RFE: Portable OpenSSH

[Dan Kaminsky]

Damien--

    *time to trot out the grizzled-veteran-of-the-ssh-wars stories*

    Here's da scoop.  So we put out a package of OpenSSH 2.2.0p1 a while
back that required a Perl2Exe'd package of EGD.  Got adopted by about five
people.  Turns out that the more system-level dependencies you put on
software, the less likely people are going to be willing or able to install
it.

    Kernelspace is the place where random number generation should
live--period.    However, should kernelspace randomness fail to exist,
mandating the use of a pseudo-kernelspace emulation layer with prngd forces
userspace binary dependencies.  As is, all ssh binaries are independent,
i.e. sshd does not require ssh does not require ssh-keygen.  At the points
where semi-dependencies exist--scp and sftp-server from sshd--we see the
greatest occurance of SSH failure and annoyance.  But when scp and
sftp-server don't exist, you can't conveniently transfer files.  When prngd
wouldn't exist, however, you wouldn't be able to do *anything*.  No SSHD, no
SSH, no nothing.

    But who would be running prngd?  Lets say every user used their own
entropy gatherer.  Instead of entropy gathering on demand, when the ssh
executables were actually being called, each user would be hammering the box
continually.  That's not elegant, of course, so lets presume there's only
one user running prngd that every user shares in the entropy of.  That user
running prngd better be root, unless you like the idea of SSHD getting its
entropy stream from an untrusted user.  So now users cannot safely run ssh
without the root user starting up a daemon?

    Granted, this starts getting ridiculous, but my point is that setting up
convoluted and non-obvious dependancies in SSH is something to avoid.  I
*like* the idea of prngd, actually--I just don't like the idea of SSH
utilities failing to function without it.  Lets be flexible here--*in
runtime*, check for /dev/random(kernelspace), failing that check for a
central prngd daemon(root kernelspace emulation), failing that check for a
userspace prngd daemon we can run for a few minutes until it builds up n
bits of entropy(user kernelspace emulation)...

    And if all else fails, just do the damn commands yourself.  Don't go
load a list of commands from somewhere in ETCDIR, though grab that list if
you can find it--have a list of commands that work on this platform compiled
into an array in the binary and go through them.

    There is no excuse to fail unless success would be insecure.

    Remember, Damien.  SSH works, and well, despite steep odds.  IPSec
fails, and often, despite virgin sacrifices.  We need to continue the former
tradition; the latter went out of fashion hundreds of years ago.

Yours Truly,

    Dan Kaminsky, CISSP
    http://www.doxpara.com