Is OpenSSH vulnerable to the ZLIB problem or isn't it?

[Nicolas Williams]

On Wed, Apr 03, 2002 at 10:31:08AM -0800, dale at accentre.com wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 03, 2002 at 11:08:44AM -0600, Dave Dykstra wrote:
> > I'm disappointed that nobody has replied to my question.  OpenSSH
> > development team, isn't the potential for a remote root exploit something
> > that's important to you?  Many other tools that use zlib have issued a
> > public statement saying they are or they are not vulnerable.
> 
> The issue has been discussed on this list.  I quote:

[...]

> > I can't speak to the rest of your questions, but because the portable
> > tree doesn't bundle its own copy of zlib, OpenSSH links against the
> > version installed on the system it's being compiled on.  Usually that's
> > a shared library if your OS has shared libraries, but it's going to be
> > OS-specific.

This is not a complete answer. A complete answer would be:

"SSHv2 is resistant to exploits of the ZLib bug, and so is OpenSSH when
linked a zlib 1.1.3. But to be sure upgrade to Zlib 1.1.4."

Or

"SSHv2 is not resistant to exploits of the ZLib bug. OpenSSH linked
with zlib 1.1.3 is vulnerable."

The protocol specific issue (i.e., "is SSHv2 resistant to the ZLib
bug?") could be discussed on the IETF SECSH list. Even if SSHv2 is not
resistant to the ZLib bug OpenSSH might be for whatever reason (for
example, the malloc()/free() implementation of a given platform has well
defined harmless behaviour with double-free()s).

Cheers,

Nico
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