[Tfug] Debian SSH vulnerability

Matt Jacob m at mattjacob.com
Tue May 13 18:06:11 MST 2008


Right. What Andy and Claude said is absolutely correct.

This is the equivalent (for me) of managing a 100-unit apartment complex 
and having to replace the lock in each unit as well as having to issue 
new keys to all the tenants. Only, instead of 1-2 tenants per unit, 
there might be 1-20 tenants per unit.

The only thing keeping me sane besides the pot of coffee I just downed 
is the fact that there's some overlap among the new keys. That is, each 
of us developers needs a new private key, and the new public key needs 
to be added to authorized_keys on every box (for the most part). 
Thankfully, the mapping is one key per developer and not one key per 
login, if you follow.

M

Claude Rubinson wrote:
> On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 05:22:35PM -0700, William Stott wrote:
>> No central patch management system for Debian?
> 
> The problem is that user-generated keys may be weak.  No way to
> provide a central fix for that.
> 
> This is one of the most serious security problems that Debian's had in
> its history and affects SSL, SSH, VPN, DNSSEC, etc.  Basically,
> anything that makes use of OpenSSL.
> 
> Claude
> 
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