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Bug 146882

Summary:	SSH allows attacker to divine root password
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1	Reporter:	Tomas Mraz <tmraz>
Component:	openssh	Assignee:	Tomas Mraz <tmraz>
Status:	CLOSED ERRATA	QA Contact:	Brian Brock <bbrock>
Severity:	low	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	2.1	CC:	bressers, mjc
Target Milestone:	---	Keywords:	Security
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	i386
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:	impact=low,public=20041130
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2005-06-02 14:31:30 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Tomas Mraz 2005-02-02 14:52:39 UTC

*** This bug has been split off bug 141642 for RHEL2.1 ***

------- Original comment by George Toft on 2004.12.02 12:52 -------

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET 
CLR 1.1.4322)

Description of problem:
With openssh configured to not allow remote root login 
(file: /etc/ssh/sshd_config, PermitRootLogin no), an attempt to log 
in remotely as root with the wrong password results in a 3 second 
delay followed by:
Permission denied, please try again.

If the correct password is entered, there is no delay before 
presenting the message:
Permission denied, please try again.

An attacker could measure the time between rejections with an attack 
tool and determine the root password.



Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
3.1p1-14

How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Set "PermitRootLogin no" in /etc/ssh/sshd_config
2. Restart sshd: service sshd restart
3. From remote machine, attempt remote login to server.  Alternately, 
ssh localhost.
4. Enter bogus password - view error after 3 seconds.
5. Enter correct password - view error immediately with no delay.

    

Actual Results:  no delay presented when correct password is entered

Expected Results:  3 second delay before presenting "Permission 
denied, please try again."

Additional info:

Comment 1 Josh Bressers 2005-06-02 14:31:30 UTC

An advisory has been issued which should help the problem
described in this bug report. This report is therefore being
closed with a resolution of ERRATA. For more information
on the solution and/or where to find the updated files,
please follow the link below. You may reopen this bug report
if the solution does not work for you.

http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2005-481.html