oss-sec mailing list archives

Re: OpenSSH key blacklisting


From: "Craig Edwards (Brain)" <brain () chatspike net>
Date: Fri, 16 May 2008 18:24:51 +0100

Hi,

I havent been following this debacle too closely as i dont have much to do with debian, however, wouldnt such a system be vulnerable to false positives if you are just going to hash partial fingerprints rather than whole fingerprints?

-- Brain

Solar Designer wrote:
Hi,

Are any other distros, besides Debian, Ubuntu, and derived ones, going
to implement key blacklisting in OpenSSH - or are considering it?

We are considering it for Openwall GNU/*/Linux, and if our effort would
be reused by others, or if others join us in developing and/or testing
the patch, this would be a reason for us to go for it.

I don't think we'll take the Debian/Ubuntu patch as-is.  Rather, we are
likely to use a trivial binary encoding/compression method for the
partial fingerprints.  We'd also use smaller partial fingerprints.  With
the approach I have in mind, it'd take around 4.55 bytes per key to
store 48-bit partial fingerprints, bringing the installed file size for
3 arch types and 2 key types/sizes in under 1 MB (or just over 1 MB for
3 key types/sizes).

Please comment.

Thanks,

Alexander


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