Bug 2169693

Summary: Cannot login when sshd configuration is larger than 256KB
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Reporter: Renaud Métrich <rmetrich>
Component: opensshAssignee: Dmitry Belyavskiy <dbelyavs>
Status: CLOSED MIGRATED QA Contact: BaseOS QE Security Team <qe-baseos-security>
Severity: high Docs Contact:
Priority: high    
Version: 8.7CC: jjelen
Target Milestone: rcKeywords: MigratedToJIRA, Triaged
Target Release: ---Flags: pm-rhel: mirror+
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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Last Closed: 2023-09-19 23:55:59 UTC Type: Bug
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Description Renaud Métrich 2023-02-14 11:25:42 UTC
Description of problem:

When the sshd configuration file is larger than 256K (main /etc/ssh/sshd_config + includes), it's not possible to log in to the system anymore and the following message is recorded in the journal:
-------- 8< ---------------- 8< ---------------- 8< ---------------- 8< --------
Feb 14 12:10:48 vm-rhel8 sshd[2979]: error: ssh_msg_recv: read: bad msg_len 618704
Feb 14 12:10:48 vm-rhel8 sshd[2979]: fatal: recv_rexec_state: ssh_msg_recv failed
-------- 8< ---------------- 8< ---------------- 8< ---------------- 8< --------

On the client side, the *ssh* process hangs forever.

The root cause for this is the size of the configuration which cannot be sent to the ssh connection handler, due to the size being larger than 256KB:
-------- 8< ---------------- 8< ---------------- 8< ---------------- 8< --------
 139 void
 140 mm_request_receive(int sock, struct sshbuf *m)
 141 {
 :
 153         msg_len = PEEK_U32(buf);
 154         if (msg_len > 256 * 1024)
 155                 fatal("%s: read: bad msg_len %d", __func__, msg_len);
 :
-------- 8< ---------------- 8< ---------------- 8< ---------------- 8< --------

The ssh connection handler exits on error, but the main *sshd* process hangs on sending the configuration.
This additionally leads to not handling incoming connections anymore and restart of the service to take a long time (1min30) due to Stop timeout.


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

openssh-server-8.0p1-16.el8.x86_64

How reproducible:

Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Generate a large configuration file

   -------- 8< ---------------- 8< ---------------- 8< ---------------- 8< --------
   # for i in $(seq 1 10000); do echo -e "Match Group GRP$i\nChrootDirectory /some/path/for/group/$i" >> /etc/ssh/sshd_config; done
   -------- 8< ---------------- 8< ---------------- 8< ---------------- 8< --------

2. Restart the service

   -------- 8< ---------------- 8< ---------------- 8< ---------------- 8< --------
   # systemctl restart sshd
   -------- 8< ---------------- 8< ---------------- 8< ---------------- 8< --------

3. Try connecting

   -------- 8< ---------------- 8< ---------------- 8< ---------------- 8< --------
   $ ssh localhost
   -------- 8< ---------------- 8< ---------------- 8< ---------------- 8< --------

Actual results:

   Hang of ssh client and message on sshd side

Expected results:

   No hang, prompt being displayed

Additional info:

Doesn't affect RHEL9.

Comment 1 RHEL Program Management 2023-09-19 23:55:28 UTC
Issue migration from Bugzilla to Jira is in process at this time. This will be the last message in Jira copied from the Bugzilla bug.

Comment 2 RHEL Program Management 2023-09-19 23:55:59 UTC
This BZ has been automatically migrated to the issues.redhat.com Red Hat Issue Tracker. All future work related to this report will be managed there.

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