@mollari.cthul.hu>

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On Thu, 15 Feb 2001, Kris Kennaway wrote:

> On Thu, Feb 15, 2001 at 01:18:45PM +0100, Jan Conrad wrote:
> > On Thu, 15 Feb 2001, Kris Kennaway wrote:
> >
> > > On Thu, Feb 15, 2001 at 12:30:20PM +0100, Jan Conrad wrote:
> > > > Hello,
> > > >
> > > > for quite a long time now I cannot understand why people encourage others
> > > > for using ssh2 by default and I wanted to ask the readers of this list for
> > > > their opinion.
> > >
> > > SSH1 has fundamental protocol flaws.  SSH2 doesn't, that we know of.
> >
> > I knew that statement... Could you give me a good reference for a
> > detailed discussion on that?
>
> www.core-sdi.com probably has some information - there are recently
> discovered flaws and a number of older ones.
>
> > > I don't understand your complaint.  If you don't want to use SSH2 with
> > > RSA/DSA keys, don't do that.  Use the UNIX password or some other PAM
> > > authentication module (OPIE, etc)
> >
> > Sorry - I did not want to complain... (really :-)
> >
> > What would you suggest for NFS mounted home dirs as a reasonable solution?
> > (To store keys I mean..)
>
> If you have people sniffing your NFS traffic then you're in trouble
> anyway since they can probably spoof things very easily.  Consider
> what's really your threat model here.

OK - that's the point here, precisely!

Don't you think in such an environment using SSH1 with
RhostsRSAAuthentication would be reasonable (of course only if you *need*
to provide users with an rsh like automatic login). Sure - you can be
spoofed etc., the SSH connection could be attacked and whatnot but I would
consider that to be harmless compared to the possibility to collect keys
just by sniffing the net (and most people usually have keys without
passphrases..).

I mean I just checked some University systems running ssh2 and ssh1 and I
found really *lots* of keys in NFS mounted users homes... (sometimes 10%
of the users had keys in their homes....)

Maybe the conclusion is to put a warning into the manpages or into the
default sshd_config saying something like 'be sure to switch
xxxAuthentication of if you have NFS mounted homes'...


What I would find reasonable is something like an .shosts mechanism for
ssh2 or, better, but more complicated, having the keys themselves
encrypted by some private key of the machine. Why should a user have
access to a plain key?

>
> If you really don't want people to use DSA authentication (it's not a
> security risk unless they use a weak passphrase) then disable it with
> the appropriate configuration directive in /etc/ssh/sshd_config.

sure

>
> Kris
>

Jan




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