SSH vulnerabilities

ssh in OpenSSH before 10.4 can have a use-after-free when a server changes its host key during a key re-exchange. (This outcome occurs only on the client side.)

sshd in OpenSSH before 10.4 does not always honor the minimum authentication delay.

sshd in OpenSSH before 10.4 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (resource consumption from excessive authentication attempts) because MaxAuthTries was mishandled for GSSAPIAuthentication.

In sshd in OpenSSH before 10.4, DisableForwarding=yes was supposed to take precedence over PermitTunnel=yes, but did not.

sshd in OpenSSH before 10.4 has an undocumented security-relevant behavior: GSSAPIStrictAcceptorCheck has no value if the server is in Windows Active Directory.

internal-sftp in sshd in OpenSSH before 10.4 recognizes only the first 9 command-line arguments, which can be important if a later command-line argument would have helped to ensure the intended security properties of an SFTP connection.

scp in OpenSSH before 10.4 may place a file in the parent directory of an intended directory when the copy occurs between two remote destinations.

sftp in OpenSSH before 10.4 does not properly constrain the location of downloaded files when "sftp server:/path ." is used with an attacker-controlled server.

libssh2 through 1.11.1 reads an attacker-controlled 32-bit attribute count from a publickey-subsystem response and uses it in the allocation num_attrs * sizeof(libssh2_publickey_attribute) without bounds checking, so on 32-bit platforms the multiplication overflows to an undersized buffer. A malicious SSH server can then drive the attribute-parsing loop to write past the allocation, causing a heap buffer overflow in a connecting libssh2 client.

A flaw was found in OpenSSH. A local unprivileged attacker on a Linux client host can hijack client-side X11 forwarding connections. This is possible by pre-binding the preferred abstract X socket name when X11 forwarding is enabled and a local UNIX-domain X socket is used. A successful attack can compromise the confidentiality of forwarded X11 traffic, including sensitive window contents and input, and may allow some manipulation of the forwarded session.

A flaw was found in OpenSSH. This vulnerability, a heap out-of-bounds read, occurs during the cleanup of GSSAPI (Generic Security Service Application Programming Interface) indicators when a trailing NULL termination is missing in the auth-indicators array. A remote attacker, under specific configurations involving GSSAPI authentication and a Kerberos environment, could exploit this to cause the SSH authentication path to crash or abort. This leads to a denial of service (DoS), impacting the availability of the SSH service.

A flaw was found in OpenSSH. A malicious SSH server can exploit a double free vulnerability in the Diffie-Hellman Group Exchange (DH-GEX) client path. This occurs during FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards) mode known-group validation when the client processes attacker-controlled DH-GEX group parameters. Successful exploitation leads to client-side process termination, resulting in a Denial of Service (DoS).

libssh2 through 1.11.1, fixed in commit 2dae302, contains an out-of-bounds heap read vulnerability in the sftp_symlink() function in src/sftp.c that allows a malicious SSH server or man-in-the-middle attacker to disclose heap memory contents or cause a crash by sending a crafted SSH_FXP_NAME response. Attackers can supply a link_len value larger than the actual packet data in SSH_FXP_NAME responses for SFTP READLINK and REALPATH operations, triggering a heap buffer over-read of up to target_len minus one bytes due to the missing validation of available packet buffer size before the memcpy operation.

libssh2 through 1.11.1, fixed in commit 7acf3df contains an out-of-bounds write vulnerability in ssh2_transport_read() that fails to enforce upper bounds on packet_length field. Remote attackers can send crafted SSH packets with excessively large packet_length values to corrupt heap memory and achieve remote code execution.

libssh2 through 1.11.1, fixed in commit 1762685, contains a pre-authentication denial of service vulnerability in the SSH_MSG_EXT_INFO handler in src/packet.c that allows a malicious SSH server to cause a client CPU exhaustion loop by sending a crafted extension count value. A malicious server can set nr_extensions to 0xFFFFFFFF during key exchange, causing the client to spin in a tight CPU loop for over 60 seconds because return values from _libssh2_get_string() are unchecked and the session timeout does not apply to CPU-bound loops.

