On a recent project I inherited an Azure IaaS setup that managed Linux VMs by connecting via SSH from public IPs. I figured while we did a vNet migration we might as well secure the SSH pipeline.

Disable SSH Arcfour and CBC Ciphers

Arcfour is compatible with RC4 encryption and has issues with weak keys, which should be avoided. See RFC 4353 for more information here.

The SSH server located on the remote host also allows cipher block chaining (CBC) ciphers to be used to establish a Secure Shell (SSH) connection, leaving encrypted content vulnerable to a plaintext recovery attack. SSH is a cryptographic network protocol that allows encrypted connections between machines to be established. These connections can be used for remote login by an end user, or to encrypt network services. SSH leverages various encryption algorithms to make these connections, including ciphers that employ cipher block chaining.

The plaintext recovery attack can return up to thirty two bits of plaintext with a probability of 2-18 or fourteen bits of plain text with a probability of 2-14. This exposure is caused by the way CBC ciphers verify the message authentication code (MAC) for a block. Each block’s MAC is created by a combination of an unencrypted sequence number and an encrypted section containing the packet length, padding length, payload, and padding. With the length of the message encrypted the receiver of the packet needs to decrypt the first block of the message in order to obtain the length of the message to know how much data to read. As the location of the message length is static among all messages, the first four bytes will always be decrypted by a recipient. An attacker can take advantage of this by submitting an encrypted block, one byte at a time, directly to a waiting recipient. The recipient will automatically decrypt the first four bytes received as it the length is required to process the message’s MAC. Bytes controlled by an attacker can then be submitted until a MAC error is encountered, which will close the connection. Note as this attack will lead to the SSH connection to be closed, iterative attacks of this nature will be difficult to carry out against a target system.

Establishing an SSH connection using CBC mode ciphers can result in the exposure of plaintext messages, which are derived from an encrypted SSH connection. Depending on the data being transmitted, an attacker may be able to recover session identifiers, passwords, and any other data passed between the client and server.

Disable Arcfour ciphers in the SSH configuration. These ciphers are now disabled by default in some OpenSSH installations. All CBC mode ciphers should also be disabled on the target SSH server. In the place of CBC, SSH connections should be created using ciphers that utilize CTR (Counter) mode or GCM (Galois/Counter Mode), which are resistant to the plaintext recovery attack.

Disable SSH Weak MAC Algorithms

The SSH server is configured to allow cipher suites that include weak message authentication code (“MAC”) algorithms. Examples of weak MAC algorithms include MD5 and other known-weak hashes, and/or the use of 96-bit or shorter keys. The SSH protocol uses a MAC to ensure message integrity by hashing the encrypted message, and then sending both the message and the output of the MAC hash function to the recipient. The recipient then generates their hash of the message and related content and compares it to the received hash value. If the values match, there is a reasonable guarantee that the message is received “as is” and has not been tampered with in transit.

If the SSH server is configured to accept weak or otherwise vulnerable MAC algorithms, an attacker may be able to crack them in a reasonable timeframe. This has two potential effects:

The attacker may figure out the shared secret between the client and the server thereby allowing them to read sensitive data being exchanged.

The attacker may be able to tamper with the data in-transit by injecting their own packets or modifying existing packet data sent within the SSH stream.

Disable all 96-bit HMAC algorithms, MD5-based HMAC algorithms, and all CBC mode ciphers configured for SSH on the server. The sshd_config file should only contain the following options as far as supported MAC algorithms are concerned:

hmac-sha2-512

hmac-sha2-512-etm@openssh.com

hmac-sha2-256

hmac-sha2-256-etm@openssh.com

hmac-ripemd160-etm@openssh.com

umac-128-etm@openssh.com

umac-128-etm@openssh.com

hmac-ripemd160

umac-128@openssh.com

umac-128@openssh.com

In addition, all CBC mode ciphers should be replaced with their CTR mode counterparts.

Testing

To test, run the following command:

nmap -sS -sV -p 22 –script ssh2-enum-algos [TARGET IP]

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