Call for testing: OpenSSH 8.5

Tue Feb 23 12:46:29 AEDT 2021

Hi,

OpenSSH 8.5p1 is almost ready for release, so we would appreciate testing
on as many platforms and systems as possible. This is a bugfix release.

Snapshot releases for portable OpenSSH are available from
http://www.mindrot.org/openssh_snap/

The OpenBSD version is available in CVS HEAD:
http://www.openbsd.org/anoncvs.html

Portable OpenSSH is also available via git using the
instructions at http://www.openssh.com/portable.html#cvs
At https://anongit.mindrot.org/openssh.git/ or via a mirror at Github:
https://github.com/openssh/openssh-portable

Running the regression tests supplied with Portable OpenSSH does not
require installation and is a simply:

$ ./configure && make tests

Live testing on suitable non-production systems is also appreciated.
Please send reports of success or failure to
openssh-unix-dev at mindrot.org. Security bugs should be reported
directly to openssh at openssh.com.

Below is a summary of changes. More detail may be found in the ChangeLog
in the portable OpenSSH tarballs.

Thanks to the many people who contributed to this release.

Security
========

 * Portable sshd(8): Prevent excessively long username going to PAM.

   This is a mitigation for a buffer overflow in Solaris' PAM username
   handling (CVE-2020-14871), and is only enabled for Sun-derived PAM
   implementations.  This is not a problem in sshd itself, it only
   prevents sshd from being used as a vector to attack Solaris' PAM.
   It does not prevent the bug in PAM from being exploited via some
   other PAM application. GHPR#212

Potentially-incompatible changes
================================

This release includes a number of changes that may affect existing
configurations:

 * ssh(1), sshd(8): this release changes the first-preference signature
   algorithm from ECDSA to ED25519.

 * ssh(1), sshd(8): set the TOS/DSCP specified in the configuration
   for interactive use prior to TCP connect. The connection phase of
   the SSH session is time-sensitive and often explicitly interactive.
   The ultimate interactive/bulk TOS/DSCP will be set after
   authentication completes.

 * ssh(1), sshd(8): remove the pre-standardization cipher
   rijndael-cbc at lysator.liu.se. It is an alias for aes256-cbc before
   it was standardized in RFC4253 (2006), has been deprecated and
   disabled by default since OpenSSH 7.2 (2016) and was only briefly
   documented in ssh.1 in 2001.

 * ssh(1), sshd(8): update/replace the experimental post-quantum
   hybrid key exchange method based on Streamlined NTRU Prime coupled
   with X25519.

   The previous sntrup4591761x25519-sha512 at tinyssh.org method is
   replaced with sntrup761x25519-sha512 at openssh.com. Per its
   designers, the sntrup4591761 algorithm was superseded almost two
   years ago by sntrup761.

   (note this both the updated method and the one that it replaced are
   disabled by default)

 * ssh(1): disable CheckHostIP by default. It provides insignificant
   benefits while making key rotation significantly more difficult,
   especially for hosts behind IP-based load-balancers.

Changes since OpenSSH 8.4
=========================

New features
------------

 * ssh(1): this release enables UpdateHostkeys by default subject to
   some conservative preconditions:
    - The key was matched in the UserKnownHostsFile (and not in the
      GlobalKnownHostsFile).
    - The same key does not exist under another name.
    - A certificate host key is not in use.
    - known_hosts contains no matching wildcard hostname pattern.
    - VerifyHostKeyDNS is not enabled.

   We expect some of these conditions will be modified or relaxed in
   future.

 * ssh(1), sshd(8): add a new LogVerbose configuration directive for
   that allows forcing maximum debug logging by file/function/line
   pattern-lists.

 * ssh(1): when prompting the user to accept a new hostkey, display
   any other host names/addresses already associated with the key.

 * ssh(1): allow UserKnownHostsFile=none to indicate that no
   known_hosts file should be used to identify host keys.

 * ssh(1): add a ssh_config KnownHostsCommand that allows the client
   to obtain known_hosts data from a command in addition to the usual
   files.

