nanogui: Access control
Subject:
Re: Access control
From:
Alex Holden ####@####.####
Date:
14 Dec 2000 11:56:32 -0000
Message-Id: <Pine.LNX.4.04.10012141121230.603-100000@hyperspace.linuxhacker.org>
On Thu, 14 Dec 2000, Alan Cox wrote:
> > So you're saying that all the existing protocols which use hashed or
> > encrypted authentication but not actual session encryption (kerberos,
> > etc.) are no better than ones which use plaintext authentication?
> Unless they use the hash to protect all the data - pretty much.
Okay, so it looks like encryption of the session data is a must for any
real level of security. How about this, we have a two level system:
* No encryption, plaintext passwords using the ordinary Unix password
mechanism (assumes the network is fully secure).
* Full encryption of both authentication and session.
However, as to my previous idea of providing the encryption via ssh:
[alex@hyperspace alex]$ ls -l /usr/sbin/sshd
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 622900 Nov 8 15:56 /usr/sbin/sshd
[alex@hyperspace alex]$ ls -l /usr/bin/ssh
-rws--x--x 1 root root 663300 Nov 8 15:56 /usr/bin/ssh
Those are stripped binaries, and they also depend on several other
libaries.
So I'm currently thinking of implementing an encryption layer based on TEA
(Tiny Encryption Algorithm). TEA is an incredibly small (748 bytes on
386), very fast (faster than IDEA), very strong (much stronger than DES)
128 bit private key cypher which isn't patented and has a completely
public domain C reference implementation available.
See http://vader.brad.ac.uk/tea/tea.shtml for more information.
By the way, I realise that if we put this in the main distribution itself,
it would prevent people in countries with draconian encryption import
regulations (like France) from downloading it, and might not be exportable
from the US (I'm not sure what the exact situation with regard to that
is at the moment) so it'll be available as a seperate archive hosted in
the UK instead. I assume there are no regulations preventing people from
downloading software which contains hooks for making use of encryption
code but not the encryption code itself?
--
------- Alex Holden -------
http://www.linuxhacker.org/
http://www.robogeeks.org/
