> Ben Nagy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> says
>
>Cryptography is not one of my strong areas, but I thought SSH was designed
>to avoid hijacking and man-in-the-middle attacks? I don't know exactly how
>it works, but something like pre-shared RSA keys or certificates could be
>used to authenticate hosts in a manner that a hacker sitting on the wire
>wouldn't be able to impersonate because the secret segment is never
>transmitted...right? Even Diffie-Helman or something should be proof against
>a middleman...
SSH does secure key exchange and data authentication. I know there
were some reports of earlier versions of the protocol which had some
theoretical weaknesses which made it vulnerable to a person-in-the-middle
attack. However, to my knowlege the current protocol versions are not
vulnerable to person-in-the-middle attacks.
I'd say the only risk with SSH is keeping the private keys private. But
that is true with any public-key cryptographic system.
Also always ask the question "what information am I trying to protect
and what is its value?" I use SSH remotely as a secure VPN because it is
easy to setup and use and it lets me be assured my passwords are encrypted
on the wire when I login to remote systems. For most information I send
and receive the encryption is overkill. It is nice, since it has the builtin
benefit of detecting any tampering of the data stream enroute. Which BTW, I
have never seen.
Smoot Carl-Mitchell
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