From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Aug 22 17:45:41 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from maxim.gbch.net (gw.gbch.net [203.24.22.66]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 7832B37B420 for ; Wed, 22 Aug 2001 17:45:17 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from gjb@gbch.net) Received: (qmail 28419 invoked by uid 1001); 23 Aug 2001 10:45:07 +1000 Message-ID: X-Posted-By: GJB-Post 2.21 16-Jun-2001 X-Operating-System: FreeBSD 4.2-RELEASE i386 X-Location: Brisbane, Australia; 27.49841S 152.98439E X-URL: http://www.gbch.net/gjb.html X-Image-URL: http://www.gbch.net/gjb/gjb-auug048.gif X-GPG-Fingerprint: EBB2 2A92 A79D 1533 AC00 3C46 5D83 B6FB 4B04 B7D6 X-PGP-Public-Keys: http://www.gbch.net/keys.html Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2001 10:45:07 +1000 From: Greg Black To: Matt Dillon Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: ssh password cracker - now this *is* cool! References: <200108222330.f7MNUUj80882@earth.backplane.com> In-reply-to: <200108222330.f7MNUUj80882@earth.backplane.com> of Wed, 22 Aug 2001 16:30:30 MST Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Matt Dillon wrote: | This gets an 'A' on my cool-o-meter. | | http://www.vnunet.com/News/1124839 The real research might be interesting, but the information in the article seems to be wrong. It says: Each keystroke from a user is immediately sent to the target machine as a separate IP packet. By performing a statistical study on a user's typing patterns, and applying a key sequence prediction algorithm, the researchers managed to successfully predict key sequences from inter-keystroke timings. While this is true for events that occur while you are typing at something like an xterm, it's not true while you type in a password. In that case the ssh client at your end collects the entire password, encrypts it, and transmits the whole thing when you hit . How are they going to determine inter-keystroke timings from that? Maybe the real trick is much cooler than what is shown in the article ... To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message