Subject: bug#18967: Tramp disables important SSH security features

From: Daniel Colascione <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2014 16:58:24 +0000

On 11/06/2014 12:05 PM, Ted Zlatanov wrote:
> On Thu, 06 Nov 2014 00:47:40 +0000 Daniel Colascione <[email-masked]> wrote: 
> 
> DC> Tramp disables SSH host key checks by setting
> DC> GlobalKnownHostsFile=/dev/null, UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null, and
> DC> StrictHostKeyChecking=no in its default method configuration. These
> DC> settings allow attackers to intercept connections to remote hosts, sniff
> DC> passwords, and cause other mischief. I don't think we should ship an
> DC> insecure configuration.
> 
> I think the alternatives are something like what Ansible does:
> http://www.ansible.com/blog/2014/01/15/ssh-connection-upgrades-coming-in-ansible-1-5
> or a SSH client library as a FFI. 

> SSH, when called externally, has many
> failure modes without those options.

So let it fail. Since when is it okay to trade diminished security for
improved reliability?