SafeWord Agent for SSH (secure shell) vulnerability

From: Tony Chimienti (tony_chimientiat_private)
Date: Wed Nov 28 2001 - 17:32:13 PST

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    Mailer: SecurityFocus
    
    This is Secure Computing's response to a security 
    alert that was posted on www.securityfocus.com on 
    Nov 23, 2001. The posting was related specifically to 
    the SafeWord Agent for SSH (secure shell), and 
    implied there was a security risk directly tied to 
    SafeWord PremierAccess, which is false.  Secure 
    Computing has since removed the SafeWord Agent 
    for SSH from the Secure Computing public web site 
    and is longer available from any source. 
    
    Clarification on some misrepresentation in the 
    original posting:
    
    1) The SafeWord Agent for SSH was not an SSH 
    server, it in fact was only made up of modified files 
    that were needed for a software build process. This 
    build process would then create the necessary binary 
    files to allow a SSH server to communicate with a 
    SafeWord authentication server. Unfortunately those 
    modified files were based on SSH.com's ssh v1.2.27 
    which is possibly known to cause a vulnerability on 
    SSH servers. Secure Computing has since removed 
    these modified files from our web site and regrets 
    any inconvenience it may have caused our 
    customers.
     
    2) SafeWord PremierAccess or any other 
    commercially available product from Secure 
    Computing has never shipped with the SafeWord 
    Agent for SSH, and in fact this code is not part of the 
    currently shipping SafeWord PremierAccess product 
    nor is the SafeWord SSH agent on any of the 
    PremierAccess CD's available today, including the 
    SafeWord Deployment CD, which includes several 
    different agents. The SafeWord SSH agent was only 
    made available for download from the SCC web site 
    for customers who wished to build binary files for use 
    with SafeWord authentication servers. These agent 
    files have been removed from our web site and can 
    no longer be downloaded. 
    
    3) SafeWord PremierAccess servers were never the 
    cause of any security vulnerabilities mentioned in this 
    alert and SafeWord PremierAccess continues to set 
    the standard in authentication and access control 
    functionality. 
    
    It is recommended that if a customer is currently 
    using or wishes to use a SSH server and protect it 
    with SafeWord PremierAccess, they should use 
    OpenSSH and use the SafeWord PremierAccess 
    Agent for PAM. SafeWord PremierAccess operates 
    with OpenSSH through the Pluggable Authentication 
    Module (PAM) framework. Secure Computing has a 
    detailed application note on how to use OpenSSH 
    and the SafeWord PAM agent for authentication with 
    SafeWord PremierAccess. Please go to 
    http://www.securecomputing.com/index.cfm 
    sKey=827  to access this application note.  
    
    Thank you,
    
    Secure Computing
    



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