Redact private key material from SSH error messages - #38543
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Remove private key content, certificate content, and parsed key structs from error messages in signCertWithPrivateKey(). These values were formatted with %q into error strings that appear in terminal output and CI logs, exposing credential material. The underlying crypto library error (preserved via %s) already describes the failure cause (malformed PEM, unsupported algorithm, etc.), so no diagnostic information is lost. Signed-off-by: Sebastien Tardif <sebtardif@ncf.ca>
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Signed-off-by: Sebastien Tardif <sebtardif@ncf.ca>
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signCertWithPrivateKey()in the SSH communicator formats private keycontent, certificate content, and parsed key structs into error messages
using
%q. These error strings propagate to terminal output and CI logs(GitHub Actions, Jenkins, etc.), exposing credential material to anyone
with log access.
This commit removes the sensitive values from the four
fmt.Errorfcallsin the function. The underlying
golang.org/x/crypto/ssherror (stillincluded via
%s) already describes the failure cause (malformed PEM,unsupported algorithm, key/cert type mismatch), so no diagnostic
information is lost. The four distinct error prefixes still identify
which step failed.
The sibling function
readPrivateKey()was already safe (it only formatserr, not the key content).Related redaction work in this repo:
Similar fix in other projects:
Target Release
1.16.x
Rollback Plan
Changes to Security Controls
Yes. This change prevents private key material from being exposed in error
messages that appear in terminal output and CI/CD logs.
CHANGELOG entry