0.14.0 (2026-09-09)

Release Notes

Security

An outside security review of the tree read the source, the config, the history, the
dependencies and the CI, and found thirteen things worth fixing. This release closes all of
them. None was a remote code execution or a leak in the default setup, but two of them undercut
promises the docs were already making.

• The askpass helper now knows whether the stored secret is a login password or a key
  passphrase, and only answers the matching prompt. Before, a server that asked Password:
  over keyboard-interactive could be handed a key passphrase, because the text of that prompt
  is written by the server and Password: is a perfectly ordinary shape. A key host now
  answers only OpenSSH's own Enter passphrase for key '<path>':, and only when the path is one
  of the key files sshelf passed with -i.
• Key hosts connect with PreferredAuthentications=publickey (plus keyboard-interactive for
  2FA hosts), so a server can no longer steer a key host into a password prompt. If a key host
  of yours relied on falling back to a password, add the password as a second host or switch its
  auth to password.
• Jump hosts never see the askpass helper. With one jump host and a stored secret the hop runs
  with BatchMode=yes and password and keyboard-interactive auth off, which is what the FAQ
  always said jump hosts had to be. With two or more hops, ssh asks for the target's secret on
  the terminal instead, and sshelf says so before it does.
• The transfer screen's control socket moved from /tmp into a private directory under
  $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR (or the data dir) with mode 0700, so another local user can't squat on the
  path and stall or answer the connection.
• Remote listings and mkdir over sftp have a timeout and an output cap, and closing the transfer
  screen no longer waits forever on a stuck server.
• Temporary files are created exclusively with random names, forward logs moved from /tmp into
  the data directory with mode 0600, and the transfer log refuses to follow a symlink.
• sshelf list, sshelf import, sshelf doctor and the shell completions replace terminal
  control characters in host and site fields before printing them. sshelf list --json is
  unchanged. The add/edit form and the importers now refuse a name that carries one.
• The 2FA code is masked while you type it, in the TUI and on the command line.
• sshelf no longer changes the permissions of a config directory it didn't create. sshelf doctor warns if that directory is world- or group-writable, or is not yours.
• Downloads land under a temporary name and are installed without replacing an existing file.
  Uploads are still checked against the last listing, which is refreshed right before a send;
  the docs now say what that check does and does not promise.
• Release workflows: every action is pinned to a commit, the version input can't reach a shell
  unescaped, companion jobs build the exact commit the release built and refuse to publish if
  the tag has moved, permissions are read-only except where a job uploads, and release artifacts
  now carry build attestations.

Changed

• Ctrl-y and sshelf print-command resolve the host's stored secret first, so the command they
  give you is the one sshelf would run, including the ProxyCommand a jump host gets. The
  command field of sshelf list --json is unchanged: a listing has no business reading the
  keyring once per host.

Install sshelf 0.14.0

Install prebuilt binaries via shell script

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf https://github.com/max-rh/sshelf/releases/download/v0.14.0/sshelf-installer.sh | sh

Install prebuilt binaries via Homebrew

brew install max-rh/tap/sshelf

Download sshelf 0.14.0

File	Platform	Checksum
sshelf-aarch64-apple-darwin.tar.xz	Apple Silicon macOS	checksum
sshelf-x86_64-apple-darwin.tar.xz	Intel macOS	checksum
sshelf-aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.xz	ARM64 Linux	checksum
sshelf-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.xz	x64 Linux	checksum

Verifying GitHub Artifact Attestations

The artifacts in this release have attestations generated with GitHub Artifact Attestations. These can be verified by using the GitHub CLI:

gh attestation verify <file-path of downloaded artifact> --repo max-rh/sshelf

You can also download the attestation from GitHub and verify against that directly:

gh attestation verify <file-path of downloaded artifact> --bundle <file-path of downloaded attestation>