Get the latest tech news

Debian Changes OpenSSH Packaging

In the wake of the XZ backdoor, the Debian project has revisited some of the patches included in its OpenSSH packages to improve security. The outcome of this is that the project will be splitting out support for Kerberos key exchange into a separate set of packages, though not until after the Debian 13 ("trixie") release expected next year.

The outcome of this is that the project will be splitting out support for Kerberos key exchange into a separate set of packages, though not until after the Debian 13 ("trixie") release expected next year. Watson did not elaborate much beyond that, but it was patching OpenSSH to link to libsystemd that made Debian and Fedora's packages vulnerable to the XZ backdoor, which was still very fresh in everyone's mind at the time. However, he noted that there was work to remove the dependency on libsystemd itself, and to move the readiness protocol upstream, " so we'll get rid of that linkage and reduce our patch load a bit".

Get the Android app