Re: [Curdle] [saag] Time for SSH3?

Seems like possibly a good time to mention VEX, since it's a relatively new
concept in software supply chain security.

- https://www.ntia.gov/files/ntia/publications/vex_one-page_summary.pdf
- https://github.com/openvex

The longer a component has survived production deployment, the more the set
of vex badges will look like Fruit Salad (slang for display of military
medals and ribbons on dress uniforms).

To Watson's comment earlier, having lots of badges is not always a good
thing, but having them and not proudly displaying them is probably worse.

OS

On Wed, Dec 20, 2023 at 11:44 PM Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu> wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 21, 2023 at 03:08:06AM +0000, Peter Gutmann wrote:
> >
> > Ah, good point....  it'd help first to get an idea
> > of what the practical impact of this attack is.  I mean, apart from egg
> on the
> > face what could an attacker actually do that's going to cause a real
> security
> > problem?
>
>    "The attack can be performed in practice, allowing an attacker to
>     downgrade the connection's security by truncating the extension
>     negotiation message (RFC8308) from the transcript. The truncation
>     can lead to using less secure client authentication algorithms and
>     deactivating specific countermeasures against keystroke timing
>     attacks in OpenSSH 9.5.
>
>     We also showed that Terrapin can be used to enable the
>     exploitation of implementation flaws. For example, we found
>     several weaknesses in the AsyncSSH servers' state machine,
>     allowing an attacker to sign a victim's client into another
>     account without the victim noticing. Hence, it will enable strong
>     phishing attacks and may grant the attacker Man-in-the-Middle
>     (MitM) capabilities within the encrypted session."
>
>     - https://terrapin-attack.com/
>
> So for an OpenSSH client/server pair, it's not _that_ terrible.  The
> keystroke timing attacks was something that only landed very recently
> (October 2023), and people have lived without it for quite some time.
>
> For people using AsyncSSH servers, the vulnerability seems to be a bit
> more unfortunate.  The fix has already been pushed out to the
> AsyncSSH, but the question is how quickly will people run "pip
> install --upgrade".
>
> > So perhaps before everyone rushes out work on their code with
> > a pair of pliers (and optionally a blowtorch),
>
> At least for people using OpenSSH it's just a set of pilers being
> applied to the ssh and sshd config file[1].   :-)
>
> [1] https://www.ssh-audit.com/hardening_guides.html
>
> So if you don't like the OpenSSH "innovations", it's not that hard to
> disable them.  :-)
>
>                                                 - Ted
>
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ORIE STEELE
Chief Technology Officer
www.transmute.industries

<https://transmute.industries>