Re: Re: Concepts: Security and Obscurity

[levinson_k () securityadmin info]

Whether passwords count as obscurity is a question asked frequently over the years.  Like Craig, I tend to agree with 
the wikipedia definition of security through obscurity, which suggests it applies to systems that use the secrecy of 
design / implementation details to provide security. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity

So with this definition, it would depend more on how the passwords were technically implemented, rather than whether or 
not passwords are used.  Passwords are the piece of authentication data you want to protect, and not the method of 
protecting that authentication.  The design is what you'd evaluate for obscurity, not the data.

If you are discussing an early port knocking implementation without any cryptographic methods where the authenticator 
is a packet sent to a series of ports in order, that gets fuzzy.  I tend to consider that to be a password like a 
keypad PIN or a numerical door lock, though some could argue that connecting to ports in akin to a network 
authentication protocol that relies on secrecy.  

And it gets even fuzzier if you're talking more recent port knocking implementations that are open source (not secret 
in their implementation details) and that use cryptographic functions for authentication.  

I'd say that asking whether port knocking apps are examples of obscurity is like asking whether operating systems are 
obscurity: some of them might use obscurity entirely, partly or not at all, it all depends on their implementation.

Note that the definition of obscurity above (using secrecy of design details for security) seems to include closed 
source software.  That might be the best example we should be using of obscurity, because open source vs. closed source 
is a religious question that will never be answered to everyone's satisfaction.  Just like security through obscurity.

kind regards,
Karl Levinson
http://securityadmin.info