Future deprecation notice
=========================
A near-future release of OpenSSH will switch scp(1) from using the
legacy scp/rcp protocol to using SFTP by default.
Legacy scp/rcp performs wildcard expansion of remote filenames (e.g.
"scp host:* .") through the remote shell. This has the side effect of
requiring double quoting of shell meta-characters in file names
included on scp(1) command-lines, otherwise they could be interpreted
as shell commands on the remote side.
This creates one area of potential incompatibility: scp(1) when using
the SFTP protocol no longer requires this finicky and brittle quoting,
and attempts to use it may cause transfers to fail. We consider the
removal of the need for double-quoting shell characters in file names
to be a benefit and do not intend to introduce bug-compatibility for
legacy scp/rcp in scp(1) when using the SFTP protocol.
Another area of potential incompatibility relates to the use of remote
paths relative to other user's home directories, for example -
"scp host:~user/file /tmp". The SFTP protocol has no native way to
expand a ~user path. However, sftp-server(8) in OpenSSH 8.7 and later
support a protocol extension "expand-path@openssh.com" to support
this.
Security Near Miss
==================
* sshd(8): fix an integer overflow in the user authentication path
that, in conjunction with other logic errors, could have yielded
unauthenticated access under difficult to exploit conditions.
This situation is not exploitable because of independent checks in
the privilege separation monitor. Privilege separation has been
enabled by default in since openssh-3.2.2 (released in 2002) and
has been mandatory since openssh-7.5 (released in 2017). Moreover,
portable OpenSSH has used toolchain features available in most
modern compilers to abort on signed integer overflow since
openssh-6.5 (released in 2014).
Thanks to Malcolm Stagg for finding and reporting this bug.
Potentially-incompatible changes
================================
* sshd(8), portable OpenSSH only: this release removes in-built
support for MD5-hashed passwords. If you require these on your
system then we recommend linking against libxcrypt or similar.
* This release modifies the FIDO security key middleware interface
and increments SSH_SK_VERSION_MAJOR.
Changes since OpenSSH 8.8
=========================
This release includes a number of new features.
New features
------------
* ssh(1), sshd(8), ssh-add(1), ssh-agent(1): add a system for
restricting forwarding and use of keys added to ssh-agent(1)
A detailed description of the feature is available at
https://www.openssh.com/agent-restrict.html and the protocol
extensions are documented in the PROTOCOL and PROTOCOL.agent
files in the source release.
* ssh(1), sshd(8): add the sntrup761x25519-sha512@openssh.com hybrid
ECDH/x25519 + Streamlined NTRU Prime post-quantum KEX to the
default KEXAlgorithms list (after the ECDH methods but before the
prime-group DH ones). The next release of OpenSSH is likely to
make this key exchange the default method.
* ssh-keygen(1): when downloading resident keys from a FIDO token,
pass back the user ID that was used when the key was created and
append it to the filename the key is written to (if it is not the
default). Avoids keys being clobbered if the user created multiple
resident keys with the same application string but different user
IDs.
* ssh-keygen(1), ssh(1), ssh-agent(1): better handling for FIDO keys
on tokens that provide user verification (UV) on the device itself,
including biometric keys, avoiding unnecessary PIN prompts.
* ssh-keygen(1): add "ssh-keygen -Y match-principals" operation to
perform matching of principals names against an allowed signers
file. To be used towards a TOFU model for SSH signatures in git.
* ssh-add(1), ssh-agent(1): allow pin-required FIDO keys to be added
to ssh-agent(1). $SSH_ASKPASS will be used to request the PIN at
authentication time.
* ssh-keygen(1): allow selection of hash at sshsig signing time
(either sha512 (default) or sha256).
* ssh(1), sshd(8): read network data directly to the packet input
buffer instead indirectly via a small stack buffer. Provides a
modest performance improvement.
* ssh(1), sshd(8): read data directly to the channel input buffer,
providing a similar modest performance improvement.
* ssh(1): extend the PubkeyAuthentication configuration directive to
accept yes|no|unbound|host-bound to allow control over one of the
protocol extensions used to implement agent-restricted keys.
Bugfixes
--------
* sshd(8): document that CASignatureAlgorithms, ExposeAuthInfo and
PubkeyAuthOptions can be used in a Match block. PR#277.
* sshd(8): fix possible string truncation when constructing paths to
.rhosts/.shosts files with very long user home directory names.
* ssh-keysign(1): unbreak for KEX algorithms that use SHA384/512
exchange hashes
* ssh(1): don't put the TTY into raw mode when SessionType=none,
avoids ^C being unable to kill such a session. bz3360
* scp(1): fix some corner-case bugs in SFTP-mode handling of
~-prefixed paths.
