OpenSSH vulnerabilities

OpenSSH before 10.3 mishandles the authorized_keys principals option in uncommon scenarios involving a principals list in conjunction with a Certificate Authority that makes certain use of comma characters.

ssh in OpenSSH before 10.1 allows control characters in usernames that originate from certain possibly untrusted sources, potentially leading to code execution when a ProxyCommand is used. The untrusted sources are the command line and %-sequence expansion of a configuration file. (A configuration file that provides a complete literal username is not categorized as an untrusted source.)

In sshd in OpenSSH before 10.0, the DisableForwarding directive does not adhere to the documentation stating that it disables X11 and agent forwarding.

A flaw was found in the OpenSSH package. For each ping packet the SSH server receives, a pong packet is allocated in a memory buffer and stored in a queue of packages. It is only freed when the server/client key exchange has finished. A malicious client may keep sending such packages, leading to an uncontrolled increase in memory consumption on the server side. Consequently, the server may become unavailable, resulting in a denial of service attack.

A vulnerability was found in OpenSSH when the VerifyHostKeyDNS option is enabled. A machine-in-the-middle attack can be performed by a malicious machine impersonating a legit server. This issue occurs due to how OpenSSH mishandles error codes in specific conditions when verifying the host key. For an attack to be considered successful, the attacker needs to manage to exhaust the client's memory resource first, turning the attack complexity high.

A security regression (CVE-2006-5051) was discovered in OpenSSH's server (sshd). There is a race condition which can lead sshd to handle some signals in an unsafe manner. An unauthenticated, remote attacker may be able to trigger it by failing to authenticate within a set time period.

OpenSSH through 10.0, when common types of DRAM are used, might allow row hammer attacks (for authentication bypass) because the integer value of authenticated in mm_answer_authpassword does not resist flips of a single bit. NOTE: this is applicable to a certain threat model of attacker-victim co-location in which the attacker has user privileges. NOTE: this is disputed by the Supplier, who states "we do not consider it to be the application's responsibility to defend against platform architectural weaknesses."

In ssh in OpenSSH before 9.6, OS command injection might occur if a user name or host name has shell metacharacters, and this name is referenced by an expansion token in certain situations. For example, an untrusted Git repository can have a submodule with shell metacharacters in a user name or host name.

The SSH transport protocol with certain OpenSSH extensions, found in OpenSSH before 9.6 and other products, allows remote attackers to bypass integrity checks such that some packets are omitted (from the extension negotiation message), and a client and server may consequently end up with a connection for which some security features have been downgraded or disabled, aka a Terrapin attack. This occurs because the SSH Binary Packet Protocol (BPP), implemented by these extensions, mishandles the handshake phase and mishandles use of sequence numbers. For example, there is an effective attack against SSH's use of ChaCha20-Poly1305 (and CBC with Encrypt-then-MAC). The bypass occurs in chacha20-poly1305@openssh.com and (if CBC is used) the -etm@openssh.com MAC algorithms. This also affects Maverick Synergy Java SSH API before 3.1.0-SNAPSHOT, Dropbear through 2022.83, Ssh before 5.1.1 in Erlang/OTP, PuTTY before 0.80, AsyncSSH before 2.14.2, golang.org/x/crypto before 0.17.0, libssh before 0.10.6, libssh2 through 1.11.0, Thorn Tech SFTP Gateway before 3.4.6, Tera Term before 5.1, Paramiko before 3.4.0, jsch before 0.2.15, SFTPGo before 2.5.6, Netgate pfSense Plus through 23.09.1, Netgate pfSense CE through 2.7.2, HPN-SSH through 18.2.0, ProFTPD before 1.3.8b (and before 1.3.9rc2), ORYX CycloneSSH before 2.3.4, NetSarang XShell 7 before Build 0144, CrushFTP before 10.6.0, ConnectBot SSH library before 2.2.22, Apache MINA sshd through 2.11.0, sshj through 0.37.0, TinySSH through 20230101, trilead-ssh2 6401, LANCOM LCOS and LANconfig, FileZilla before 3.66.4, Nova before 11.8, PKIX-SSH before 14.4, SecureCRT before 9.4.3, Transmit5 before 5.10.4, Win32-OpenSSH before 9.5.0.0p1-Beta, WinSCP before 6.2.2, Bitvise SSH Server before 9.32, Bitvise SSH Client before 9.33, KiTTY through 0.76.1.13, the net-ssh gem 7.2.0 for Ruby, the mscdex ssh2 module before 1.15.0 for Node.js, the thrussh library before 0.35.1 for Rust, and the Russh crate before 0.40.2 for Rust.

