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Merged
merged 6 commits into from
Aug 11, 2024

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Rob-Hague
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This is the analogue of the RSA change #1373 for DSA. This has a couple of caveats:

  • The BCL supports only FIPS 186-compliant keys, that is, public (P, Q) lengths of (512 <= P <= 1024, 160) for FIPS 186-1/186-2; and (2048, 256), (3072, 256) for FIPS 186-3/186-4. The latter also specifies (2048, 224) but due to a quirk in the Windows API, the BCL does not support Q values of length 2241.
  • OpenSSH, based on the SSH spec, only supports (supported) Q values of length 160, but appears to also work in non-FIPS-compliant cases such as in our integration tests with a (2048, 160) host key. That test now fails and I changed that host key to (1024, 160).

This basically means that (1024, 160) is the largest DSA key size supported by both SSH.NET and OpenSSH. However, given that OpenSSH deprecated DSA in 20152, and the alternative that I have been considering is just to delete support for DSA in the library, this change seems reasonable to me. I don't think we can justify keeping the current handwritten code around.

I think we may still consider dropping DSA from the library, I just had this branch laying around and figured I'd finish it off.

Footnotes

  1. https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/blob/fadd8313653f71abd0068c8bf914be88edb2c8d3/src/libraries/Common/src/System/Security/Cryptography/DSACng.ImportExport.cs#L259-L265

  2. https://www.openssh.com/txt/release-7.0

This is the analogue of the RSA change sshnet#1373 for DSA. This has a couple of caveats:

- The BCL supports only FIPS 186-compliant keys, that is, public (P, Q) lengths
  of (512 <= P <= 1024, 160) for FIPS 186-1/186-2; and (2048, 256), (3072, 256)
  for FIPS 186-3/186-4. The latter also specifies (2048, 224) but due to a quirk
  in the Windows API, the BCL does not support Q values of length 224[^1].
- OpenSSH, based on the SSH spec, only supports (supported) Q values of length 160,
  but appears to also work in non-FIPS-compliant cases such as in our integration
  tests with a (2048, 160) host key. That test now fails and I changed that host key
  to (1024, 160).

This basically means that (1024, 160) is the largest DSA key size supported by both
SSH.NET and OpenSSH. However, given that OpenSSH deprecated DSA in 2015[^2], and the
alternative that I have been considering is just to delete support for DSA in the
library, this change seems reasonable to me. I don't think we can justify keeping the
current handwritten code around.

I think we may still consider dropping DSA from the library, I just had this branch
laying around and figured I'd finish it off.

[^1]: https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/blob/fadd8313653f71abd0068c8bf914be88edb2c8d3/src/libraries/Common/src/System/Security/Cryptography/DSACng.ImportExport.cs#L259-L265
[^2]: https://www.openssh.com/txt/release-7.0
@Rob-Hague
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Naturally, running .NET Framework tests on Linux struggles with Windows CNG. I think we need a different approach to the tests

@Rob-Hague
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So I think we should give up on the "mono on .NET Framework" scenario. An interesting test but ultimately a waste of precious time trying to support dead technology. Until we find a proper way to run the integration tests for .NET Framework, we can stick to running them locally.

@Rob-Hague Rob-Hague marked this pull request as draft August 6, 2024 10:40
@Rob-Hague Rob-Hague marked this pull request as ready for review August 7, 2024 06:27
@Rob-Hague
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Ok it's back to green

@WojciechNagorski WojciechNagorski merged commit fe65570 into sshnet:develop Aug 11, 2024
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@Rob-Hague Rob-Hague deleted the dsa branch August 11, 2024 11:44
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2 participants