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Overconfidence in SSH Protection
nitsudima writes to mention a post on the Informit site about the common misunderstandings surrounding SSH, and how well-intentioned admins may be creating holes in their own security by using it. From the article: "In UNIX, all things are files. To send network traffic, UNIX writes the traffic to the network device file. In this case, the connection to Box A (and that private key used for authentication) is a socket file. This file will shuttle the authentication traffic between Box A and Box P. So what's the risk? Maybe the hacker can't get a copy of the private key through the socket file, but something better (from his/her view) can be done. If the hacker has root on Box D, he or she can point a private copy of the agent forwarding software to that socket file and thereby point the authentication process to the administrator's credentials--the ones kept on the 'safe' intranet. What are the chances that the administrator has configured access to all the DMZ servers he controls?"
I consider myself fairly competent as far as this kind of stuff goes, but I just couldn't follow that summary at all. Maybe it's just because it's so late. Can someone post a more sensible summary of an attack?
So all I need to do is to get a root access to a Linux server and I can spy normal users there? Whoah, now this is what I call news.
Yep, just gotta get root. Of course, at that point, you probably have more to worry about than someone redirecting your ssh session.
Any sysadmin who configures sshd to allow direct access to a root account is incompetent and deserves to clean up the resulting mess when they are cracked.
So what should we worry about again?
The key is not transmitted or sent to the socket file. This person does not understand anything about private key authentication and should return all of his certifications, and please stop posting stories by them, it is embarassing.
Maybe I read the article wrong but it seems to me like a problem with someones design and not with SSH, a little like saying Unix is insecure because a unwitty sysadmin could try to make his life easier by using a blank root password.
I think part of the article is trying to say that users can enable their own ssh tunnels to home, and thus if their home network is compromised there is an easy route into the office intranet.
The submitter didn't summarise anything, he cut out a chunk which didn't make much sense on its own. It didn't help that the article was fairly long-winded. This is what I understand the author is trying to say:
As others have commented, this is kind of a "duh" moment. What's the next article?Gan Family Homepage
The article illustrated one very convoluted way to break your DMZ security, but failed to make the simple statement: don't trust anyone, not even root, on your DMZ hosts. Allow SSH logins into the DMZ, and allow the DMZ to pull files from private network patching servers, such as apt repositories, but don't allow anyone to SSH from the DMZ to the intranet. Assume the DMZ is cracked wide open and keystroke logging. No one is going to get past the DMZ by watching you type 'apt-get install squid' but they will by watching you type 'ssh root@creditcarddb.int' and then the root password.
... you can packet sniff the authentication process all day long and you won't get someone's private key.
Anyone who tunnels from the DMZ to a trusted host which can execute commands on a sensitive server can't see the forest for the trees. You've learned how to use SSH and tunnel, but you're lacking some basic common sense.
Also, I don't see what good a socket catching the authentication will do
That whole article seemed a bit of voodoo itself. Many incongruous statements, like "If the hacker has root on Box D, he or she can point a private copy of the agent forwarding software to that socket file and thereby point the authentication process to the administrator's credentials--the ones kept on the "safe" intranet."
What does that mean, exactly? You direct the authentication process to a socket file and point the process to the admin's credentials? If the socket is on the DMZ host, and the credentials are on the private network host, how can you point the authentication process to those credentials?
Maybe I'm stupid, but the article didn't seem to make a lot of sense.
Here's a summary for you:
User A on box foo:
foo> ssh-agent xterm
foo> ssh-add
* enters their pass key *
User A can now ssh to any box that has their public key in box:$HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys
User B (evul hacker with root on box foo):
foo# SSH_AGENT_PID=XXXX; export SSH_AGENT_PID
foo# SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/tmp/ssh-YYYY/ZZZZ; export SSH_AUTH_SOCK
User B now can ssh to any box that User A can, as above.
