Subject: Encryption (was: Re: netatalk.com)
From: Tom Fitzgerald (tfitz@MIT.EDU)
Date: Tue Aug 01 2000 - 20:10:45 EDT
> Off-topic: JeffB, a feature request for 2.0: Make randnum and rand2num
> optionally read shadow passwords. *sigh*
This isn't possible with rand*num encryption, that's the reason DHX was
created. The randnums use a 1-way hash of the password for authentication,
and the server can't validate the hash unless it has the original
cleartext password on disk. Thus the .passwd file.
DHX authentication uses a public-key scheme to pass the cleartext
password from the client to the server, so that can be checked against
the shadow file.
Here's a deeper problem: DHX appears to be inferior to rand2num because
with rand2num, the authentication handshake doesn't succeed until the
server can prove to the client that it knows the user's password too.
This prevents a rogue server from impersonating a real server. DHX
doesn't appear to do this, so the security level is more like randnum,
which doesn't verify the server's identity. Am I missing something?
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b28 : Wed Jan 17 2001 - 14:31:47 EST