Public Access
jaap-jan
94f66be5e8
Authorization Code with PKCE on a loopback redirect, per RFC 6749, RFC 7636 and RFC 8252. Zero package references: the flow is fully specified, and the one thing a library would own for us -- nonce generation and validation -- is exactly what the key binding needs to control. Duende's OidcClient generates and validates its own nonce as an internal detail, and the binding requires the nonce be a specific value: the hash of the key statement being enrolled. Fighting that is worse than owning the flow. AuthorizeKeyBindingAsync is the client half of the primary trust anchor. It runs a second authorization with nonce set to the statement hash and prompt=login, so the ID token that returns is the provider's signature over exactly those public keys, attesting to a user present now rather than to a session opened at some unknown earlier time. It requests only openid -- a second refresh token would be one more long-lived credential for no benefit -- and rejects a token whose nonce is not the one it asked for, because enrolling that would store evidence verifying against keys we are not publishing. The nonce is read without validating the ID token's signature. Sanctioned by OIDC Core 3.1.3.7: for a token received by direct communication with the token endpoint, TLS server authentication may stand in for signature checking. That reasoning does not extend to another user's binding, which arrives via the DodoSSH server and must be verified against JWKS fetched directly -- the directory work in M3. Raw TcpListener rather than HttpListener for the redirect: an ephemeral port can be bound and read atomically instead of picking one and hoping it is still free, there is no HTTP.SYS URL-ACL question on Windows, and the whole surface is one request line. It answers 404 on other paths and keeps waiting, because a browser asks for /favicon.ico first and treating that as the callback would abort every sign-in. 127.0.0.1 rather than localhost: RFC 8252 permits either, but the name resolves through the hosts file. 20 tests, driving the real listener over TCP with a fake browser that actually fetches the redirect -- injecting a fabricated callback would skip the parsing, path filtering and response writing that can break. Mostly negative, because the loopback port is reachable by every local process: a response with the wrong state is rejected *and* never reaches the token endpoint, metadata declaring an issuer other than its own authority is rejected (RFC 8414 3.3, without which a mix-up attack works), a provider offering only 'plain' is fatal rather than a silent downgrade, and the verifier sent is checked against the challenge advertised so PKCE is not theatre that only fails in production. Two bugs caught by writing the tests: the authorize URL builder dropped client_id entirely after a refactor, and CancellationTokenSource.CancelAfter has no TimeProvider overload -- so the browser timeout is now constructed with the clock and a test can advance it instead of waiting five minutes.
DodoSSH
A self-hosted, team-oriented SSH client with an end-to-end encrypted vault.
Manage hosts, credentials and keys in a desktop app; sync them across your devices and share them with teammates through a server you run yourself. The server stores ciphertext and never holds a key — the operator cannot read the credentials it stores.
Status: early development. See the milestone plan for what exists today.
Why
Teams either scatter SSH credentials across individual ~/.ssh directories with no sharing
story, or pay per-seat for a hosted product that holds their infrastructure credentials.
DodoSSH keeps the convenience of a synced, shareable vault while remaining self-hostable and
zero-knowledge.
Architecture
| Component | Choice |
|---|---|
| Backend | ASP.NET Core on .NET 10, PostgreSQL + EF Core |
| Client | Avalonia (C#) for Windows/Linux/macOS; terminal pane is a WebView running xterm.js |
| Auth | OIDC, provider-agnostic (Entra ID, Keycloak, Auth0, Authentik) |
| Vault | End-to-end encrypted; X25519 + Ed25519 + XChaCha20-Poly1305, Argon2id unlock |
| Connections | Client-direct SSH by default, with an optional raw-TCP server relay |
Two consequences worth knowing before you read further:
- Revocation is not retroactive. A removed member keeps what they already downloaded. The real remediation is rotating the SSH credential, so offboarding is built around a rotation checklist rather than a button that implies more than it delivers.
- No session recording in relay mode. The relay forwards SSH ciphertext, so it cannot see commands. That is the cost of the relay not being able to read your traffic.
The reasoning behind each major decision is recorded in docs/adr/, starting with
the E2EE trust model.
Repository layout
src/
DodoSSH.Contracts DTOs shared with the client — the real API contract
DodoSSH.Crypto DSH1 envelope, AAD derivation, key wrapping
DodoSSH.Domain entities and invariants, no EF
DodoSSH.Infrastructure DbContext, configurations, migrations
DodoSSH.Api the host
tests/ one test project per source project
docs/adr/ architecture decision records
Building
Requires the .NET SDK pinned in global.json (10.0.x).
dotnet build DodoSSH.slnx
dotnet test DodoSSH.slnx
Run the API locally:
dotnet run --project src/DodoSSH.Api
It listens on http://localhost:5233, serving /healthz/live, /healthz/ready and — in
Development — /openapi/v1.json.
Development and testing are currently Windows-only. Anything known or suspected to differ on
Linux and macOS is tracked in docs/platform-flags.md, along with the
deployment gotchas that have already cost time once. Read it before assuming something works
off-Windows.
Conventions the build enforces
- Warnings are errors.
dotnet format --verify-no-changesgates CI. - Package versions are centralised in
Directory.Packages.props;packages.lock.jsonis committed and CI restores in locked mode. BannedSymbols.txtbansDateTime.UtcNow(useTimeProvider),Guid.NewGuid(useCreateVersion7), sync-over-async, MD5/SHA1 and PBKDF2.- Public members of
DodoSSH.Contractsmust be declared inPublicAPI.Unshipped.txt, so a contract change is a build error rather than a client-side surprise.
Milestones
- M0 — foundation. Repo structure, build conventions, CI, ADRs. Done.
- M1 — vertical slice. OIDC login → enroll → create a host → open a shell.
Backend done: the DSH1 crypto core, the data model, sync push/pull for hosts,
/me, and enrollment with the identity-provider key binding. Remaining: the desktop client, and the two spikes that gate it — the Linux WebView and SSH.NET'swindow-change. Both need a Linux and a macOS machine, so neither has run yet. - M2 — full personal vault, robust sync, relay.
- M3 — teams, sharing, ACLs.
- M4 — hardening and ops, packaging, self-hosting guide.
- M5 — multi-provider OIDC, key rotation, per-item content keys.
Licence
MIT.