Improper input validation in the SSH Elevate Shell feature allows an authenticated user with permission to create or modify a shared SSH entry to execute arbitrary commands on a remote SSH host using stored elevation credentials via a crafted alternate username and user interaction with the Elevate Shell action. This affects  :  - Remote Desktop Manager 2026.2.5.0 through 2026.2.7.0 - Remote Desktop Manager 2026.1.23.0 and earlier

Russh is a Rust SSH client & server library. From version 0.34.0 to before version 0.61.0, several russh client and server message handlers decoded attacker-controlled SSH strings, name-lists, and byte fields into owned allocations before applying field-specific bounds. A remote SSH peer could send oversized, high-fanout, or malformed length-prefixed fields and make the library allocate, attempt to allocate, or split data before rejecting input that should have been rejected earlier. This issue has been patched in version 0.61.0.

Russh is a Rust SSH client & server library. From version 0.34.0-beta.1 to before version 0.61.0, russh did not enforce the SSH identification-string rules as deliberately as OpenSSH. In particular, the server-side identification reader used the same permissive path as the client, allowing pre-banner lines from clients, and the reader did not enforce a bounded number of pre-banner lines. For a library server built on russh, this could allow a remote peer to hold connection setup resources in the cleartext pre-authentication phase with malformed identification input that should have been rejected early. This issue has been patched in version 0.61.0.

Russh is a Rust SSH client & server library. From version 0.34.0 to before version 0.61.1, when SSH compression is enabled, russh accepted compressed packets whose on-wire size passed the normal transport packet-length checks but whose decompressed size was much larger. This allowed a remote peer to send oversized post-decompression packets that should have been rejected. In current releases, this is a remote denial-of-service / resource-exhaustion issue in the post-decompression receive path. In older releases before 0.58.0, the same remote decompression path used CryptoVec, which appears to make the historical impact worse. This issue has been patched in version 0.61.1.

A local privilege escalation vulnerability was found in the ansible.posix authorized_key module. The module's keyfile() function uses os.chown() instead of os.lchown() and opens files without O_NOFOLLOW when managing SSH authorized keys. An unprivileged local user can pre-stage symbolic links in their ~/.ssh directory to redirect file ownership changes to arbitrary system paths when an operator runs the authorized_key task as root, leading to local privilege escalation.

When adding a key to a remote agent constraint extensions such as restrict-destination-v00@openssh.com were not serialized in the request. Destination restrictions were silently stripped when forwarding keys, allowing unrestricted use of the key on the remote host. The client now serializes all constraint extensions. Additionally, the in-memory keyring returned by NewKeyring() now rejects keys with unsupported constraint extensions instead of silently ignoring them.

The Verify() method for FIDO/U2F security key types (sk-ecdsa-sha2-nistp256@openssh.com, sk-ssh-ed25519@openssh.com) did not check the User Presence flag. Signatures generated without physical touch were accepted, allowing unattended use of a hardware security key. To restore the previous behavior, return a "no-touch-required" extension in Permissions.Extensions from PublicKeyCallback.

A malicious actor with access to the network could exploit an Improper Input Validation vulnerability found in UniFi OS devices to execute a Command Injection.

A malicious actor with access to the network could exploit a Path Traversal vulnerability found in UniFi OS devices to access files on the underlying system that could be manipulated to access an underlying account.

A malicious actor with access to the network could exploit an Improper Access Control vulnerability found in UniFi OS devices to make unauthorized changes to the system.

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ptrace: slightly saner 'get_dumpable()' logic The 'dumpability' of a task is fundamentally about the memory image of the task - the concept comes from whether it can core dump or not - and makes no sense when you don't have an associated mm. And almost all users do in fact use it only for the case where the task has a mm pointer. But we have one odd special case: ptrace_may_access() uses 'dumpable' to check various other things entirely independently of the MM (typically explicitly using flags like PTRACE_MODE_READ_FSCREDS). Including for threads that no longer have a VM (and maybe never did, like most kernel threads). It's not what this flag was designed for, but it is what it is. The ptrace code does check that the uid/gid matches, so you do have to be uid-0 to see kernel thread details, but this means that the traditional "drop capabilities" model doesn't make any difference for this all. Make it all make a *bit* more sense by saying that if you don't have a MM pointer, we'll use a cached "last dumpability" flag if the thread ever had a MM (it will be zero for kernel threads since it is never set), and require a proper CAP_SYS_PTRACE capability to override.

