Session Date/Time: 07 Nov 2024 15:30

sshm

Summary

The first meeting of the Secure Shell Maintenance Working Group (SSHM) at IETF 121 was held in Dublin, Ireland. The meeting covered working group operations, the SSH agent protocol, deprecating ciphers, and a brief update on NTRU Prime and MLKEM drafts. Decisions were made regarding the adoption of the SSH agent protocol draft and the NTRU Prime draft. A call was made for further discussion on mailing list regarding the draft of ssh agent protocol.

Key Discussion Points

Working Group Operations: Discussed tooling (Datatracker, Git repositories), format of drafts (XML, Markdown), and feedback mechanisms (issue trackers, email, mailing list). Implementation reports are required before document progression.
SSH Agent Protocol (Damien Miller): Presentation on the SSH agent protocol, its extensibility, and deployment. Discussion included potentially standardizing extensions for key limitations and considering the document's status as standards-track.
Deprecating Ciphers (Theo): Discussion on removing older ciphers. The group considered an incremental approach, prioritizing non-contentious ciphers first. The different perspective of client and server implementations was highlighted. Keeping a separate binary of the "old" ciphers for enterprise would be a potential solution.
File Transfer Protocol (Tero): A proposal to consider standardization the latest version of the file transfer protocol was made.

Decisions and Action Items

SSH Agent Protocol Draft: Adopted as a working group document. Damien Miller to update the draft based on feedback and push new version. The document's status as standards track vs informational will be discussed in mailing list.
- Action Item: Damien Miller to update the draft and rename based on feedback.
- Action Item: Tero to send email to list regarding the limitation of keys.
- Action Item: community to provide further feedback on the SSH Agent Protocol Draft
NTRU Prime Draft: Adopted as a working group document.
Deprecating Ciphers: Initial list of non-contentious ciphers for deprecation will be made with developers. This will be brought up to the main list as a discussion.
- Action Item: Develop an initial list of non-contentious ciphers.
- Action Item: Post initial list to the mailing list for discussion.
File Transfer Protocol: Discuss the file transfer protocol standardization on the mailing list.
- Action Item: Discuss this topic on the mailing list

Next Steps

Damien Miller to update and rename the SSH agent protocol draft.
Further discussion on the mailing list regarding the SSH agent protocol and its extensions.
Develop an initial list of non-contentious ciphers for deprecation, followed by a discussion on the mailing list.
Community to determine the document status standards track vs informational for the agent protocol.
Discuss the file transfer protocol standardization on the mailing list
Panos to update ML Chem draft and submit for call of adoption.