ssh-broker-g3 — Tectia Connection Broker - Generation 3
ssh-broker-g3
[-a, --broker-address=
ADDR
] [-f, --config-file=
FILE
] [-D, --debug=
LEVEL
] [-l, --debug-log-file=
FILE
] [--pid-file=
FILE
] [--exit
] [--reconfig
] [-h
] [-V
]
ssh-broker-g3 (ssh-broker-g3.exe on Windows) is a component of Tectia Client, Tectia ConnectSecure and Tectia MFT Events. It handles all cryptographic operations and authentication-related tasks for Tectia ConnectSecure and for the client programs sshg3, scpg3, sftpg3, and ssh-client-g3.exe (on Windows only).
ssh-broker-g3 uses the Secure Shell version 2 protocol to communicate with a Secure Shell server.
You can start the Connection Broker manually by using the ssh-broker-g3 command. This starts ssh-broker-g3 in the background and all following uses of sshg3, sftpg3, or scpg3 will connect via this instance of the Connection Broker instead of starting a new Broker session.
If a command-line client (sshg3, sftpg3, or scpg3) is started when the Connection Broker is not running in the background, the client starts the Broker in run-on-demand mode. In this mode, ssh-broker-g3 will exit after the last client has disconnected.
If there is an ssh-broker-g3 process running in the run-on-demand mode, and the Connection Broker is started from the command line, the new ssh-broker-g3 process sends a message to the old ssh-broker-g3 process to change from the run-on-demand mode to the background mode, keeping the Broker running after the clients disconnect.
The status of the running Connection Broker can be checked using the ssh-broker-ctl and ssh-broker-gui utilities.
The Connection Broker operates automatically as an authentication agent, storing
user's public keys and forwarding the authentication over Secure Shell
connections. Key pairs can be created with ssh-keygen-g3
.
The Connection Broker can also serve OpenSSH clients as an authentication agent.
The public key pairs used for user authentication are by default stored in
the $HOME/.ssh2
directory (%APPDATA%\SSH\UserKeys
on Windows).
See the section called “Files” for more information.
The Connection Broker automatically maintains and checks a database containing the
public host keys used for authenticating Secure Shell servers. When logging
in to a server host for the first time, the host's public key is stored in
the user's $HOME/.ssh2/hostkeys
directory (%APPDATA%\SSH\HostKeys
on Windows).
See the section called “Files” for more information.
The most important options of ssh-broker-g3 are the following:
-a, --broker-address=
ADDR
Listens to Connection Broker connections on a local address ADDR
.
-D, --debug=
LEVEL
Sets the debug level string to LEVEL
.
-f, --config-file=
FILE
Reads the Connection Broker configuration file from
FILE
instead of the default location.
-l, --debug-log-file=
FILE
Dumps debug messages to FILE
.
--pid-file=
FILE
Stores the process ID of the Connection Broker to FILE
.
--exit
Make the currently running Connection Broker exit. This will terminate all connections.
--reconfig
Re-reads the configuration file
(ssh-broker-config.xml
) and takes it into use.
-V, --version
Displays program version and exits.
-h, --help
Displays a short summary of command-line options and exits.
On Windows, the help is only shown when running
"ssh-broker-cli.exe -h" directly from the "C:\Program Files\SSH Communications Security\SSH Tectia\SSH
Tectia AUX\Support Binaries
" directory. Normally,
ssh-broker-cli.exe is never run by the user, but it is
automatically called by ssh-broker-g3.exe.
The following optional environment variables are required in certain situations:
=ADDRESS
This variable defines an address to a separate Tectia Connection Broker process to which a connection is made.
This variable becomes necessary to define the location of the Connection Broker process, if you are running it from a non-default location, or using a userID other than that of the ssh-broker-g3 process owner.
ssh-broker-g3 uses the following files:
$HOME/.ssh2/ssh-broker-config.xml
This is the user-specific configuration file used by ssh-broker-g3 (and sshg3, scpg3, and sftpg3). The format of this file is described in ssh-broker-config(5). This file does not usually contain any sensitive information, but the recommended permissions are read/write for the user, and not accessible for others.
On Windows, the user-specific configuration file is
located in %APPDATA%\SSH\ssh-broker-config.xml
.
$HOME/.ssh2/random_seed
This file is used for seeding the random number generator. It contains sensitive data and its permissions should be read/write for the user and not accessible for others. This file is created the first time the program is run and it is updated automatically. You should never need to read or modify this file.
On Windows, the random seed file is located in
%APPDATA%\SSH\random_seed
.
$HOME/.ssh2/identification
This file contains information on public keys and certificates used for user authentication when contacting remote hosts.
With Tectia Client G3, using the identification
file is not
necessary if all user keys are stored in the default directory and you allow
all of them to be used for public-key and/or certificate authentication. If
the identification
file does not exist, the Connection Broker attempts to
use each key found in the $HOME/.ssh2
directory. If the
identification
file exists, the keys listed in it are
attempted first.
The identification file contains a list of private key filenames each
preceded by the keyword IdKey
(or
CertKey
). An example file is shown below:
IdKey mykey
This directs the Connection Broker to use $HOME/.ssh2/mykey
when attempting login using public-key authentication.
The files are by default assumed to be in the
$HOME/.ssh2
directory, but also a path to the key file can be
given. The path can be absolute or relative to the $HOME/.ssh2
directory. If there is more than one IdKey
, they are tried
in the order that they appear in the identification file.
On Windows, the identification file is located in
%APPDATA%\SSH\identification
. Key paths
in the file can be absolute or relative to the
%APPDATA%\SSH
directory. The default user
key directory is %APPDATA%\SSH\UserKeys
and the default user certificate directory is
%APPDATA%\SSH\UserCertificates
.