May 2026: This security advisory provides the details and fix information for a vulnerability that was discovered and fixed after the was disclosed in February 2026. This new advisory is for a new vulnerability in the control connection handshaking. The section of this advisory includes Show Control Connections guidance to help with system checks.  A vulnerability in the peering authentication in Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Controller, formerly SD-WAN vSmart, Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager, formerly SD-WAN vManage, and Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Validator, formerly SD-WAN vBond, could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to bypass authentication and obtain administrative privileges on an affected system. This vulnerability exists because the peering authentication mechanism in an affected system is not working properly. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted requests to the affected system. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to log in to an affected Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Controller as an internal, high-privileged, non-root user account. Using this account, the attacker could access NETCONF, which would then allow the attacker to manipulate network configuration for the SD-WAN fabric.

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: crypto: algif_aead - Revert to operating out-of-place This mostly reverts commit 72548b093ee3 except for the copying of the associated data. There is no benefit in operating in-place in algif_aead since the source and destination come from different mappings. Get rid of all the complexity added for in-place operation and just copy the AD directly.

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.

OpenSSH before 10.3 omits connection multiplexing confirmation for proxy-mode multiplexing sessions.

OpenSSH before 10.3 can use unintended ECDSA algorithms. Listing of any ECDSA algorithm in PubkeyAcceptedAlgorithms or HostbasedAcceptedAlgorithms is misinterpreted to mean all ECDSA algorithms.

In OpenSSH before 10.3, command execution can occur via shell metacharacters in a username within a command line. This requires a scenario where the username on the command line is untrusted, and also requires a non-default configurations of % in ssh_config.

In OpenSSH before 10.3, a file downloaded by scp may be installed setuid or setgid, an outcome contrary to some users' expectations, if the download is performed as root with -O (legacy scp protocol) and without -p (preserve mode).

Vulnerability in the OpenSSH GSSAPI delta included in various Linux distributions. This vulnerability affects the GSSAPI patches added by various Linux distributions and does not affect the OpenSSH upstream project itself. The usage of sshpkt_disconnect() on an error, which does not terminate the process, allows an attacker to send an unexpected GSSAPI message type during the GSSAPI key exchange to the server, which will call the underlying function and continue the execution of the program without setting the related connection variables. As the variables are not initialized to NULL the code later accesses those uninitialized variables, accessing random memory, which could lead to undefined behavior. The recommended workaround is to use ssh_packet_disconnect() instead, which does terminate the process. The impact of the vulnerability depends heavily on the compiler flag hardening configuration.

A vulnerability allowing a low-privileged user to extract saved SSH credentials.

A vulnerability was determined in mkj Dropbear up to 2025.89. Impacted is the function unpackneg of the file src/curve25519.c of the component S Range Check. This manipulation causes improper verification of cryptographic signature. The attack can be initiated remotely. The attack is considered to have high complexity. The exploitability is considered difficult. The actual existence of this vulnerability is currently in question. Patch name: fdec3c90a15447bd538641d85e5a3e3ac981011d. To fix this issue, it is recommended to deploy a patch. The project maintainer explains: "Signature Malleability is not exploitable in SSH protocol. (...) [A] PoC doesn't exist for SSH implementation, but rather it's against the internal API."

An attacker may exploit the use of outdated and weak MAC algorithms in the device’s SSH service to potentially compromise the integrity of the SSH session, allowing manipulation of transmitted data if the attacker can interact with the network traffic.

An attacker may exploit the use of weak CBC-based cipher suites in the device’s SSH service to potentially observe or manipulate parts of the encrypted SSH communication, if they are able to intercept or interact with the network traffic.

In OpenClaw before 2026.2.23, tools.exec.safeBins validation for sort could be bypassed via GNU long-option abbreviations (such as --compress-prog) in allowlist mode, leading to approval-free execution paths that were intended to require approval. Only an exact string such as --compress-program was denied.

A vulnerability in Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to view sensitive information on an affected system. This vulnerability is due to insufficient file system restrictions. An authenticated attacker with netadmin privileges could exploit this vulnerability by accessing the vshell of an affected system. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to read sensitive information on the underlying operating system.

