sshnet / sshnet/SSH.NET

Remove SHA-1 Signature Support

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#1,306 11 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Dominant language
C#
Stars
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Forks
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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

Problem Statement

This item is to track the removal of SHA-1 as a cryptographic signature (HMAC) option from SSH.NET. Nist formally deprecated SHA-1 in 2011 (source). The OpenSSH project also officially dropped support for SHA-1 in 2020 (source).

TL;DR: SHA-1 is considered insecure and we should remove it as a supported signature.

Proposal

The following would be removed from the codebase:

Key Exhange Methods
  • diffie-hellman-group1-sha1
  • diffie-hellman-group14-sha1
  • diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha1
Host Key Algorithms
  • ssh-dss
  • ssh-rsa
Impact

I don't see a compatibility concern with this change because even very old servers would still support more modern algorithms than those being removed. So, it would really only affect someone connecting to a really, really old SSH server (i.e. running pre-2010s era algorithms). Those who have that need should 1) realize that their connection is not secure and stop doing that immediately, and 2) can continue to use one of our older library versions.

Additional Considerations

The SHA-1 (and MD5) algorithms are also used in message authentication codes, however, those are not listed above because they play a much lesser role in security and are used only after a secure connection has been established. However, if we think those should be in scope also, that's fine too.

Feedback welcome.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by locating the SSH.NET registrations and tests for diffie-hellman-group1-sha1, diffie-hellman-group14-sha1, diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha1, ssh-dss, and ssh-rsa. Confirm the intended scope with maintainers, then verify that these algorithms are no longer offered and that the relevant test suite passes.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
csharp
Domain
networking, security
Issue type
Refactor
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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