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Date:      Wed, 9 Jul 2008 12:25:40 +0530
From:      "Ivan Grover" <ivangrvr299@gmail.com>
To:        "=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Dag-Erling_Sm=F8rgrav?=" <des@des.no>
Cc:        freebsd-security@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: OPIE Challenge sequence
Message-ID:  <670f29e20807082355j590a23aax6335ee3d6480d96b@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <8663rg5qvd.fsf@ds4.des.no>
References:  <670f29e20807080316s6cf57612jf5135bfd340e3328@mail.gmail.com> <20080708113030.GN62764@server.vk2pj.dyndns.org> <670f29e20807080641wb6f76cctfacfbb2af2f4f7e9@mail.gmail.com> <8663rg5qvd.fsf@ds4.des.no>

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On Tue, Jul 8, 2008 at 9:07 PM, Dag-Erling Sm=F8rgrav <des@des.no> wrote:

> "Ivan Grover" <ivangrvr299@gmail.com> writes:
> > Thank you so much for your responses. By  "predetermined ", i meant the
> > challenges appear sequentially in decremented fashion, so are we aware =
of
> > any security hole with this.
>
> There is no way to deduce the next challenge from the current one.  This
> is documented in the opie(4) man page.

Just to clarify, I think you are trying to say the next response from the
current one, since the challenges are generated somehting like otp-md5 60
lo0245 ext, otp-md5 59 lo0245 ext, otp-md5 58 lo0245 ext,... so on.


>
> Here's the only advisory I could find for OPIE:
>
> http://security.freebsd.org/advisories/FreeBSD-SA-06:12.opie.asc
>




> > I ask this because usually the challenge/response implementations
> > consider generating random challenges( i think here they have a
> > weakness where the passphrase need to be in clear text).
>
> OPIE cannot use random challenges, because one of the requirements is
> that it should be possible to print a list of pre-generated responses.
>
> The advantage of OPIE over traditional passwords is that OPIE is not
> vulnerable to replay attacks, but this is not as relevant these days as
> it was back when S/Key (on which OPIE is based) was designed.  Replay
> attacks aren't very effective against encrypted protocols such as SSH.
>
> > My problem is to determine the best challenge/response implementation
> > for authenticating the clients.
>
> Systems like OPIE, where the challenge is actually issued to the user
> and not just to the user's software, require the user to have access to
> a response calculator, or to carry a sheet of precalculated responses.
> The former is difficult unless the users always log in from their own
> desktop or laptop computer, and the latter is usually a bad idea since
> someone might steel the sheet.  On the bright side, it should be fairly
> easy to write an OTP calculator that run on a cell phone, such as an
> S60-based Nokia phones or an iPhone.
>
> I'd say that the only advantage of OPIE today is that it's free.
>
> DES
> --
> Dag-Erling Sm=F8rgrav - des@des.no
>



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