OpenSSH vulnerabilities

The default configuration of OpenSSH through 6.1 enforces a fixed time limit between establishing a TCP connection and completing a login, which makes it easier for remote attackers to cause a denial of service (connection-slot exhaustion) by periodically making many new TCP connections.

The auth_parse_options function in auth-options.c in sshd in OpenSSH before 5.7 provides debug messages containing authorized_keys command options, which allows remote authenticated users to obtain potentially sensitive information by reading these messages, as demonstrated by the shared user account required by Gitolite. NOTE: this can cross privilege boundaries because a user account may intentionally have no shell or filesystem access, and therefore may have no supported way to read an authorized_keys file in its own home directory.

The key_certify function in usr.bin/ssh/key.c in OpenSSH 5.6 and 5.7, when generating legacy certificates using the -t command-line option in ssh-keygen, does not initialize the nonce field, which might allow remote attackers to obtain sensitive stack memory contents or make it easier to conduct hash collision attacks.

OpenSSH 5.6 and earlier, when J-PAKE is enabled, does not properly validate the public parameters in the J-PAKE protocol, which allows remote attackers to bypass the need for knowledge of the shared secret, and successfully authenticate, by sending crafted values in each round of the protocol, a related issue to CVE-2010-4252.

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.

OpenSSH 3.6.1 and earlier, when restricting host access by numeric IP addresses and with VerifyReverseMapping disabled, allows remote attackers to bypass "from=" and "user@host" address restrictions by connecting to a host from a system whose reverse DNS hostname contains the numeric IP address.

OpenSSH-portable (OpenSSH) 3.6.1p1 and earlier with PAM support enabled immediately sends an error message when a user does not exist, which allows remote attackers to determine valid usernames via a timing attack.

sshd in OpenSSH 3.2.2, when using YP with netgroups and under certain conditions, may allow users to successfully authenticate and log in with another user's password.

Buffer overflow in sshd in OpenSSH 2.3.1 through 3.3 may allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via a large number of responses during challenge response authentication when OpenBSD is using PAM modules with interactive keyboard authentication (PAMAuthenticationViaKbdInt).

Integer overflow in sshd in OpenSSH 2.9.9 through 3.3 allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code during challenge response authentication (ChallengeResponseAuthentication) when OpenSSH is using SKEY or BSD_AUTH authentication.

Buffer overflow in OpenSSH before 2.9.9, and 3.x before 3.2.1, with Kerberos/AFS support and KerberosTgtPassing or AFSTokenPassing enabled, allows remote and local authenticated users to gain privileges.

Off-by-one error in the channel code of OpenSSH 2.0 through 3.0.2 allows local users or remote malicious servers to gain privileges.

SSH protocol 2 (aka SSH-2) public key authentication in the development snapshot of OpenSSH 2.3.1, available from 2001-01-18 through 2001-02-08, does not perform a challenge-response step to ensure that the client has the proper private key, which allows remote attackers to bypass authentication as other users by supplying a public key from that user's authorized_keys file.

OpenSSH before 3.0.1 with Kerberos V enabled does not properly authenticate users, which could allow remote attackers to login unchallenged.

OpenSSH 3.0.1 and earlier with UseLogin enabled does not properly cleanse critical environment variables such as LD_PRELOAD, which allows local users to gain root privileges.

OpenSSH before 2.9.9, when running sftp using sftp-server and using restricted keypairs, allows remote authenticated users to bypass authorized_keys2 command= restrictions using sftp commands.

OpenSSH before 2.9.9, while using keypairs and multiple keys of different types in the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2 file, may not properly handle the "from" option associated with a key, which could allow remote attackers to login from unauthorized IP addresses.