My ASUS router runs Asuswrt-Merlin (third-party) firmware that also uses Dropbear.

Luckily it's more up-to-date:

ASUSWRT-Merlin RT-AC86U 386.4_0 Sat Jan 1 18:43:23 UTC 2022
➜ ssh -V
Dropbear v2020.81


I can successfully log in to that router using the 1Password SSH Agent :)

OpenSSH 8.8 has also disabled sha-rsa by default, so anyone running that client would also have difficulty using ssh keys with these old ssh servers.

https://www.openssh.com/txt/release-8.8

However, they do apparently provide a way to explicitly re-enable it for old hosts according to those release notes.


Host old-host
HostkeyAlgorithms +ssh-rsa
PubkeyAcceptedAlgorithms +ssh-rsa


This doesn't work with the 1Password ssh-agent.

I have the same issue with a few Mikrotik routers, even on their latest RouterOS 7.x. I use the ssh client in WSL (Windows subsystem for Linux) and as a workaround i unset SSH_AUTH_SOCK and load the key from the filesystem using the -i to ssh.

I have a similar issue, but with openssh on UniFi Cloud Key

Server: OpenSSH_7.4p1 Debian-10+deb9u7, OpenSSL 1.0.2u 20 Dec 2019
Error: sign_and_send_pubkey: signing failed for RSA "" from agent: agent refused operation

Working linux box is Server: OpenSSH_8.4p1 Ubuntu-6ubuntu2.1, OpenSSL 1.1.1l 24 Aug 2021

Client is: OpenSSH_8.6p1, LibreSSL 3.3.5

Key works fine if I do a -i in and unset SSH_AUTH_SOCK

I found this error in the logs:
ERROR 2022-03-24T15:24:37.782 tokio-runtime-worker(ThreadId(3)) [1P:/Users/builder/builds/BhfSvM9x/0/dev/core/core/ssh/op-ssh-agent/src/lib.rs:377] Error handling sign request: Key(signing with ssh-rsa is unsupported; SHA-1 may be insecure)
ERROR 2022-03-24T15:24:37.798 tokio-runtime-worker(ThreadId(7)) [1P:/Users/builder/builds/BhfSvM9x/0/dev/core/core/ssh/op-ssh-agent/src/lib.rs:377] Error handling sign request: Key(signing with ssh-rsa is unsupported; SHA-1 may be insecure)

But when I tried to add these to my config file it got an error:
Host old-host
HostkeyAlgorithms +ssh-rsa
PubkeyAcceptedAlgorithms +ssh-rsa

That and this seems like the op-ssh-agent does not support the legacy key signing.

Correct. We currently don't support ssh-rsa / SHA-1 signatures, but because of the compatibility issues this imposes, we're working on adding support for it anyway.

@floris_1P I like the idea of dropping insecure protocols and if at some day unifi updates SSHD I would prefer not to have what I assume is a potential Man in the middle vector (of course I only ssh into these devices on network, so lower risk). Maybe a configuration checkbox for legacy protocols on the developer config menu? If it could be done by key that would be even better so I could enable just for the key I use for Unifi. Just thinking not sure what is possible ;-)

@compunction You can already opt out of ssh-rsa through your SSH config:


HostkeyAlgorithms -ssh-rsa
PubkeyAcceptedAlgorithms -ssh-rsa


@floris_1P If I do that in my client config I get:

debug1: Offering public key: removed RSA SHA256:+Q4xSw+GPZrn+v3tMjfTrOqw2Zsiy+ChL/YajpdFmuc agent
debug1: send_pubkey_test: no mutual signature algorithm
debug1: Offering public key: removed RSA SHA256:IIP+sCXT7oTh4Ua8AobOPCNoJklDC55UfmHvtyPYSeM agent
debug1: send_pubkey_test: no mutual signature algorithm

If I reconfigure the SSHD, I would expect it to get broken on the next firmware update.

@compunction Yes, sorry for the confusion, but all I meant to say that if we now add ssh-rsa support to the agent, you would be free to opt out of that using that snippet I posted. But yes, if the server only supports ssh-rsa, then it is expected that opting out results in a broken auth flow.