Re: Bug#807239: lftp: can no longer connect with sftp (no matching host key type found)
On Wed, Dec 09, 2015 at 04:44:31PM +0100, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> On 2015-12-09 15:18:44 +0000, Colin Watson wrote:
> > On Wed, Dec 09, 2015 at 10:06:32AM +0100, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> > > According to what is documented, this appears to be related to
> > > host key checking: the error mesage is "no matching *host key*
> > > type found" and the option name is HostKeyAlgorithms. In what
> > > way it could be insecure in the case where the user doesn't have
> > > the key in the ~/.ssh/known_hosts file?
> >
> > Weak host keys make it easier to conduct man-in-the-middle attacks.
>
> My point is that with StrictHostKeyChecking = no and no keys for
> the host in ~/.ssh/known_hosts, there is no host authentication,
> so that a man-in-the-middle attack is already possible, even if
> the server provides a strong key. Thus whether a weak host key
> is provided by the server or not in this case shouldn't matter.
With StrictHostKeyChecking=yes/ask, it still weakens trust-on-first-use.
With StrictHostKeyChecking=no, I can somewhat see your point (although
there would at least be a visual indication if a different host key were
presented); but I doubt that it's worth continuing to support otherwise
obsolescent cryptography just for that case.
Put another way: it'd be quite peculiar and confusing to send different
server_host_key_algorithms in the client's SSH_MSG_KEXINIT packet
depending on the value of StrictHostKeyChecking.
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@debian.org]
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