(where XXXX, YYYY, and ZZZZ are determined by evul hacker)
YES Thats correct you can use AgentForwarding.... If you are stupid enough to use agent forwarding to a host you don't trust or you would consider insecure ITS YOUR OWN STUPID FAULT IF YOU GET HACKED. Now for the evil h4x0rz to use agent forwarding on the host you connect to to hack the machine you are coming in from requires quite a number of things to be done on your stupid behalf that sure wouldnt be enabled by default and you would almost need to set them up purposefully. The only real danger with agent forwarding to an insucure host is that evil h4x0rz on that host can use your forwarded authentication agent to connect to boxes that are set up to both allow connections using that ssh-key AND allow tcp connections from any box that the evil h4x0rz have access to. Aside from that it is only as insecure as establishing a telnet session to the box and having some buffer overflow occur back to the client due to poor code on the client side. I am sure not about to stop using ssh for some "simpler" protocol like telnet but I will sure keep disabling AgentForwarding and any kind of portforwarding the hosts I dont trust and I ASSUME EVERYONE ELSE WILL CONTINUE TO DO THAT AS WELL. Otherwise you might as well start posting your root passwords to slashdot which may or may not matter if you have locked your systems down correctly in the first place.
meridian at tha.net
Why the developers of ssh have an option to forbid agent forwarding. Isn't it off by default? I cite from "man ssh":
>>>
Agent forwarding should be enabled with caution. Users with the
ability to bypass file permissions on the remote host (for the
agent's Unix-domain socket) can access the local agent through
the forwarded connection. An attacker cannot obtain key material
from the agent, however they can perform operations on the keys
that enable them to authenticate using the identities loaded into
the agent.
So wha is slashdot running an article about something where there is an explicit one-paragraph long waring in the man page of program at the option in question.
Yes, no doutbt there are a lot of idiots around, who without understanding,do things which require semantics which leads to a security leak (there is abolutely no way if you want to initiate authenticatication from processes on a machine to avoid root to do the same - as log as you are not asked on the agent's side each time before authentication;
So... how does this even remotely approach being news? Yes, if you type your passwords into a machine on which someone else has root, you have given those passwords to them! The horror! I had no idea!
The best thing I can say about this article summary is that it did not misrepresent the actual piece. The article itself was also muddled tripe, filled with semi-true and completely-irrelevant noise like "in unix, everything is a file..."
It appears that the author is just a firewall admin who's offended that ssh can be used to thwart his precious acls, and invested in giving the tool a bad name.
The article is about a common misconfiguration with regard to agent forwarding. The DMZ hosts aren't supposed to be safe, that's why they're in the DMZ and not in the intranet. The admin must assume that root on these machines is compromised. Consequently he doesn't store his private keys on any of the DMZ machines. But what many overlook, possibly because they don't use the feature, is agent forwarding. Once the admin has logged into a compromised DMZ host, access to his credentials is extended to the DMZ host by that ominous socket. The file itself never leaves the admin's computer, but if agent forwarding is enabled, root on the DMZ host can now point other hosts on the intranet to the authentication facility on the admin's computer. This misconfiguration enables the attacker to hop from the DMZ to the intranet. The correct way to avoid this is to disable agent forwarding (on the admin's computer, not just on the DMZ hosts, of course).
A few versions ago OpenSSH added a -c "Require confirmation to sign using identities" to ssh-add to take care of this. Or using something like SSHKeychain on OS X so it'll ask for confirmation for multi-hop auth, but not for connections direct from your trusted machine.
Tom Anthony
No, it's not really a man in the middle attack.
It's more of a credential hijacking scenario where
the attacker waits for you to authenticate with
the compromised machine, forward your credentials
to that machine, and then the attacker uses those
credentials to reach other machines that honor those
credentials.
This would be more like you signing in, walking
away from your computer, and someone else walkup up
to the computer and doing stuff as you except that
they get to act as you while you're still acting
as you.
Did that help?
*sigh* back to work...
Don't use SSH to poke a hole in the firewall separating your DMZ from the intranet.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."