Feature request: support webauthn-sk-ecdsa-sha2-nistp256@openssh.com SSH keys

[ozyman42]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Product Feedback

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Supply chain security

Discussion Details

Currently, when signing commits or pulling / pushing commits, SSH key or GPG key is supported. The SSH key can be backed by a hardware security key since the sk-ssh-ed25519@openssh.com algorithm is supported, but not everyone carries around a yubikey so it's quite common for people to just store their ssh key locally where it can be stolen. Even if the local ssh key is encrypted with a password, it's not uncommon for a compromised machine to be monitored with a keylogger, so an attacker can get the password if they really want to, plus nothing is preventing a brute force attack against a stolen password encrypted local key.

What's currently not supported is SSH via passkey, the webauthn-sk-ecdsa-sha2-nistp256@openssh.com key type. If that key type were supported by Github for commit signing and ssh authn for pushing / pulling, any type of passkey could be used. This would greatly improve supply chain security and accessibility.

I for one prefer password managers which backup passkeys to the cloud which protects against loss / theft of device whereas with a yubikey I could easily misplace it.

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[ozyman42]

Why is this important for supply chain security?

1. Github ought to move to a model where verified commits are required by default. Without that protection, anyone who manages to get write access to a repo can push to the repo without verifying their identity, opening the door for impersonation of commits.
2. By requiring verified commits, you move to a place where the actual user must be present at time of commit. This is not something that can be spoofed as passkeys which are typically hardware backed cannot be utilized in the absence of the owner.

Passkeys cannot be stolen. The recent TeamPCP hack was made possible by credential stealing malware.