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Re: The sky is falling! XML's dirty secret! Go back! It's a

• To: Paul Prescod <paul@p...>
• Subject: Re: The sky is falling! XML's dirty secret! Go back! It's a trap!
• From: Rich Salz <rsalz@d...>
• Date: Sun, 2 Jun 2002 16:26:27 -0400 (EDT)
• Cc: <xml-dev@l...>
• In-reply-to: <3CFA76CA.E5C309FA@p...>

> out to be a security hole in your sshd, then you might be happy that you
> didn't post the IP address for your vulnerable system on the web.

Since most port scans are automated, it really doesn't matter if you 
publish your IP address or not. :(

Passwords aren't security through obscurity.  They are keys into what are 
usually (these days) strong crypto systems.  Passwords are "bad" because 
humans usually pick them, resulting in weak keys.  An example of StO are 
various ways that PDF files were protected, as discovered by the Russian 
Programmer.

Security through obscurity has a definite meaning in the security world: 
an important part of the protection of the *algorithm* requires it to be 
secret.  This directly violates Kerchoff's principal, which says assume 
the algorithm is public, and concentrate on the strength of the key.

*THAT* is why passwords are historically bad.

> where we replace passwords with cryptographically secure 128-bit hashes.

I don't know what you mean by this.  Replacing a password with a 
passphrase (which could be hashed down to small fixed size and used as a 
login key), is generally considered a good thing.  I don't know of anyone 
who is suggesting replacing a user-specified password with a 128bit 
number.  (And they should say to use SHA, which is 160 bits, anyway :)
 
> This stuff is always a matter of costs and benefits.

Most definitely.  The real goal is to make it cheaper for the bad guy to 
steal someone else's car.  That's subtly different from what somone posted 
here the other day.  For a better explanation of this, I cannot 
give enough praise to Dan Geer's "Risk Management" talk.  Available in 
several places, including the RISKS digest[1].
	/r$


[1] http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/20.06.html

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  • Re: The sky is falling! XML's dirty secret! Go back! It's a trap!
    • From: Paul Prescod <paul@p...>

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