ssh-add in OpenSSH before 9.3 adds smartcard keys to ssh-agent without the intended per-hop destination constraints. The earliest affected version is 8.9.

The client side in OpenSSH 5.7 through 8.4 has an Observable Discrepancy leading to an information leak in the algorithm negotiation. This allows man-in-the-middle attackers to target initial connection attempts (where no host key for the server has been cached by the client). NOTE: some reports state that 8.5 and 8.6 are also affected.

An issue was discovered in OpenSSH 7.9. Due to the scp implementation being derived from 1983 rcp, the server chooses which files/directories are sent to the client. However, the scp client only performs cursory validation of the object name returned (only directory traversal attacks are prevented). A malicious scp server (or Man-in-The-Middle attacker) can overwrite arbitrary files in the scp client target directory. If recursive operation (-r) is performed, the server can manipulate subdirectories as well (for example, to overwrite the .ssh/authorized_keys file).

In OpenSSH 7.9, due to accepting and displaying arbitrary stderr output from the server, a malicious server (or Man-in-The-Middle attacker) can manipulate the client output, for example to use ANSI control codes to hide additional files being transferred.

In OpenSSH 7.9, scp.c in the scp client allows remote SSH servers to bypass intended access restrictions via the filename of . or an empty filename. The impact is modifying the permissions of the target directory on the client side.

Remotely observable behaviour in auth-gss2.c in OpenSSH through 7.8 could be used by remote attackers to detect existence of users on a target system when GSS2 is in use. NOTE: the discoverer states 'We understand that the OpenSSH developers do not want to treat such a username enumeration (or "oracle") as a vulnerability.'

OpenSSH through 7.7 is prone to a user enumeration vulnerability due to not delaying bailout for an invalid authenticating user until after the packet containing the request has been fully parsed, related to auth2-gss.c, auth2-hostbased.c, and auth2-pubkey.c.

A certain Red Hat modification to the ChrootDirectory feature in OpenSSH 4.8, as used in sshd in OpenSSH 4.3 in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.4 and Fedora 11, allows local users to gain privileges via hard links to setuid programs that use configuration files within the chroot directory, related to requirements for directory ownership.

Error handling in the SSH protocol in (1) SSH Tectia Client and Server and Connector 4.0 through 4.4.11, 5.0 through 5.2.4, and 5.3 through 5.3.8; Client and Server and ConnectSecure 6.0 through 6.0.4; Server for Linux on IBM System z 6.0.4; Server for IBM z/OS 5.5.1 and earlier, 6.0.0, and 6.0.1; and Client 4.0-J through 4.3.3-J and 4.0-K through 4.3.10-K; and (2) OpenSSH 4.7p1 and possibly other versions, when using a block cipher algorithm in Cipher Block Chaining (CBC) mode, makes it easier for remote attackers to recover certain plaintext data from an arbitrary block of ciphertext in an SSH session via unknown vectors.

A certain Debian patch for OpenSSH before 4.3p2-9etch3 on etch; before 4.6p1-1 on sid and lenny; and on other distributions such as SUSE uses functions that are not async-signal-safe in the signal handler for login timeouts, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (connection slot exhaustion) via multiple login attempts. NOTE: this issue exists because of an incorrect fix for CVE-2006-5051.

