Encryption

[Tomas Kuthan]

On 03/ 6/14 04:02 PM, Stephen Harris wrote:
> Am I correct in assuming that the user and host public/private keys used
> in openSSH are only used for authentication (is the remote server known to
> be X, is this Harry trying to login), and have no role in the encryption?
>
> I was under the assumption that each connection used a newly generated
> key (using DH for key exchange) so each session was unique.
>
> (I believe this because the transport layer needs to be set up before
>   user keys are even presented, and rfc4253 #6.3 doesn't mention the host
>   key).
>
> I'm being asked to provide private keys to allow network sniffing
> (problem analysis) but I'm not sure this is the right thing to do
> because I'm not convinced these keys are used as part of the encryption!
>
> Thanks...
>

Hi Stephen,

your understanding is correct.
In DH key exchange, server's private key is used by the server to create 
a signature of exchange hash and the public key is used by the client to 
verify this signature.
To eavesdropper these keys have no value, because they are not able to 
deduce the session key, nor the exchange hash.

Tomas