* ssh(1): unbreak hostbased auth using RSA keys. Allow ssh(1) to
select RSA keys when only RSA/SHA2 signature algorithms are
configured (this is the default case). Previously RSA keys were
not being considered in the default case.
* ssh-keysign(1): make ssh-keysign use the requested signature
algorithm and not the default for the key type. Part of unbreaking
hostbased auth for RSA/SHA2 keys.
* ssh(1): stricter UpdateHostkey signature verification logic on
the client- side. Require RSA/SHA2 signatures for RSA hostkeys
except when RSA/SHA1 was explicitly negotiated during initial
KEX; bz3375
* ssh(1), sshd(8): fix signature algorithm selection logic for
UpdateHostkeys on the server side. The previous code tried to
prefer RSA/SHA2 for hostkey proofs of RSA keys, but missed some
cases. This will use RSA/SHA2 signatures for RSA keys if the
client proposed these algorithms in initial KEX. bz3375
* All: convert all uses of select(2)/pselect(2) to poll(2)/ppoll(2).
This includes the mainloops in ssh(1), ssh-agent(1), ssh-agent(1)
and sftp-server(8), as well as the sshd(8) listen loop and all
other FD read/writability checks. On platforms with missing or
broken poll(2)/ppoll(2) syscalls a select(2)-based compat shim is
available.
* ssh-keygen(1): the "-Y find-principals" command was verifying key
validity when using ca certs but not with simple key lifetimes
within the allowed signers file.
* ssh-keygen(1): make sshsig verify-time argument parsing optional
* sshd(8): fix truncation in rhosts/shosts path construction.
* ssh(1), ssh-agent(1): avoid xmalloc(0) for PKCS#11 keyid for ECDSA
keys (we already did this for RSA keys). Avoids fatal errors for
PKCS#11 libraries that return empty keyid, e.g. Microchip ATECC608B
"cryptoauthlib"; bz#3364
* ssh(1), ssh-agent(1): improve the testing of credentials against
inserted FIDO: ask the token whether a particular key belongs to
it in cases where the token supports on-token user-verification
(e.g. biometrics) rather than just assuming that it will accept it.
Will reduce spurious "Confirm user presence" notifications for key
handles that relate to FIDO keys that are not currently inserted in at
least some cases. bz3366
* ssh(1), sshd(8): correct value for IPTOS_DSCP_LE. It needs to
allow for the preceding two ECN bits. bz#3373
* ssh-keygen(1): add missing -O option to usage() for the "-Y sign"
option.
* ssh-keygen(1): fix a NULL deref when using the find-principals
function, when matching an allowed_signers line that contains a
namespace restriction, but no restriction specified on the
command-line
* ssh-agent(1): fix memleak in process_extension(); oss-fuzz
issue #42719
* ssh(1): suppress "Connection to xxx closed" messages when LogLevel
is set to "error" or above. bz3378
* ssh(1), sshd(8): use correct zlib flags when inflate(3)-ing
compressed packet data. bz3372
* scp(1): when recursively transferring files in SFTP mode, create the
destination directory if it doesn't already exist to match scp(1) in
legacy RCP mode behaviour.
* scp(1): many improvements in error message consistency between scp(1)
in SFTP mode vs legacy RCP mode.
* sshd(8): fix potential race in SIGTERM handling PR#289
* ssh(1), ssh(8): since DSA keys are deprecated, move them to the
end of the default list of public keys so that they will be tried
last. PR#295
* ssh-keygen(1): allow 'ssh-keygen -Y find-principals' to match
wildcard principals in allowed_signers files
Portability
-----------
* ssh(1), sshd(8): don't trust closefrom(2) on Linux. glibc's
implementation does not work in a chroot when the kernel does not
have close_range(2). It tries to read from /proc/self/fd and when
that fails dies with an assertion of sorts. Instead, call
close_range(2) directly from our compat code and fall back if
that fails. bz#3349,
* OS X poll(2) is broken; use compat replacement. For character-
special devices like /dev/null, Darwin's poll(2) returns POLLNVAL
when polled with POLLIN. Apparently this is Apple bug 3710161 -
not public but a websearch will find other OSS projects
rediscovering it periodically since it was first identified in
2005.
* Correct handling of exceptfds/POLLPRI in our select(2)-based
poll(2)/ppoll(2) compat implementation.
* Cygwin: correct checking of mbstowcs() return value.
* Add a basic SECURITY.md that refers people to the openssh.com
website.