Certain Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 4 and 5 packages for OpenSSH, as signed in August 2008 using a legitimate Red Hat GPG key, contain an externally introduced modification (Trojan Horse) that allows the package authors to have an unknown impact. NOTE: since the malicious packages were not distributed from any official Red Hat sources, the scope of this issue is restricted to users who may have obtained these packages through unofficial distribution points. As of 20080827, no unofficial distributions of this software are known.

OpenSSH before 5.1 sets the SO_REUSEADDR socket option when the X11UseLocalhost configuration setting is disabled, which allows local users on some platforms to hijack the X11 forwarding port via a bind to a single IP address, as demonstrated on the HP-UX platform.

sshd in OpenSSH 4 on Debian GNU/Linux, and the 20070303 OpenSSH snapshot, allows remote authenticated users to obtain access to arbitrary SELinux roles by appending a :/ (colon slash) sequence, followed by the role name, to the username.

OpenSSH 4.4 up to versions before 4.9 allows remote authenticated users to bypass the sshd_config ForceCommand directive by modifying the .ssh/rc session file.

OpenSSH 4.3p2, and probably other versions, allows local users to hijack forwarded X connections by causing ssh to set DISPLAY to :10, even when another process is listening on the associated port, as demonstrated by opening TCP port 6010 (IPv4) and sniffing a cookie sent by Emacs.

Unspecified vulnerability in the linux_audit_record_event function in OpenSSH 4.3p2, as used on Fedora Core 6 and possibly other systems, allows remote attackers to write arbitrary characters to an audit log via a crafted username. NOTE: some of these details are obtained from third party information.

ssh in OpenSSH before 4.7 does not properly handle when an untrusted cookie cannot be created and uses a trusted X11 cookie instead, which allows attackers to violate intended policy and gain privileges by causing an X client to be treated as trusted.

Unspecified vulnerability in SSHield 1.6.1 with OpenSSH 3.0.2p1 on Cisco WebNS 8.20.0.1 on Cisco Content Services Switch (CSS) series 11000 devices allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (connection slot exhaustion and device crash) via a series of large packets designed to exploit the SSH CRC32 attack detection overflow (CVE-2001-0144), possibly a related issue to CVE-2002-1024.

OpenSSH, when using OPIE (One-Time Passwords in Everything) for PAM, allows remote attackers to determine the existence of certain user accounts, which displays a different response if the user account exists and is configured to use one-time passwords (OTP), a similar issue to CVE-2007-2243.

OpenSSH 4.6 and earlier, when ChallengeResponseAuthentication is enabled, allows remote attackers to determine the existence of user accounts by attempting to authenticate via S/KEY, which displays a different response if the user account exists, a similar issue to CVE-2001-1483.

Unspecified vulnerability in the sshd Privilege Separation Monitor in OpenSSH before 4.5 causes weaker verification that authentication has been successful, which might allow attackers to bypass authentication. NOTE: as of 20061108, it is believed that this issue is only exploitable by leveraging vulnerabilities in the unprivileged process, which are not known to exist.

OpenSSH portable 4.1 on SUSE Linux, and possibly other platforms and versions, and possibly under limited configurations, allows remote attackers to determine valid usernames via timing discrepancies in which responses take longer for valid usernames than invalid ones, as demonstrated by sshtime. NOTE: as of 20061014, it appears that this issue is dependent on the use of manually-set passwords that causes delays when processing /etc/shadow due to an increased number of rounds.

packet.c in ssh in OpenSSH allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) by sending an invalid protocol sequence with USERAUTH_SUCCESS before NEWKEYS, which causes newkeys[mode] to be NULL.

Unspecified vulnerability in portable OpenSSH before 4.4, when running on some platforms, allows remote attackers to determine the validity of usernames via unknown vectors involving a GSSAPI "authentication abort."

