2 [[meta title="Similar Projects"]]
4 The monkeysphere isn't the only project intending to implement a PKI
5 for OpenSSH. We provide links to these other projects because they're
6 interesting, though we have concerns with their approaches.
10 All of the other projects we've found so far require a patched version
11 of OpenSSH, which makes adoption more difficult. Most people don't
12 build their own software, and simply overlaying a patched binary is
13 associated with significant maintenance (and therefore security)
16 While ultimately contributing a patch to
17 [OpenSSH](http://openssh.com/) (or any
18 [free](http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/)
19 [SSH](http://www.lysator.liu.se/~nisse/lsh/)
20 [implementation](http://matt.ucc.asn.au/dropbear/dropbear.html)) is
21 not a bad thing, we hope to be able to better establish the use of a
22 PKI without resorting to source modification.
26 [openssh-gpg](http://www.red-bean.com/~nemo/openssh-gpg/) is a patch
27 against OpenSSH to support OpenPGP certificates. According to its
28 documentation, it is intended to support [`pgp-sign-rsa` and
29 `pgp-sign-dss` public key algorithms for hosts, as specified by the
30 IETF](http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4253#section-6.6).
32 Some concerns with `openssh-gpg`:
34 * This patch is old; it doesn't appear to have been maintained beyond
35 OpenSSH 3.6p1. As of this writing, OpenSSH 5.1p1 is current.
37 * It only provides infrastructure in one direction: the user
38 authenticating the host by name. There doesn't seem to be a
39 mechanism for dealing with identifying users by name, or allowing
40 users to globally revoke or update keys.
42 * The choice of User ID (`anything goes here (and here!)
43 <ssh@foo.example.net>`) for host keys overlaps with the current use
44 of the User ID space. While it's unlikely that someone actually
45 uses this e-mail address in the web of trust, it would be a nasty
46 collision, as the holder of that key could impersonate the server
47 in question. The monkeysphere uses [User IDs of the form
48 `ssh://foo.example.net`](http://tools.ietf.org/wg/secsh/draft-ietf-secsh-scp-sftp-ssh-uri/)
49 to avoid collisions with existing use.
51 * It's not clear that `openssh-gpg` acknowledges or respects the
52 [usage flags](http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4880#section-5.2.3.21)
53 on the host keys. This means that it could accept a "sign-only"
54 key as suitable for authenticating a host, despite the
55 clearly-marked intentions of the key-holder.
57 ## Perspectives OpenSSH client ##
59 [The Perspectives project](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~perspectives/) at
60 CMU has released an [openssh client that uses network
61 notaries](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~perspectives/openssh.html) to bolster
62 your confidence in newly-seen keys. This offers a defense against a
63 narrow MITM attack (e.g. by someone who controls your local gateway)
64 by simply verifying that other machines from around the network see
65 the same keys for the remote host that you're seeing.
67 This tactic is quite useful, but doesn't take the system as far as it
68 could go, and doesn't tie into any existing web of trust.
70 Some concerns with the Perspectives OpenSSH client:
72 * This client won't help if you are connecting to machines behind
73 firewalls, on NAT'ed LANs, with source IP filtering, or otherwise
74 in a restricted network state.
76 * There is still a question of why you should trust these particular
77 notaries during your verification. Who are the notaries? How
78 could they be compromised?
80 * It only provides infrastructure in one direction: the user
81 authenticating the host by name. There is no mechanism for dealing
82 with identifying users by name, or allowing users to globally
83 revoke or change keys.
85 * It doesn't provide any mechanism for key rotation or revocation:
86 Perspectives won't help you if you need to re-key your machine.
88 ## OpenSSH with X.509v3 certificates ##
90 Roumen Petrov [maintains a patch to OpenSSH that works with the X.509
91 PKI model](http://www.roumenpetrov.info/openssh/). This is the
92 certificate hierarchy commonly used by TLS (and SSL).
94 Some concerns about OpenSSH with X.509v3:
96 * the X.509 certificate specification itself [encourages corporate
97 consolidation and centralized global "trust" because of its
98 single-issuer architectural
99 limitation](http://lair.fifthhorseman.net/~dkg/tls-centralization/).
100 This results in an expensive and cumbersome system for smaller
101 players, and it also doesn't correspond to the true distributed
102 nature of human-to-human trust. Furthermore, centralized global
103 "trusted authorities" create a tempting target for attack, and a
104 single-point-of-failure if an attack is successful.
106 Depending on how you declare your trust relationships, OpenPGP is
107 capable of providing the same hierarchical structure as X.509, but
108 it is not limited to such a structure. The OpenPGP Web of Trust
109 model is more flexible and more adaptable to represent real-world
110 trust than X.509's rigid hierarchy.
112 * X.509 certificates can identify hosts by name, but not by
113 individual service. This means that a compromised web or e-mail
114 server with access to the X.509 key for that service could re-use
115 its certificate as an SSH server, and it would be able to
116 masquerade successfully.
118 The monkeysphere uses [User IDs of the form
119 `ssh://foo.example.net`](http://tools.ietf.org/wg/secsh/draft-ietf-secsh-scp-sftp-ssh-uri/),
120 so they are not by-default shared across services on the same host
121 (you can still share a key across services on the same host if you
122 like, but the service User IDs can be certified independently of