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Date:      Fri, 3 Apr 1998 01:56:52 -0500 (EST)
From:      Robert Watson <robert@cyrus.watson.org>
To:        Mark Murray <mark@grondar.za>
Cc:        Charles Quarri <randy@hackerz.org>, stable@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Hesiod support on 2.2 
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.3.96.980403015427.21311Q-100000@fledge.watson.org>
In-Reply-To: <199804030543.HAA24161@greenpeace.grondar.za>

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On Fri, 3 Apr 1998, Mark Murray wrote:

> To make Hesiod secure, you should not use it to distribute passwords 
> (encrypted or not). That is what Kerberos is for. One of the things I 
> have picked up in 48 hours of research.

Well, I actually did not intend to, nor was it my understanding that that
was MIT's intent on writing it.  They intended it as a directory service
for typical UNIX config files (such as /etc/hosts) and user information
(such as /etc/passwd, /etc/group).  Toehold would dynamically create
accounts on the machine, assigning them uids as appropriate, and use
Kerberos to authenticate the user.  However, the ability to specify passwd
entries + group entries + hosts entries, etc, could be used to attack a
machine in an insecure DNS arrangement.  As I understand it, MIT then
implemented kerberized DNS queries -- securing communication between the
resolver and the server using rcmd entries and krb_mkpriv.  This is not
equivilent to DNSsec, which digitally signs the DNS data, rather than the
transport.

  Robert N Watson 


----
Carnegie Mellon University  http://www.cmu.edu/
Trusted Information Systems http://www.tis.com/
SafePort Network Services   http://www.safeport.com/
robert@fledge.watson.org    http://www.watson.org/~robert/


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