A vulnerability in the Data Collection Agent (DCA) feature of Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to gain DCA user privileges on an affected system. This vulnerability is due to the presence of a credential file for the DCA user on an affected system. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted HTTP request and reading the file that contains the DCA password from that affected system. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to access another affected system and gain DCA user privileges. Note: Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager releases 20.18 and later are not affected by this vulnerability.

A vulnerability in the API of Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager could allow an authenticated, remote attacker to overwrite arbitrary files on the local file system. To exploit this vulnerability, the attacker must have valid read-only credentials with API access on the affected system. This vulnerability is due to improper file handling on the API interface of an affected system. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by uploading a malicious file on the local file system. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to overwrite arbitrary files on the affected system and gain vmanage user privileges.

BeyondTrust Remote Support (RS) and certain older versions of Privileged Remote Access (PRA) contain a critical pre-authentication remote code execution vulnerability. By sending specially crafted requests, an unauthenticated remote attacker may be able to execute operating system commands in the context of the site user.

Terraform / OpenTofu Provider adds support for Proxmox Virtual Environment. Prior to version 0.93.1, in the SSH configuration documentation, the sudoer line suggested is insecure and can result in escaping the folder using ../, allowing any files on the system to be edited. This issue has been patched in version 0.93.1.

OpenClaw is a personal AI assistant. Prior to version 2026.1.29, there is an OS command injection vulnerability via the Project Root Path in sshNodeCommand. The sshNodeCommand function constructed a shell script without properly escaping the user-supplied project path in an error message. When the cd command failed, the unescaped path was interpolated directly into an echo statement, allowing arbitrary command execution on the remote SSH host. The parseSSHTarget function did not validate that SSH target strings could not begin with a dash. An attacker-supplied target like -oProxyCommand=... would be interpreted as an SSH configuration flag rather than a hostname, allowing arbitrary command execution on the local machine. This issue has been patched in version 2026.1.29.

OpenClaw (aka clawdbot or Moltbot) before 2026.1.29 obtains a gatewayUrl value from a query string and automatically makes a WebSocket connection without prompting, sending a token value.

The Access Manager 92xx in hardware revision K7 is based on Linux instead of Windows CE embedded in older hardware revisions. In this new hardware revision it was noticed that an SSH service is exposed on port 22. By analyzing the firmware of the devices, it was noticed that there are two users with hardcoded and weak passwords that can be used to access the devices via SSH. The passwords can be also guessed very easily. The password of at least one user is set to a random value after the first deployment, with the restriction that the password is only randomized if the configured date is prior to 2022. Therefore, under certain circumstances, the passwords are not randomized. For example, if the clock is never set on the device, the battery of the clock module has been changed, the Access Manager has been factory reset and has not received a time yet.

Soft Serve is a self-hostable Git server for the command line. Versions 0.11.2 and below have a critical authentication bypass vulnerability that allows an attacker to impersonate any user (including admin) by "offering" the victim's public key during the SSH handshake before authenticating with their own valid key. This occurs because the user identity is stored in the session context during the "offer" phase and is not cleared if that specific authentication attempt fails. This issue has been fixed in version 0.11.3.

wheel is a command line tool for manipulating Python wheel files, as defined in PEP 427. In versions 0.40.0 through 0.46.1, the unpack function is vulnerable to file permission modification through mishandling of file permissions after extraction. The logic blindly trusts the filename from the archive header for the chmod operation, even though the extraction process itself might have sanitized the path. Attackers can craft a malicious wheel file that, when unpacked, changes the permissions of critical system files (e.g., /etc/passwd, SSH keys, config files), allowing for Privilege Escalation or arbitrary code execution by modifying now-writable scripts. This issue has been fixed in version 0.46.2.

A vulnerability in the SSH service of Cisco IEC6400 Wireless Backhaul Edge Compute Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause the SSH service to stop responding. This vulnerability exists because the SSH service lacks effective flood protection. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by initiating a denial of service (DoS) attack against the SSH port. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause the SSH service to be unresponsive during the period of the DoS attack. All other operations remain stable during the attack.