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Date:      Mon, 26 Mar 2001 22:49:20 -0500
From:      Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu>
To:        Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.ORG>, Kris Kennaway <kris@obsecurity.org>
Cc:        Nate Williams <nate@yogotech.com>, "Michael A. Dickerson" <mikey@singingtree.com>, "Duwde (Fabio V. Dias)" <duwde@duwde.com.br>, freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: SSHD revelaing too much information.
Message-ID:  <p05010404b6e5bb325d3c@[128.113.24.47]>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.NEB.3.96L.1010326205118.81313D-100000@fledge.watson.org>
References:  <Pine.NEB.3.96L.1010326205118.81313D-100000@fledge.watson.org>

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At 9:30 PM -0500 3/26/01, Robert Watson wrote:
>OK, so I go knowingly into a heated discussion :-).

And you go an ruin a good, building flame-war by bringing in
facts and a reasoned analysis.  Boy, what a spoil-sport...

>2) Several important classes of software consumers benefit
>    from the explicit detailing of version information.
>
>A number of consumers of this banner information are present,
>and they represent an important class of users.  Just off the
>top of my head, I can identify at least two reasons why
>revealing version information is useful:

One thing I was wondering is if the version information could be
delayed until the user has successfully authenticated to some user
on the destination host.  Maybe any userid on the destination host,
maybe just some specific userid(s). I think that would give the
version info out to people who would have some RIGHT to know it,
without leaving it out there for absolutely anyone to anonymously
discover.  [this delay would be an sshd configuration option, of
course, so that administrators could choose the behavior they
wanted]

My next question is whether this version-paranoid behavior should
key off some system setting (a sysctl of some sort), as perhaps
there are other network-service daemons where this same issue
comes up.  Might as well have them all key off a single option.

-- 
Garance Alistair Drosehn            =   gad@eclipse.acs.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer           or  gad@freebsd.org
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute    or  drosih@rpi.edu

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