Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2001 19:49:26 -0500 From: Alfred Perlstein <bright@mu.org> To: Greg Black <gjb@gbch.net> Cc: Matt Dillon <dillon@earth.backplane.com>, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: ssh password cracker - now this *is* cool! Message-ID: <20010822194926.U81307@elvis.mu.org> In-Reply-To: <nospam-998527507.28418@maxim.gbch.net>; from gjb@gbch.net on Thu, Aug 23, 2001 at 10:45:07AM %2B1000 References: <200108222330.f7MNUUj80882@earth.backplane.com> <nospam-998527507.28418@maxim.gbch.net>
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* Greg Black <gjb@gbch.net> [010822 19:46] wrote: > 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 <Enter>. > > 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 ... No, the idea is that one may have ssh'd into a remote host that's trusted, and there the user is typing a password to access something from the trusted host. One could do the statistical analysis then. -- -Alfred Perlstein [alfred@freebsd.org] Ok, who wrote this damn function called '??'? And why do my programs keep crashing in it? To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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