I don't think he was impugning SSH's security record at all: just the perceived abuse of the protocol.
The entire quote, in context:
10) Biggest problem with Unix - by akaina
Recently on the Google Labs Aptitude Test there was a question: "What's broken with Unix? How would you fix it?"
What would you have put?
Pike:
Ken Thompson and I started Plan 9 as an answer to that question. The major things we saw wrong with Unix when we started talking about what would become Plan 9, back around 1985, all stemmed from the appearance of a network. As a stand-alone system, Unix was pretty good. But when you networked Unix machines together, you got a network of stand-alone systems instead of a seamless, integrated networked system. Instead of one big file system, one user community, one secure setup uniting your network of machines, you had a hodgepodge of workarounds to Unix's fundamental design decision that each machine is self-sufficient.
Nothing's really changed today. The workarounds have become smoother and some of the things we can do with networks of Unix machines are pretty impressive, but when ssh is the foundation of your security architecture, you know things aren't working as they should.
My disagreement with SSH is more specific. It is a securitymonger's
plaything, so has been stuffed with every authentication and encryption
technology known, yet those that are configured when it is installed is
a random variable. Therefore both sides must negotiate like crazy to figure
how to talk, and one often finds that there is no shared language. This is
idiocy. The complexity is silly, but much worse is that there isn't at least
one guaranteed protocol for authentication and encryption that both
ends always have and can use as a fallback. I would argue that that
would always be sufficient, but I know I'm in the minority there. I do
argue that it's demonstrably necessary.
Algorithms everywhere, and not a byte to send.
By making the thing too complicated, they defeat
the very purpose of security. Difficult administration results in
incorrect or inadequate installation. There are cases when I can't
use ssh, a direct consequence.
-rob
Russ Cox chimes in
we're stuck with ssh, but let's not delude
ourselves into thinking it's a good protocol.
That's not a criticism of OpenSSH itself, but of the way Unix systems hadn't progressed from being a set of standalone systems to one networked system. The mention of SSH is not as a criticism of the protocol or OpenSSH. It's a criticism of the Unix world's lack of progress in moving towards what Pike sees as a better way of building large systems.
