To help aid security for SSH connections, you can publish ‘SSHFP’ records in DNS which contain a fingerprint of a server’s ssh host key.
If DNSSEC is in use throughout the DNS hierarchy then it ought to provide a trusted way of verifying remote hosts when no record already exists in your ~/.ssh/known_hosts file.
To create the actual records for sshfp within DNS, you need to get hold of the ‘sshfp’ utility (apt-get install sshfp or yum install hash-slinger)
For a specific host, you can do ‘sshfp -qs <hostname>’ which will produce something like :
foobar.palepurple.co.uk IN SSHFP 1 1 9676BB7A92C7E11B90E9508A343A4CAE9888B43D foobar.palepurple.co.uk IN SSHFP 2 1 D4F49CE2195A0BF531275B889ED6ABFF2F24C2BC
If you’re using Bind for DNS, then it should be quite easy to add in (copy+paste).
If you’re using TinyDNS, then it needs converting – using something like the perl script below :
sshfp -qs foobar.palepurple.co.uk | perl ssh-fp-converter.pl
which will output something like :
:foobar.palepurple.co.uk:44:\001\001\226\166\273\172\222\307\341\033\220\351\120\212\064\072\114\256\230\210\264\075: :foobar.palepurple.co.uk:44:\002\001\324\364\234\342\031\132\013\365\061\047\133\210\236\326\253\377\057\044\302\274:
Once the records are published, then you can tell SSH to check/verify against DNS – for example :
ssh -oVerifyHostKeyDNS=yes -v user@foobar.palepurple.co.uk
If you do not have DNSSEC implemented, or the keys do not match up, you’ll see output an
“Error calculating host key fingerprint.”
If the keys do match up, and you’re using DNSSEC, it should skip asking you to confirm the host key verification.
ssh-fp-converter.pl :
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
# Take in, e.g. :
# foobar.palepurple.co.uk IN SSHFP 1 1 9676BB7A92C7E11B90E9508A343A4CAE9888B43D";
# foobar.palepurple.co.uk IN SSHFP 2 1 D4F49CE2195A0BF531275B889ED6ABFF2F24C2BC
# on standard input, and output the appropriate tinydns records for sshfp -
# e.g.
# :foobar.palepurple.co.uk:44:\001\001\226\166\273\172\222\307\341\033\220\351\120\212\064\072\114\256\230\210\264\075:
# :foobar.palepurple.co.uk:44:\002\001\324\364\234\342\031\132\013\365\061\047\133\210\236\326\253\377\057\044\302\274:
while() {
chop;
my ($host, $in, $sshfp, $alg, $fptype, $fp) = split " ", $_;
my $out = sprintf("\\%03o\\%03o", $alg, $fptype);
for (my $i = 0; $i < length($fp); $i += 2) {
$out .= sprintf("\\%03o", hex substr($fp, $i, 2));
}
printf(":%s:44:%s:\n", $host, $out);
}
(Script above is also on github at : https://gist.github.com/palepurple/9546745 )