ssh sends lots of "chaff" packets
Why does SSH send 100 packets per keystroke? · eieio.games
In 2023, ssh added keystroke timing obfuscation. The idea is that the speed at which you type different letters betrays some information about which letters you’re typing. So ssh sends lots of “chaff” packets along with your keystrokes to make it hard for an attacker to determine when you’re actually entering keys.
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Keystroke obfuscation can be disabled client-side. After reverting my original breaking change, I tried updating my test harness to pass
ObscureKeystrokeTiming=nowhen starting up ssh sessions.
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The “chaff” messages that ssh uses to obscure keystrokes are SSH2_MSG_PING messages. And they’re sent to servers that advertise the availability of the
ping@openssh.comextension. What if we just…don’t advertiseping@openssh.com?
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Obviously forking go’s crypto library is a little scary, and I’m gonna have to do some thinking about how to maintain my little patch in a safe way.