* Enable additional compiler warnings and toolchain hardening flags,
including -Wbitwise-instead-of-logical, -Wmisleading-indentation,
-fzero-call-used-regs and -ftrivial-auto-var-init.
* HP/UX. Use compat getline(3) on HP-UX 10.x, where the libc version
is not reliable.
=========================
Potentially-incompatible changes
* sshd(8): The default set of ciphers and MACs has been altered to
remove unsafe algorithms. In particular, CBC ciphers and arcfour*
are disabled by default.
The full set of algorithms remains available if configured
explicitly via the Ciphers and MACs sshd_config options.
* sshd(8): Support for tcpwrappers/libwrap has been removed.
* OpenSSH 6.5 and 6.6 have a bug that causes ~0.2% of connections
using the curve25519-sha256@libssh.org KEX exchange method to fail
when connecting with something that implements the specification
correctly. OpenSSH 6.7 disables this KEX method when speaking to
one of the affected versions.
New Features
* Major internal refactoring to begin to make part of OpenSSH usable
as a library. So far the wire parsing, key handling and KRL code
has been refactored. Please note that we do not consider the API
stable yet, nor do we offer the library in separable form.
* ssh(1), sshd(8): Add support for Unix domain socket forwarding.
A remote TCP port may be forwarded to a local Unix domain socket
and vice versa or both ends may be a Unix domain socket.
* ssh(1), ssh-keygen(1): Add support for SSHFP DNS records for
ED25519 key types.
* sftp(1): Allow resumption of interrupted uploads.
* ssh(1): When rekeying, skip file/DNS lookups of the hostkey if it
is the same as the one sent during initial key exchange; bz#2154
* sshd(8): Allow explicit ::1 and 127.0.0.1 forwarding bind
addresses when GatewayPorts=no; allows client to choose address
family; bz#2222
* sshd(8): Add a sshd_config PermitUserRC option to control whether
~/.ssh/rc is executed, mirroring the no-user-rc authorized_keys
option; bz#2160
* ssh(1): Add a %C escape sequence for LocalCommand and ControlPath
that expands to a unique identifer based on a hash of the tuple of
(local host, remote user, hostname, port). Helps avoid exceeding
miserly pathname limits for Unix domain sockets in multiplexing
control paths; bz#2220
* sshd(8): Make the "Too many authentication failures" message
include the user, source address, port and protocol in a format
similar to the authentication success / failure messages; bz#2199
* Added unit and fuzz tests for refactored code. These are run
automatically in portable OpenSSH via the "make tests" target.
Bugfixes
* sshd(8): Fix remote forwarding with the same listen port but
different listen address.
* ssh(1): Fix inverted test that caused PKCS#11 keys that were
explicitly listed in ssh_config or on the commandline not to be
preferred.
* ssh-keygen(1): Fix bug in KRL generation: multiple consecutive
revoked certificate serial number ranges could be serialised to an
invalid format. Readers of a broken KRL caused by this bug will
fail closed, so no should-have-been-revoked key will be accepted.
* ssh(1): Reflect stdio-forward ("ssh -W host:port ...") failures in
exit status. Previously we were always returning 0; bz#2255
* ssh(1), ssh-keygen(1): Make Ed25519 keys' title fit properly in the
randomart border; bz#2247
* ssh-agent(1): Only cleanup agent socket in the main agent process
and not in any subprocesses it may have started (e.g. forked
askpass). Fixes agent sockets being zapped when askpass processes
fatal(); bz#2236
* ssh-add(1): Make stdout line-buffered; saves partial output getting
lost when ssh-add fatal()s part-way through (e.g. when listing keys
from an agent that supports key types that ssh-add doesn't);
bz#2234
* ssh-keygen(1): When hashing or removing hosts, don't choke on
@revoked markers and don't remove @cert-authority markers; bz#2241
* ssh(1): Don't fatal when hostname canonicalisation fails and a
ProxyCommand is in use; continue and allow the ProxyCommand to
connect anyway (e.g. to a host with a name outside the DNS behind
a bastion)
* scp(1): When copying local->remote fails during read, don't send
uninitialised heap to the remote end.
* sftp(1): Fix fatal "el_insertstr failed" errors when tab-completing
filenames with a single quote char somewhere in the string;
bz#2238
* ssh-keyscan(1): Scan for Ed25519 keys by default.
* ssh(1): When using VerifyHostKeyDNS with a DNSSEC resolver, down-
convert any certificate keys to plain keys and attempt SSHFP
resolution. Prevents a server from skipping SSHFP lookup and
forcing a new-hostkey dialog by offering only certificate keys.