Signal handler race condition in OpenSSH before 4.4 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash), and possibly execute arbitrary code if GSSAPI authentication is enabled, via unspecified vectors that lead to a double-free.

sshd in OpenSSH before 4.4, when using the version 1 SSH protocol, allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (CPU consumption) via an SSH packet that contains duplicate blocks, which is not properly handled by the CRC compensation attack detector.

OpenSSH on FreeBSD 5.3 and 5.4, when used with OpenPAM, does not properly handle when a forked child process terminates during PAM authentication, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (client connection refusal) by connecting multiple times to the SSH server, waiting for the password prompt, then disconnecting.

scp in OpenSSH 4.2p1 allows attackers to execute arbitrary commands via filenames that contain shell metacharacters or spaces, which are expanded twice.

sshd in OpenSSH before 4.2, when GSSAPIDelegateCredentials is enabled, allows GSSAPI credentials to be delegated to clients who log in using non-GSSAPI methods, which could cause those credentials to be exposed to untrusted users or hosts.

OpenSSH 4.0, and other versions before 4.2, does not properly handle dynamic port forwarding ("-D" option) when a listen address is not provided, which may cause OpenSSH to enable the GatewayPorts functionality.

SSH, as implemented in OpenSSH before 4.0 and possibly other implementations, stores hostnames, IP addresses, and keys in plaintext in the known_hosts file, which makes it easier for an attacker that has compromised an SSH user's account to generate a list of additional targets that are more likely to have the same password or key.

sshd in OpenSSH 3.5p1, when PermitRootLogin is disabled, immediately closes the TCP connection after a root login attempt with the correct password, but leaves the connection open after an attempt with an incorrect password, which makes it easier for remote attackers to guess the password by observing the connection state, a different vulnerability than CVE-2003-0190. NOTE: it could be argued that in most environments, this does not cross privilege boundaries without requiring leverage of a separate vulnerability.

sshd.c in OpenSSH 3.6.1p2 and 3.7.1p2 and possibly other versions, when using privilege separation, does not properly signal the non-privileged process when a session has been terminated after exceeding the LoginGraceTime setting, which leaves the connection open and allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (connection consumption).

The default configuration for OpenSSH enables AllowTcpForwarding, which could allow remote authenticated users to perform a port bounce, when configured with an anonymous access program such as AnonCVS.

Directory traversal vulnerability in scp for OpenSSH before 3.4p1 allows remote malicious servers to overwrite arbitrary files. NOTE: this may be a rediscovery of CVE-2000-0992.

sshd in OpenSSH 3.6.1p2 and earlier, when PermitRootLogin is disabled and using PAM keyboard-interactive authentication, does not insert a delay after a root login attempt with the correct password, which makes it easier for remote attackers to use timing differences to determine if the password step of a multi-step authentication is successful, a different vulnerability than CVE-2003-0190.

The PAM conversation function in OpenSSH 3.7.1 and 3.7.1p1 interprets an array of structures as an array of pointers, which allows attackers to modify the stack and possibly gain privileges.

The SSH1 PAM challenge response authentication in OpenSSH 3.7.1 and 3.7.1p1, when Privilege Separation is disabled, does not check the result of the authentication attempt, which can allow remote attackers to gain privileges.

Multiple "buffer management errors" in OpenSSH before 3.7.1 may allow attackers to cause a denial of service or execute arbitrary code using (1) buffer_init in buffer.c, (2) buffer_free in buffer.c, or (3) a separate function in channels.c, a different vulnerability than CVE-2003-0693.

"Memory bugs" in OpenSSH 3.7.1 and earlier, with unknown impact, a different set of vulnerabilities than CVE-2003-0693 and CVE-2003-0695.

A "buffer management error" in buffer_append_space of buffer.c for OpenSSH before 3.7 may allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary code by causing an incorrect amount of memory to be freed and corrupting the heap, a different vulnerability than CVE-2003-0695.