Bug 2253

Summary: No "$@"-like SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND leads to escaping, arg-sep and metachar issues
Product: Portable OpenSSH Reporter: Craig Ringer <ringerc>
Component: sshdAssignee: Assigned to nobody <unassigned-bugs>
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX    
Severity: enhancement CC: djm
Priority: P5    
Version: 6.6p1   
Hardware: Other   
OS: Linux   

Description Craig Ringer 2014-07-08 16:35:26 AEST
Hi all

I've recently noticed that it's quite tricky to get a remote OpenSSH command to be invoked with the correct arguments, especially if using a command= specifier in a public key entry with "$SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND".

When ssh is invoked, any argument quoting is consumed by the calling shell. ssh then passes the command to sshd, where it's stored in SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND. However, no escaping is performed by ssh or sshd to ensure that shell metacharacters are escaped and whitespace regions within arguments aren't treated as argument separators.

In a normal shell, one uses "$@", which is the argument-separation-and-metachar aware version of "$*".

OpenSSH lacks any equivalent. It needs one to make it possible to use SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND securely without making arbitrary rules ("the command may not contain any shell metachars and spaces within arguments are not permitted").

It really needs a $SSH_ESCAPED_ORIGINAL_COMMAND .
Comment 1 Damien Miller 2014-07-09 11:40:50 AEST
The SSH protocol passes the requested command as a single string and not an array of arguments, so there is no way for SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND to reliably go back to what was specified on the client's commandline.
Comment 2 Damien Miller 2016-08-02 10:41:54 AEST
Close all resolved bugs after 7.3p1 release