CVE-2016-0777

An information leak flaw was found in the way the OpenSSH client roaming feature was implemented. A malicious server could potentially use this flaw to leak portions of memory (possibly including private SSH keys) of a successfully authenticated OpenSSH client.

This issue does not affect the version OpenSSH as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, 5 and 6. This issue affects the version of OpenSSH as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 in a non-default configuration. For more information please refer to https://access.redhat.com/articles/2123781

The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.

1. The vulnerable roaming code can be permanently disabled by adding the undocumented option "UseRoaming no" to the system-wide configuration file (usually /etc/ssh/ssh_config), or per-user configuration file (~/.ssh/config), or command-line (-o "UseRoaming no").

2. If an OpenSSH client is disconnected from an SSH server that offers roaming, it prints "[connection suspended, press return to resume]" on stderr, and waits for '\n' or '\r' on stdin (and not on the controlling terminal) before it reconnects to the server; advanced users may become suspicious and press Control-C or Control-Z instead, thus avoiding the information leak.

However, SSH commands that use the local stdin to transfer data to the remote server are bound to trigger this reconnection automatically (upon reading a '\n' or '\r' from stdin). Moreover, these non-interactive SSH commands (for example, backup scripts and cron jobs) commonly employ public-key authentication and are therefore perfect targets for this information leak.