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Bug#710853: openssh-server: ssh server keys creation



Control: retitle -1 openssh-server: fine-tune server key creation

On Mon, Jun 03, 2013 at 02:32:06AM +0200, Christoph Anton Mitterer wrote:
With respect to the creation of SSH server keys in postinst, may I suggest the
following:
- not create ssh1 keys at all... actually I've never seen them auto-created,
 but code seems to be there
 This is mainly for security reasons... if someone really want's ssh1, he shoul
 manually create the keys.

Done in 1:7.1p2-2 (see #811265).

- specify bit sizes
 Also for security reasons, use the highest bit sizes possible for the respective
 algorithm,... it should have basically no performance impact, and if someone
 really thinks he wants a weaker key,.. he still can manually create it
 That is
 rsa2: -b 4096
 dsa: -b 1024
 ecdsa: -b 521 (no typo)

ssh-keygen's defaults are fine, especially nowadays that it defaults to 3072 bits for RSA keys. For the same sorts of reasons that I laid out in https://bugs.debian.org/1094246#10, I don't think it's necessary to override them here.

- use the FQDN as comment
 I always found it handy to have the full hostname on the server keys as comment, i.e.
 -C "$(hostname -f)"
 without username, as e.g. root@$(hostname -f), would be the personal key of the user
 root.

This seems probably reasonable. The only thing I was wondering was whether there were any (minor) privacy implications to recording that information? I guess not but I'm not certain.

--
Colin Watson (he/him)                              [cjwatson@debian.org]


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