* sshd(8): Avoid crash at exit via NULL pointer reference; bz#2225
* Fix some strict-alignment errors.
Portable OpenSSH
* Portable OpenSSH now supports building against libressl-portable.
* Portable OpenSSH now requires openssl 0.9.8f or greater. Older
versions are no longer supported.
* In the OpenSSL version check, allow fix version upgrades (but not
downgrades. Debian bug #748150.
* sshd(8): On Cygwin, determine privilege separation user at runtime,
since it may need to be a domain account.
* sshd(8): Don't attempt to use vhangup on Linux. It doesn't work for
non-root users, and for them it just messes up the tty settings.
* Use CLOCK_BOOTTIME in preference to CLOCK_MONOTONIC when it is
available. It considers time spent suspended, thereby ensuring
timeouts (e.g. for expiring agent keys) fire correctly. bz#2228
* Add support for ed25519 to opensshd.init init script.
* sftp-server(8): On platforms that support it, use prctl() to
prevent sftp-server from accessing /proc/self/{mem,maps}
Changes since OpenSSH 6.5
=========================
This is primarily a bugfix release.
Security:
* sshd(8): when using environment passing with a sshd_config(5)
AcceptEnv pattern with a wildcard. OpenSSH prior to 6.6 could be
tricked into accepting any enviornment variable that contains the
characters before the wildcard character.
New / changed features:
* ssh(1), sshd(8): this release removes the J-PAKE authentication code.
This code was experimental, never enabled and had been unmaintained
for some time.
* ssh(1): when processing Match blocks, skip 'exec' clauses other clauses
predicates failed to match.
* ssh(1): if hostname canonicalisation is enabled and results in the
destination hostname being changed, then re-parse ssh_config(5) files
using the new destination hostname. This gives 'Host' and 'Match'
directives that use the expanded hostname a chance to be applied.
Bugfixes:
* ssh(1): avoid spurious "getsockname failed: Bad file descriptor" in
ssh -W. bz#2200, debian#738692
* sshd(8): allow the shutdown(2) syscall in seccomp-bpf and systrace
sandbox modes, as it is reachable if the connection is terminated
during the pre-auth phase.
* ssh(1), sshd(8): fix unsigned overflow that in SSH protocol 1 bignum
parsing. Minimum key length checks render this bug unexploitable to
compromise SSH 1 sessions.
* sshd_config(5): clarify behaviour of a keyword that appears in
multiple matching Match blocks. bz#2184
* ssh(1): avoid unnecessary hostname lookups when canonicalisation is
disabled. bz#2205
* sshd(8): avoid sandbox violation crashes in GSSAPI code by caching
the supported list of GSSAPI mechanism OIDs before entering the
sandbox. bz#2107
* ssh(1): fix possible crashes in SOCKS4 parsing caused by assumption
that the SOCKS username is nul-terminated.
* ssh(1): fix regression for UsePrivilegedPort=yes when BindAddress is
not specified.
* ssh(1), sshd(8): fix memory leak in ECDSA signature verification.
* ssh(1): fix matching of 'Host' directives in ssh_config(5) files
to be case-insensitive again (regression in 6.5).
Portable OpenSSH:
* sshd(8): don't fatal if the FreeBSD Capsicum is offered by the
system headers and libc but is not supported by the kernel.
* Fix build using the HP-UX compiler.
Changes since OpenSSH 6.4
=========================
This is a feature-focused release.
New features:
* ssh(1), sshd(8): Add support for key exchange using elliptic-curve
Diffie Hellman in Daniel Bernstein's Curve25519. This key exchange
method is the default when both the client and server support it.
* ssh(1), sshd(8): Add support for Ed25519 as a public key type.
Ed25519 is a elliptic curve signature scheme that offers
better security than ECDSA and DSA and good performance. It may be
used for both user and host keys.
* Add a new private key format that uses a bcrypt KDF to better
protect keys at rest. This format is used unconditionally for
Ed25519 keys, but may be requested when generating or saving
existing keys of other types via the -o ssh-keygen(1) option.
We intend to make the new format the default in the near future.
Details of the new format are in the PROTOCOL.key file.
* ssh(1), sshd(8): Add a new transport cipher
"chacha20-poly1305@openssh.com" that combines Daniel Bernstein's
ChaCha20 stream cipher and Poly1305 MAC to build an authenticated
encryption mode. Details are in the PROTOCOL.chacha20poly1305 file.
* ssh(1), sshd(8): Refuse RSA keys from old proprietary clients and
servers that use the obsolete RSA+MD5 signature scheme. It will
still be possible to connect with these clients/servers but only
DSA keys will be accepted, and OpenSSH will refuse connection
entirely in a future release.
