[GTALUG] dreamhost reply, is dh key exchange question.

Mike el.fontanero at gmail.com
Wed Oct 10 15:06:39 EDT 2018


Hi Karen,

I'm going to guess that the "business decision" is basically to
conform to current acceptable security practices, possibly even for
liability reasons.

Question: Do you, or your colleague, have administrative (or "root")
privilege to your hosted system? If so, you could re-enable the
deprecated algorithms without Dreamhost's help (or permission).

However, I have what may be an easier solution, one that I should
already have thought of:  If you still have working SSH-based shell
access to a different host, you should be able to SSH FROM THERE to
your dreamhost system.

That is, SSH to your other shell account, and instead of running your
email program, run "ssh user at eugene...", and once connected to eugene,
proceed as though you were connected directly.

Such plumbing is often necessary for a variety of reasons.  Just make
sure you know where you are.  The commands "whoami", and "hostname"
are often useful!

Cheers,
Mike





On 10/9/18, Karen Lewellen via talk <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:
> Hi Mike and everyone.
> Below  is the explanation from dreamhost regarding my dh key exchange
> situation.
> A bit of background.
> Dreamhost has a special program allowing International Nonprofit
> organizations who can demonstrate tax exempt status  to have a hosting
> account with their service.
> My employee got such an account  years back, they have offices both in new
> York and Toronto.  I have asked Brian to share the documentation dreamhost
> provided its nonprofit organization members in this program of their so
> called business decision.
> I pointed out that many in the nonprofit sector are using  less than hot
> off the shelf tools to manage their internet efforts, with this business
> decision  creating a risk for more than   myself.  Further, I pointed out
> that  I am at the moment, physically incapable of making changes having
> not  been able to work fully since the end of June.
> I share  his first post, I have not gotten an answer yet to my reply.
> I dare say the simple solution would be, if they exists, an easy way to
> manage it, finding another company all together.
> At the same time though I would welcome  educating other dreamhost
> customers, say via there twitter  presence, if they have one.
> Thoughts on their explanation?
> Karen
> <dreamhost e-mail begins below this line:>
>
>
> On Mon, 8 Oct 2018, DreamHost Customer Support Team wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>
>     "I don't see that there should be any trouble connecting to
>> dreamhost.com..."
>>
>>  Simply connecting to dreamhost.com is not a valid test, as there are no
>> customers ever hosted on our main web site. That server is reserved for
>> internal use only. It has only internal use logins on it. Encryption is
>> maintained via a separate system.
>>
>>   "However there is a problem with Eugene.dreamhost.com Since
>> dreamhost.com still should allow my ssh client to connect, the question
>> is if my account can be placed on a server that will
>> allow such a connection."
>>
>>   Again, we are not hosting customers on any servers that support the
>> method of encryption you're looking for. I wish we could, but we have
>> made a business decision not to support that type of connection style for
>> customer logins. We will be updating dreamhost.com shortly.
>>
>>  "You were going to move our account in any case, at least I have
>> e-mails saying that was going to
>> happen."
>>
>>  That will simply be a move of email, to a different email server. This
>> is unrelated to where your web service lives.
>>
>>  Sorry I can't be of more help here.
>>
>> Thanks!
>> Brian H
>>
>> --
>> To continue this support case, just reply to this email.
>> Check our Knowledge Base tips and how-tos! https://help.dreamhost.com/
>> Don't forget the expert content on our blog:
>> https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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>>
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>>
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>>
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