[18268] in bugtraq
Re: "The End of SSL and SSH?"
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Damien Miller)
Thu Dec 21 12:36:33 2000
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Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0012211328100.1904-100000@mothra.mindrot.org>
Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 13:36:24 +1100
Reply-To: Damien Miller <djm@MINDROT.ORG>
From: Damien Miller <djm@MINDROT.ORG>
X-To: Crispin Cowan <crispin@WIREX.COM>
To: BUGTRAQ@SECURITYFOCUS.COM
In-Reply-To: <3A40EBEE.11B10D11@wirex.com>
On Wed, 20 Dec 2000, Crispin Cowan wrote:
> * SSH: punts the whole problem, and makes the users responsible
> for initial key placement. Brilliant & lame at the same time, this
> has allowed SSH to spread rapidly, because it is much easier to
> install than most other secure remote access/VPN solutions. To
> be really secure, you can sneakernet (floppy disk) your initial
> key onto all the nodes you want. You can also punt, and use
> insecure means to place the initial keys: SSH warns you that you're
> subject to a man-in-the-middle attack when you do that.
OpenSSH (and maybe others) print fingerprints when previously unknown host
keys are presented. This allows for OOB veracity checking.
I have seen a few PGP signed SSH host keys and SSH host keys served from
webservers with "real" certificates, so 'cross-PKI' is another way around
the problem.
> > SSH and SSL are in my opinion poor implementations of security
> > protocols, they also lack a lot of things such as repudiation/etc.
> > To believe they are the best we can do makes me very sad. I suspect
> > in 5 years we'll talk about ssh/ssl like we talk about telnet right
> > now.
>
> They may be bad protocols (or good; I'm not a crypto protocol guy)
> but not for the reason you're presenting. The issue you bring up is
> endemic to all crypto protocols.
His argument in the case of SSL isn't even correct - CRLs and OCSP are
extant, if not pretty or widely deployed, repudiation mechanisms.
-d
--
| ``We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on | Damien Miller -
| a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the | <djm@mindrot.org>
| works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, /
| we know this is not true.'' - Robert Wilensky UCB / http://www.mindrot.org
