diff --git a/CHANGES b/CHANGES
index cee4d48c8..f3a9ce7e5 100644
--- a/CHANGES
+++ b/CHANGES
@@ -6,6 +6,13 @@
 
                                   Changelog
 
+Daniel S (18 September 2007)
+- Immanuel pointed out that public key SSH auth failed if no public/private
+  key was specified and there was no HOME environment variable, and then it
+  didn't continue to try the other auth methods. Now it will instead try to
+  get the files id_dsa.pub and id_dsa from the current directory if none of
+  the two conditions were met.
+
 Dan F (17 September 2007)
 - Added hooks to the test suite to make it possible to test a curl running
   on a remote host.
diff --git a/RELEASE-NOTES b/RELEASE-NOTES
index 059a4b682..a10177b90 100644
--- a/RELEASE-NOTES
+++ b/RELEASE-NOTES
@@ -18,6 +18,7 @@ This release includes the following bugfixes:
  o curl-config --protocols now properly reports LDAPS, SCP and SFTP
  o ldapv3 support on Windows
  o ldap builds with the MSVC makefiles
+ o no HOME and no key given caused SSH auth failure
 
 This release includes the following known bugs:
 
diff --git a/lib/ssh.c b/lib/ssh.c
index 50ec429b3..d95db32cd 100644
--- a/lib/ssh.c
+++ b/lib/ssh.c
@@ -407,6 +407,9 @@ static CURLcode ssh_statemach_act(struct connectdata *conn)
           sshc->rsa_pub = aprintf("%s", data->set.str[STRING_SSH_PUBLIC_KEY]);
         else if (home)
           sshc->rsa_pub = aprintf("%s/.ssh/id_dsa.pub", home);
+        else
+          /* as a final resort, try current dir! */
+          sshc->rsa_pub = strdup("id_dsa.pub");
 
         if (sshc->rsa_pub == NULL) {
           Curl_safefree(home);
@@ -420,6 +423,9 @@ static CURLcode ssh_statemach_act(struct connectdata *conn)
           sshc->rsa = aprintf("%s", data->set.str[STRING_SSH_PRIVATE_KEY]);
         else if (home)
           sshc->rsa = aprintf("%s/.ssh/id_dsa", home);
+        else
+          /* as a final resort, try current dir! */
+          sshc->rsa = strdup("id_dsa");
 
         if (sshc->rsa == NULL) {
           Curl_safefree(home);