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Date:      Tue, 15 Jun 1999 01:34:14 -0600
From:      Warner Losh <imp@harmony.village.org>
To:        Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@flood.ping.uio.no>
Cc:        freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: DES & MD5? 
Message-ID:  <199906150734.BAA91097@harmony.village.org>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "15 Jun 1999 09:22:08 %2B0200." <xzp7lp6exnj.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no> 
References:  <xzp7lp6exnj.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no>  <Pine.OSF.4.10.9906151628010.1783-100000@bragg> 

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In message <xzp7lp6exnj.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no> Dag-Erling Smorgrav writes:
: Always assume the bad guys have your password files.

While this is a good assumption for planning purpose, it has limits.
If your password file can be disclosed, chances are very good that any
other file on your system can be disclosed.  Generally speaking, this
is a really bad thing, almost as bad as being able to replace any file
in the system.  This line of reasoning does implicitly assume that the
files aren't shared via a non-encrypted channel.

This does point out the limits of "secret" passwords.  Public
key/private key authentication systems can make things more secure.
However, they are ill suited to hardwired terminals since people are
generally not as good at computers as computing signatures needed for
this sort of thing.

Warner


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