[patch] ssh-keygen(1): by default generate ed25519 key (instead of rsa)

[Thomas Dwyer III]

For what it's worth, the current RSA default is FIPS compliant. Although
NIST included ed25519 in FIPS 186-5 and the public comment period closed
more than two years ago, it's still in draft; 186-4 does not include
ed25519 (it does include ecdsa though, with the curves that OpenSSH already
supports).


Tom.III


On Sun, Nov 6, 2022 at 8:04 PM Damien Miller <djm at mindrot.org> wrote:

> On Mon, 7 Nov 2022, Darren Tucker wrote:
>
> > On Mon, 7 Nov 2022 at 00:51, Job Snijders <job at openbsd.org> wrote:
> > [...]
> > > Perhaps now is a good time to make Ed25519 the default when invoking
> > > ssh-keygen(1) without arguments?
> >
> > I don't think so.  Outside of DSA (which is REQUIRED in RFC4253 but is
> > considered weak these days), RSA keys are the most widely supported
> > key type and thus most likely to work in any given situation, which
> > makes them an appropriate default.  If you know this is not the case
> > for your environment, that's what "-t" is for.
>
> I don't mind using defaults to apply a little nudge towards better
> algorithms. OpenSSH has supported ed25519 keys for almost a decade,
> and RFC 8709 has been a standard for a couple of years.
>
> So I'm cautiously supportive of doing this.
>
> -d
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