Is RSA authentication on SSH still broken?

Antonio Bemfica antonio@axolotl.ic.gc.ca
Wed Nov 6 14:26:00 GMT 2002


Thanks very much for the help! This did it:

chmod 755 $HOME/.ssh
chmod 644 $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys*

I had $HOME set to 700 and authorized_keys* to 600 before and that
somehow broke RSA authentication - it is odd that stricter permissions
would cause that. I suppose this is because the SYSTEM or sshd user need
to read the keys and cannot without the appropriate privileges.

Thanks again.

Antonio

On Tue, 2002-11-05 at 18:55, Harig, Mark A. wrote:

> I am able to use SSH with public/private-key files.
> ssh is working on Cygwin, both as a client and
> as a server, at least on Win2K.
> 
> # Cygwin version:
> $ uname -r
> 1.3.14(0.62/3/2)
> 
> # Windows version:
> $ uname -s
> CYGWIN_NT-5.0
> 
> # ssh version
> $ ssh -V
> OpenSSH_3.4p1, SSH protocols 1.5/2.0, OpenSSL 0x0090607f
> 
> My guess is that your problem is related to file/directory
> permissions.  One permission problem I found is that
> 'ssh-keygen' creates a ~/.ssh directory (if you don't
> have one already) with permissions set to 700.  I found
> that I had to change these to 755.
> 
> Here are the file permissions you should check:
> 
> 1. $HOME - Your home directory should be set to 700.
>    Only you need access to your home directory.
> 
> 2. $HOME/.ssh - Try setting this to 755.
> 
> 3. $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys* - Turn off write
>    permission for anyone other than you, turn on
>    read permission for everyone.  One possible
>    setting for this is:
> 
>      $ chmod 644 $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys*
> 
>    Of course, only 'identity.pub' keys should be
>    in 'authorized_keys' and only 'id_rsa.pub'/id_dsa.pub'
>    should be in 'authorized_keys2', depending upon
>    the type(s) of encryption you chose.
> 
> 4. $HOME/.ssh/<private keys> -
>    Of course, only you should have any permissions
>    for your private key files 'identity', 'id_rsa',
>    or 'id_dsa' (you need at least one of these).
> 
>       $ chmod 600 identity (or id_rsa or id_dsa, etc.)
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Antonio Bemfica [mailto:antonio@axolotl.ic.gc.ca]
> > Sent: Tuesday, November 05, 2002 5:32 PM
> > To: cygwin@cygwin.com
> > Subject: Is RSA authentication on SSH still broken?
> > 
> > 
> > Hello
> > 
> > Could someone clarify whether RSA authentication is still not possible
> > when running SSH as the SYSTEM user? I have Cygwin 1.3.14-1 
> > and OpenSSH
> > 3.4p1-5 and can only login via password authentication (I am familiar
> > with the process to effect RSA authentication under Unix). I have also
> > tightened permissions on the key files, home directory, etc.
> > 
> > The /usr/doc/Cygwin/openssh-3.4p1-5.README file mentions that "The
> > following restrictions only apply to Cygwin versions up to 1.3.1" - is
> > it safe to assume that I should be able to get it running, since I am
> > using 1.3.14-1? I will stop trying otherwise!
> > 
> > Thanks a lot for the help.
> > 
> > A.



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