I just checked the source and openssh doesn't appear to set madvise(MADV_DONTDUMP) anywhere :-( That seems like an oversight? For comparison openssl has a set of "secure malloc" functions (for keys etc) which uses MADV_DONTDUMP amongst other mitigations.
sshd runs as root, so the core dumps would be readable as root-only, no? If you have root access already you could dump it even while it's still running with ptrace anyways
>sshd runs as root, so the core dumps would be readable as root-only, no
Yes, although the article we're discussing shows that you can't rely on that, the dump could be subsequently moved to a developer machine for investigation, and unencrypted key material left in could be compromised that way... defense in depth would make sense here.