 * ssh(1): for FIDO keys, if a signature operation fails with a
   "incorrect PIN" reason and no PIN was initially requested from the
   user, then request a PIN and retry the operation. This supports
   some biometric devices that fall back to requiring PIN when reading
   of the biometric failed, and devices that require PINs for all
   hosted credentials.

 * sshd(8): implement client address-based rate-limiting via new
   sshd_config(5) PerSourceMaxStartups and PerSourceNetBlockSize
   directives that fine-grained control than the global MaxStartups
   limit.

Bugfixes
--------

 * ssh(1): Prefix keyboard interactive prompts with "(user at host)" to
   make it easier to determine which connection they are associated
   with in cases like scp -3, ProxyJump, etc. bz#3224

 * sshd(8): fix sshd_config SetEnv directives located inside Match
   blocks. GHPR#201

 * ssh(1): when requesting a FIDO token touch on stderr, inform the
   user once the touch has been recorded.

 * ssh(1): prevent integer overflow when ridiculously large
   ConnectTimeout values are specified, capping the effective value
   (for most platforms) at 24 days. bz#3229

 * ssh(1): consider the ECDSA key subtype when ordering host key
   algorithms in the client,

 * ssh(1), sshd(8): rename the PubkeyAcceptedKeyTypes keyword to
   PubkeyAcceptedAlgorithms. The previous name incorrectly suggested
   that it control allowed key algorithms, when this option actually
   specifies the signature algorithms that are accepted. The previous
   name remains available as an alias. bz#3253

 * ssh(1), sshd(8): similarly, rename HostbasedKeyTypes (ssh) and
   HostbasedAcceptedKeyTypes (sshd) to HostbasedAcceptedAlgorithms.

 * sftp-server(8): add missing lsetstat at openssh.com documentation
   and advertisement in the server's SSH2_FXP_VERSION hello packet.

 * ssh(1), sshd(8): more strictly enforce KEX state-machine by
   banning packet types once they are received. Fixes memleak caused
   by duplicate SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REQUEST (oss-fuzz #30078).

 * sftp(1): allow the full range of UIDs/GIDs for chown/chgrp on 32bit
   platforms instead of being limited by LONG_MAX. bz#3206

 * Minor man page fixes (capitalization, commas, etc.) bz#3223

 * sftp(1): when doing an sftp recursive upload or download of a
   read-only directory, ensure that the directory is created with
   write and execute permissions in the interim so that the transfer
   can actually complete, then set the directory permission as the
   final step. bz#3222

 * ssh-keygen(1): document the -Z, check the validity of its argument
   earlier and provide a better error message if it's not correct.
   bz#2879

 * ssh(1): ignore comments at the end of config lines in ssh_config,
   similar to what we already do for sshd_config. bz#2320

 * sshd_config(5): mention that DisableForwarding is valid in a
   sshd_config Match block. bz3239

 * sftp(1): fix incorrect sorting of "ls -ltr" under some
   circumstances. bz3248.

 * ssh(1), sshd(8): fix potential integer truncation of (unlikely)
   timeout values. bz#3250

 * ssh(1): make hostbased authentication send the signature algorithm
   in its SSH2_MSG_USERAUTH_REQUEST packets instead of the key type.
   This make HostbasedAcceptedAlgorithms do what it is supposed to -
   filter on signature algorithm and not key type.

Portability
-----------

 * sshd(8): add a number of platform-specific syscalls to the Linux
   seccomp-bpf sandbox. bz#3232 bz#3260

 * sshd(8): remove debug message from sigchld handler that could cause
   deadlock on some platforms. bz#3259

 * Sync contrib/ssh-copy-id with upstream.

 * unittests: add a hostname function for systems that don't have it.
   Some systems don't have a hostname command (it's not required by
   POSIX). The do have uname -n (which is), but not all of those have
   it report the FQDN.

OpenSSH is brought to you by Markus Friedl, Niels Provos, Theo de
Raadt, Kevin Steves, Damien Miller, Darren Tucker, Jason McIntyre,
Tim Rice and Ben Lindstrom.