It was discovered that libssh, a tiny C SSH library, did not reset the state of the PRNG after accepting a connection. A server mode application that forks itself to handle incoming connections could see its children sharing the same PRNG state, resulting in a cryptographic weakness and possibly the recovery of the private key.

For the oldstable distribution (squeeze), this problem has been fixed in version 0.4.5-3+squeeze2. For the stable distribution (wheezy), this problem has been fixed in version 0.5.4-1+deb7u1. For the testing distribution (jessie), this problem has been fixed in version 0.5.4-3. For the unstable distribution (sid), this problem has been fixed in version 0.5.4-3. We recommend that you upgrade your libssh packages.

The ssh library was designed to be used by programmers needing a working SSH implementation by the mean of a library.

libssh on Debian Linux

This check tests the installed software version using the apt package manager.

• http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2879.html

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Updated on 2015-03-25