Trick user to send private key password to compromised host

[Karsten Künne]

On Tuesday 13 May 2008 05:01:25 Roman Fiedler imposed structure on a
stream of electrons, yielding:
> Hi list,
>
> I do not known, if this is really an issue but i noticed that when
> connecting to a remote ssh host with the standard linux openssh client
> using a private key, that there is no line of text indicating when the
> local key-passwd process was completed and the connection session was
> established.
>
> On a compromised host, the login shell could write the line 'Enter
> passphrase for key 'guess the filename using the current account
> name':'. If unnoticed, the user will think, that he misstyped the
> passphrase and repeat it. After capturing the word, the login could
> continue with the standard procedure (e.g. motd banner).
>

What does that have to do with openssh? On a compromised host the attacker can 
do all kind of neat tricks and doesn't have to rely on openssh. For instance, 
a keylogger would be able to catch even more stuff and is probably easier to 
set up.


Karsten.
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