"Confirm user presence for key" message not displayed when using Yubikey for SSH connection

Question

I have created SSH key on Yubikey 5 Nano using FIDO2:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519-sk -f ~/.ssh/id_ed25519-sk

The Yubikey has user and admin PIN set.

When using the key for establishing a SSH connection however, there is no message about requiring to touch the key like on the Github blog Security keys are now supported for SSH Git operations:

Confirm user presence for key ...

In verbose mode the SSH client displays:

debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey
debug1: Next authentication method: publickey
debug1: Offering public key: /.../.ssh/id_ed25519-sk ED25519-SK SHA256:... explicit authenticator agent
debug1: Server accepts key: /.../.ssh/id_ed25519-sk ED25519-SK SHA256:... explicit authenticator agent

at which point the Yubikey starts flashing. Once I touch it, the SSH login succeeds with that key and the subsequent messages will be:

debug1: Authentication succeeded (publickey).
Authenticated to github.com (via proxy).

When using the key for Git operations like git clone or git pull, it just silently waits for the key tap. The issue I have with this behavior is I don't know whether the SSH client is waiting for the network/server/proxy or for me to touch the key.

This is on Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS with OpenSSH 8.2p1 (and Git 2.28.0). I am using the default ssh-agent and I can see the key listed in the 'Passwords and keys' application in Gnome under 'OpenSSH keys'.

Using ssh-keygen compiled from the OpenSSH 9.0p1 portable source, I can see that the public key has the flags set to 0x1 (user presence required):

$ ./ssh-keygen -vvv -y -f ~/.ssh/id_ed25519-sk
sk-ssh-ed25519@openssh.com AAAAGnNrLX...mAAAABHNzaDo= foo@bar
debug1: sk_application: "ssh:", sk_flags 0x01

This flag should in theory trigger the message however it does not. The OpenSSH 9.0p1 SSH client has the same behavior so I assume this lack of the message is caused by something in my setup.

Adding some debug debug code to identity_sign() in sshconnect2.c, I can see it calls ssh_agent_sign() and returns. Checking the source code of process_sign_request2() in ssh-agent.c, it contains the code to emit the message for "sk" keys.

When the SSH client is waiting for the key touch, the relevant process tree looks like this:

gnome-keyring-d(57868)-+-ssh-agent(58517)---ssh-sk-helper(79174)
                       |-{gnome-keyring-d}(57869)
                       |-{gnome-keyring-d}(57870)
                       |-{gnome-keyring-d}(57982)
                       `-{gnome-keyring-d}(79173)

Once the key touch happens, the ssh-sk-helper process goes away.

So it seems like if ssh-agent emitted the message, it did not get to the ssh process.

Git literally just runs ssh (with some arguments) so if it works from ssh, it seems like it should "just work" from Git too. You might try turning on `GIT_TRACE` to watch Git run ssh for debug purposes, and/or use `strace` to see what ssh itself does differently once invoked by Git. — torek, Jun 08 '22 at 13:05
Had the same issue. found the solution here https://askubuntu.com/a/784663/299187 — kofemann, Jun 10 '22 at 08:24

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 08 '22 at 14:04

This is more of a workaround than proper answer, however it provides a way to fix the behavior. There are multiple factors (sic!) to this:

Firstly, there is something in Ubuntu which is automatically adding the keys in ~/.ssh directory to the ssh-agent started on login - once I create a key using ssh-keygen, the key appears automatically in the output of ssh-add -l. It is probably not ssh itself, because I do not have AddKeysToAgent set in my ~/.ssh/config (or the global config) and the default value of this directive is no.

To overcome this behavior, I generated the key files in different location (~/altssh).

Next, ssh prefers the keys stored in ssh-agent so this needs to be changed as well, using the IdentitiesOnly directive set to yes.

The ssh configuration snippet that makes the 'Confirm user presence' message to be emitted:

Host *github.com                                                                
  User git                                                                      
                                                                                
  # ssh will prefer the keys stored in ssh-agent to the one from                
  # the identity file so this behavior needs to be changed.                     
  IdentitiesOnly yes                                                            
  # for a good measure                                                          
  IdentityAgent none                                                            
                                                                                
  # The keys from ~/.ssh will be added to the ssh-agent automatically           
  # which I want to avoid because then the 'Confirm user presence'              
  # message will not be displayed.                                              
  IdentityFile ~/altssh/id_ed25519-sk

With this in place, it works:

$ ssh-add -l | grep 25519 | wc -l
0
$ ssh -T github.com
Confirm user presence for key ED25519-SK SHA256:...
Hi ...! You've successfully authenticated, but GitHub does not provide shell access.

Still, I think this is a limitation of how the ssh-agent communication works in OpenSSH. Also, perhaps Ubuntu should not be adding the sk keys to the ssh-agent as a second level workaround.

I was struggling with the same problem on Debian 12, `IdentitiesOnly` + `IdentityAgent` did the job, you made my days so much better man thank you — ethicnology, Aug 02 '23 at 09:07

"Confirm user presence for key" message not displayed when using Yubikey for SSH connection

1 Answers1