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Date:      Thu, 5 Jan 2017 11:04:23 +0000
From:      Matthew Seaman <matthew@FreeBSD.org>
To:        freebsd-ports@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: openldap-client vs openldap-sasl-client
Message-ID:  <d41f8e35-73cd-b96b-9ef1-43a3e330c076@freebsd.org>
In-Reply-To: <20170105104326.GB2648@home.opsec.eu>
References:  <c798f1e9-92f0-1d2a-32e4-46dad59f05d0@FreeBSD.org> <34b66662-a2d7-706d-3653-e0ffc9bf81b2@rlwinm.de> <20170105104326.GB2648@home.opsec.eu>

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On 01/05/17 10:43, Kurt Jaeger wrote:
> Hi!
>
> [openldap-client vs openldap-sasl-client and libreoffice etc]
>> Yes and yes it sucks. The "solution" is to build your own repo and set
>> the right flags to always use the same LDAP client port. With binary
>> packages and the speed of modern x86_64 systems I for one no longer see
>> removing SASL support from OpenLDAP as useful enough to justify the
>> complexity.
>
> The other question is: What's the use of SASL anyway ? I've seen it
> for years in mailserver setups, etc, and it always caused trouble.
>

SASL effectively gets you a number of new authentication mechanisms.
Most of these are ways of proving you know a secret without sending the 
actual secret (ie. password) over the net in plain text, but I think it 
also adds the ability to use client TLS certificates for authentication. 
IIRC.

I don't see much value in the extra mechanisms for secure login over 
unencrypted links nowadays.  Pretty much everything I'm using currently 
already requires TLS for good security reasons, so there's no real 
downside to using plain LOGIN over the encrypted channel.  Plus the 
'proof of knowledge' authentication mechanisms have a big downside: they 
need the secret stored in the LDAP database in plain text, or in some 
locally reversible encryption.  With LOGIN over TLS, I can use salted 
password hashes in much the same way as Unix passwords.

SASL would be worth it for TLS client certificate functionality, if 
that's the only way to enable that.

	Cheers,

	Matthew




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