0sec06 - 1.0

0sec 2006
a private security event for friends

Speakers
Andrea Barisani
Rob Holland
Schedule
Day 2
Room Talk
Start time 22:00
Duration 01:00
Info
ID 23
Type Lecture
Track Talks
Language English

Messing with OpenSSH Public Key system

from LDAP patch to a cleaner abstraction layer

Once upon a time there was a project named openssh-lpk, aiming to hack public key lookup over LDAP into OpenSSH. The patch did a reasonable job, allowing central administration of users in a LDAP environment. However, having LDAP code in OpenSSH felt wrong and ugly, and a new system was necessary. Abstracting public key lookup would provide a flexible way for quickly allowing arbitrary lookup of keys without compromising OpenSSH code base cleaniness and conformity to strict coding standards.

The talk will cover the current openssh-lpk patch, its benefits and reasons to exist, a first approach for abstracting public keys lookup in a Quick and Dirty (tm) way, followed by a Nice and Clean (tm) approach with a complete abstraction layer. We'll show and debate concepts as well as showing our current code for the three solutions.

openssh-lpk; from egg, to ugly duckling, to swan.