Future deprecation notice
=========================
OpenSSH plans to remove support for the DSA signature algorithm in
early 2025. This release disables DSA by default at compile time.
DSA, as specified in the SSHv2 protocol, is inherently weak - being
limited to a 160 bit private key and use of the SHA1 digest. Its
estimated security level is only 80 bits symmetric equivalent.
OpenSSH has disabled DSA keys by default since 2015 but has retained
run-time optional support for them. DSA was the only mandatory-to-
implement algorithm in the SSHv2 RFCs, mostly because alternative
algorithms were encumbered by patents when the SSHv2 protocol was
specified.
This has not been the case for decades at this point and better
algorithms are well supported by all actively-maintained SSH
implementations. We do not consider the costs of maintaining DSA
in OpenSSH to be justified and hope that removing it from OpenSSH
can accelerate its wider deprecation in supporting cryptography
libraries.
This release, and its deactivation of DSA by default at compile-time,
marks the second step in our timeline to finally deprecate DSA. The
final step of removing DSA support entirely is planned for the first
OpenSSH release of 2025.
Potentially-incompatible changes
--------------------------------
* all: as mentioned above, the DSA signature algorithm is now
disabled at compile time.
* sshd(8): the server will now block client addresses that
repeatedly fail authentication, repeatedly connect without ever
completing authentication or that crash the server. See the
discussion of PerSourcePenalties below for more information.
Operators of servers that accept connections from many users, or
servers that accept connections from addresses behind NAT or
proxies may need to consider these settings.
* sshd(8): the server has been split into a listener binary, sshd(8),
and a per-session binary "sshd-session". This allows for a much
smaller listener binary, as it no longer needs to support the SSH
protocol. As part of this work, support for disabling privilege
separation (which previously required code changes to disable) and
disabling re-execution of sshd(8) has been removed. Further
separation of sshd-session into additional, minimal binaries is
planned for the future.
* sshd(8): several log messages have changed. In particular, some
log messages will be tagged with as originating from a process
named "sshd-session" rather than "sshd".
* ssh-keyscan(1): this tool previously emitted comment lines
containing the hostname and SSH protocol banner to standard error.
This release now emits them to standard output, but adds a new
"-q" flag to silence them altogether.
* sshd(8): (portable OpenSSH only) sshd will no longer use argv[0]
as the PAM service name. A new "PAMServiceName" sshd_config(5)
directive allows selecting the service name at runtime. This
defaults to "sshd". bz2101
