Bug#431538: ssh asks for passphrase for unreadable private key file

[Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org>]

forwarded 431538 https://bugzilla.mindrot.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1693
tags 431538 fixed-upstream
thanks

On Tue, Jul 03, 2007 at 11:12:18AM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> ian@lalonde:~/adt-play$ ls -al /root/.ssh/id_dsa_adt
> -rw------- 1 root root 672 Jul  2 18:15 /root/.ssh/id_dsa_adt
> ian@lalonde:~/adt-play$ id
> uid=1000(ian) gid=1000(ian) groups=1000(ian),1001(AdtXenUs)
> ian@lalonde:~/adt-play$ strace -s500 -ot ssh -i /root/.ssh/id_dsa_adt root@172.18.45.68
> ian@lalonde:~/adt-play$ ssh -i /root/.ssh/id_dsa_adt root@172.18.45.68 
> Enter passphrase for key '/root/.ssh/id_dsa_adt': 
> ^C
> Enter passphrase for key '/root/.ssh/id_dsa_adt': 
> ian@lalonde:~/adt-play$ strace -s500 -ot ssh -i /root/.ssh/id_dsa_adt root@172.18.45.68
> Enter passphrase for key '/root/.ssh/id_dsa_adt': 
> ^C
> 
> This is, of course, daft.  Looking at the strace (see extract below)
> shows that indeed it gets EACCESS and then decides to ask for the
> passphrase as if that's going to help.

I never got round to reporting this upstream, unfortunately, but
somebody else did. Apparently this was due to an uninitialised variable
on the stack (see the upstream bug report). It'll be fixed in OpenSSH
5.4.

Thanks,

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson@debian.org]