The release of Dropbear 2024.84 is available, a compact SSH server and client primarily used on embedded systems such as wireless routers, as well as in distributions like OpenWrt. Dropbear is characterized by low memory consumption, the ability to disable unnecessary functionality during the build process, and supports building both client and server in a single executable file similar to busybox. When statically linked with uClibc, the Dropbear executable file is only 110kB. Dropbear supports X11 forwarding, is compatible with OpenSSH key files (~/.ssh/authorized_keys), and can create multiplexed connections through a transit host. This project is written in C and is distributed under a license close to MIT.
In the new release:
- Improved compatibility with OpenSSH for the ssh and ssh-keygen commands.
- User login now requires the presence of an 'x' flag in the password hash field in /etc/passwd, for example, 'user1:x:1003:1003::/home/user1:/bin/sh'. Users without this flag will not be able to log in.
- BatchMode and StrictHostKeyChecking options have been added to dbclient, useful for SSH tunnels: ssh -o BatchMode=yes -o StrictHostKeyChecking=yes
- Added the ability to forward UNIX sockets over a tunnel created with Dropbear SSH.
- Instead of the dropbearkey command, you can now invoke 'dropbear ssh-keygen', meaning it can now be used as an alias in the system for ssh-keygen.
- When generating a key, the public key (id_ed25519.pub) is now saved separately.
- Support for the file ~/.ssh/dropbear_config has been added in dbclient with several options from ssh_config: Host, HostName, Port, User, and IdentityFile. This feature is currently disabled by default during compilation.
- Support for strict key exchange (Strict KEX) has been added.
- Several 'year 2038 issues' (Y2038) have been fixed.
Source: opennet.ru
