On Mon, 1 Aug 2005, Ralf Baechle DL5RB wrote: > On Fri, Jul 29, 2005 at 06:31:09PM -0700, Bill - WA7NWP wrote: > > > Suppose I captured all the packets of a SSH encrypted exchange. Would > > it be possible to decode the contents of the exchange IF one had both > > the public and private keys? > > ssh uses the Diffie-Hellman algorithm to exchange randomly generated > session keys. These keys are generated on the fly and destroyed at the > end of the session or replaced after a certain time with new keys. The > special propertie of the Diffie-Hellman algorithm is that it permits the > secure exchange of the session keys even if the session is being evedropped > uppon. Diffie-Hellman is vulnerable against a man in the middle attack > however, so the data packets used in the key exchange are secured against > this kind of attach using public key cryptography. The bottom line of > all this is no, publishing the RSA or DSA public keys is useless as they're > not being used for cryptography nor can their knowledge be used to > decrypt anything. Ssh is a pretty smart protocol :-)
Thanks Ralf. It looks like it's back to getting encryption type NONE going in SSH for our amatuer activities. It was a good try. 73, Bill - WA7NWP - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-hams" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