* ssh(1), sshd(8): Refuse old proprietary clients and servers that
use a weaker key exchange hash calculation.
* ssh(1): Increase the size of the Diffie-Hellman groups requested
for each symmetric key size. New values from NIST Special
Publication 800-57 with the upper limit specified by RFC4419.
* ssh(1), ssh-agent(1): Support PKCS#11 tokens that only provide
X.509 certs instead of raw public keys (requested as bz#1908).
* ssh(1): Add a ssh_config(5) "Match" keyword that allows
conditional configuration to be applied by matching on hostname,
user and result of arbitrary commands.
* ssh(1): Add support for client-side hostname canonicalisation
using a set of DNS suffixes and rules in ssh_config(5). This
allows unqualified names to be canonicalised to fully-qualified
domain names to eliminate ambiguity when looking up keys in
known_hosts or checking host certificate names.
* sftp-server(8): Add the ability to whitelist and/or blacklist sftp
protocol requests by name.
* sftp-server(8): Add a sftp "fsync@openssh.com" to support calling
fsync(2) on an open file handle.
* sshd(8): Add a ssh_config(5) PermitTTY to disallow TTY allocation,
mirroring the longstanding no-pty authorized_keys option.
* ssh(1): Add a ssh_config ProxyUseFDPass option that supports the
use of ProxyCommands that establish a connection and then pass a
connected file descriptor back to ssh(1). This allows the
ProxyCommand to exit rather than staying around to transfer data.
Bugfixes:
* ssh(1), sshd(8): Fix potential stack exhaustion caused by nested
certificates.
* ssh(1): bz#1211: make BindAddress work with UsePrivilegedPort.
* sftp(1): bz#2137: fix the progress meter for resumed transfer.
* ssh-add(1): bz#2187: do not request smartcard PIN when removing
keys from ssh-agent.
* sshd(8): bz#2139: fix re-exec fallback when original sshd binary
cannot be executed.
* ssh-keygen(1): Make relative-specified certificate expiry times
relative to current time and not the validity start time.
* sshd(8): bz#2161: fix AuthorizedKeysCommand inside a Match block.
* sftp(1): bz#2129: symlinking a file would incorrectly canonicalise
the target path.
* ssh-agent(1): bz#2175: fix a use-after-free in the PKCS#11 agent
helper executable.
* sshd(8): Improve logging of sessions to include the user name,
remote host and port, the session type (shell, command, etc.) and
allocated TTY (if any).
* sshd(8): bz#1297: tell the client (via a debug message) when
their preferred listen address has been overridden by the
server's GatewayPorts setting.
* sshd(8): bz#2162: include report port in bad protocol banner
message.
* sftp(1): bz#2163: fix memory leak in error path in do_readdir().
* sftp(1): bz#2171: don't leak file descriptor on error.
* sshd(8): Include the local address and port in "Connection from
..." message (only shown at loglevel>=verbose).
Portable OpenSSH:
* Please note that this is the last version of Portable OpenSSH that
will support versions of OpenSSL prior to 0.9.6. Support (i.e.
SSH_OLD_EVP) will be removed following the 6.5p1 release.
* Portable OpenSSH will attempt compile and link as a Position
Independent Executable on Linux, OS X and OpenBSD on recent gcc-
like compilers. Other platforms and older/other compilers may
request this using the --with-pie configure flag.
* A number of other toolchain-related hardening options are used
automatically if available, including -ftrapv to abort on signed
integer overflow and options to write-protect dynamic linking
information. The use of these options may be disabled using the
--without-hardening configure flag.
* If the toolchain supports it, one of the -fstack-protector-strong,
-fstack-protector-all or -fstack-protector compilation flag are
used to add guards to mitigate attacks based on stack overflows.
The use of these options may be disabled using the
--without-stackprotect configure option.
* sshd(8): Add support for pre-authentication sandboxing using the
Capsicum API introduced in FreeBSD 10.
* Switch to a ChaCha20-based arc4random() PRNG for platforms that do
not provide their own.
* sshd(8): bz#2156: restore Linux oom_adj setting when handling
SIGHUP to maintain behaviour over retart.
* sshd(8): bz#2032: use local username in krb5_kuserok check rather
than full client name which may be of form user@REALM.
* ssh(1), sshd(8): Test for both the presence of ECC NID numbers in
OpenSSL and that they actually work. Fedora (at least) has
NID_secp521r1 that doesn't work.
* bz#2173: use pkg-config --libs to include correct -L location for
libedit.
christos