RE: Re: Concepts: Security and Obscurity

["Craig Wright" <Craig.Wright () bdo com au>]

Here I fully agree with Karl in the start of this post. 

Where I differ is that I do believe that "security through obscurity" is
a determinable question. There are experiments that could be run to
determine this question - it is just not a question which has been
determined as yet (unless there is a paper someone on the list can
provide?)

There are a few proposed experiments that may go a long way to answer
this which have been proposed, either way - and either outcome - I look
forward to the results.

Regards,
Craig



Craig Wright
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-----Original Message-----

From: listbounce () securityfocus com [mailto:listbounce () securityfocus com]
On Behalf Of levinson_k () securityadmin info
Sent: Wednesday, 18 April 2007 10:22 AM
To: security-basics () securityfocus com
Subject: Re: Re: Concepts: Security and Obscurity


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