$HOME/.ssh2/hostkeys
This is the user-specific default directory for storing the public
keys of server hosts. You are prompted to accept new or changed keys
automatically when you connect to a server, unless you have set
strict-host-key-checking
to yes
in the
ssh-broker-config.xml
file. You should verify the key
fingerprint before accepting new or changed keys.
When the host key is received during the first connection to a remote host (or when the host key has changed) and you choose to save the key, its filename is stored by default in hashed format. The hashed host key format is a security feature to make address harvesting on the hosts difficult.
The storage format can be controlled with the
filename-format
attribute of the known-hosts
element in the ssh-broker-config.xml
configuration file. The
attribute value must be plain
or hash
(default).
If you are adding the keys manually, the keys should be named with
key_<port>_<host>.pub
pattern, where
<port>
is the port the Secure Shell server
is running on and <host>
is the hostname
you use when connecting to the server (for example,
key_22_alpha.example.com.pub
).
If both hashed and plain-text format keys exist, the hashed format takes precedence.
Note that the identification is different based on the host and port
the client is connecting to. For example, the short hostname
alpha
is considered different from the fully
qualified domain name alpha.example.com
. Also a
connection with an IP, for example 10.1.54.1
, is
considered a different host, as is a connection to the same host but
different port, for example
alpha.example.com#222
.
On Windows, the user-specific host key files are located in
%APPDATA%\SSH\HostKeys
.
For more information on host keys, see Server Authentication with Public Keys.
$HOME/.ssh2/hostkeys/salt
This is the initialization file for hashed host key names.
On Windows, the salt file is located in
%APPDATA%\SSH\HostKeys\salt
.
/opt/tectia/share/auxdata/ssh-broker-ng/ssh-broker-config-default.xml
This is the configuration file used by ssh-broker-g3 (and sshg3, scpg3, and sftpg3) that contains the factory default settings. It is not recommended to edit the file, but you can use it to view the default settings. The format of this file is described in ssh-broker-config(5).
On Windows, the default configuration file is
located in "C:\Program Files\SSH Communications Security\SSH Tectia\SSH Tectia AUX\ssh-broker-ng\ssh-broker-config-default.xml
".
/etc/ssh2/ssh-broker-config.xml
This is the global (system-wide) configuration file used by ssh-broker-g3 (and sshg3, scpg3, and sftpg3). The format of this file is described in ssh-broker-config(5).
On Windows, the global configuration file is
located in C:\Program Files\SSH Communications Security\SSH Tectia\SSH Tectia Broker\ssh-broker-config.xml
.
/etc/ssh2/hostkeys
If a host key is not found in the user-specific
$HOME/.ssh2/hostkeys
directory, this is the next location to be
checked for all users. Host key files are not automatically put here but
they have to be updated manually by the system administrator
(root
) or by using Tectia Manager.
If the administrator obtains the host keys by connecting to each host,
the keys will be by default in the hashed format. In this case, also the
administrator's $HOME/.ssh2/hostkeys/salt
file has to be copied
to the /etc/ssh2/hostkeys
directory.
On Windows, the system-wide host key files are by default located in:
"C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\SSH\HostKeys
" on pre-Vista Windows.
"C:\ProgramData\SSH\HostKeys
" on Windows Vista and later Windows versions.
/etc/ssh2/hostkeys/salt
This is the initialization file for hashed host key names. The file has to be copied here manually by the same administrator that obtains the host keys.
On Windows, the salt file for all users is by default located in:
"C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\SSH\HostKeys\salt
" on pre-Vista Windows.
"C:\ProgramData\SSH\HostKeys\salt
" on Windows Vista and later Windows versions.
/etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts
This is the default system-wide file used by OpenSSH clients for storing the public key data of known server hosts. It is supported also by Tectia ConnectSecure.
If a host key is not found in the user-specific
$HOME/.ssh/known_hosts
file, this is the next
location to be checked for all users.
The ssh_known_hosts
file is never automatically updated
by Tectia Client or ConnectSecure, since they store new host keys always in the Tectia user-specific
directory $HOME/.ssh2/hostkeys
.
$HOME/.ssh/known_hosts
This is the default user-specific file used by OpenSSH clients for
storing the public key data of known server hosts. The
known_hosts
file is supported also by
Tectia ConnectSecure.
The known_hosts
file contains a hashed or plain-text
format entry of each known host key and the port used on the server, in case
it is non-standard (other than 22). For more information on the format of
the known_hosts
file, see the OpenSSH
sshd(8) man page.
The known_hosts
file is never automatically updated
by Tectia Client or ConnectSecure, since they store new host keys always in the Tectia
directory $HOME/.ssh2/hostkeys
.
$HOME/.ssh2/authorized_keys
(on the server host)This directory is the default location used by Tectia Server for the user public keys that are authorized for login.
On Tectia Server on Windows, the default directory for user public keys is
%USERPROFILE%\.ssh2\authorized_keys
.
$HOME/.ssh2/authorization
(on the server host)This is the default file used by earlier versions of Tectia Server (sshd2) that lists the user public keys that are authorized for login. The file can be optionally be used with Tectia Server G3 (ssh-server-g3) as well.
On Tectia Server on Windows, the authorization file is by default located in
%USERPROFILE%\.ssh2\authorization
.
For information on the format of this file, see the ssh-server-g3(8) man page.
$HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys
(on the server host)This is the default file used by OpenSSH server (sshd) that contains the user public keys that are authorized for login.
For information on the format of this file, see the OpenSSH sshd(8) man page.