nanog mailing list archives

Re: Wireless insecurity at NANOG meetings


From: Joel Jaeggli <joelja () darkwing uoregon edu>
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2002 10:00:27 -0700 (PDT)


On Sun, 22 Sep 2002, Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:


On Sun, 22 Sep 2002, Richard A Steenbergen wrote:

On Sun, Sep 22, 2002 at 01:11:07PM +0200, Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:
There are also people ssh'ing to personal and corporate machines from
the terminal room where the root password is given out or easily
available.

Are you saying people shouldn't SSH?

I've seen far too many people get into trouble because they have some
flawed thinking that "ssh == always secure", even against compromises of
one of the endpoints. If root is available, a reasonable person should
ASSUME that some bored individual (like Bandy Rush) has taken 30 seconds
and recompiled the ssh binaries with a password logger.

When we hosted nanog 16 we made the effort to periodically compare the md5 
sums of the binaries on the terminal room machines to a reference source. 
I wouldn't personally place a greate deal of trust in machines that 
aren't in ones possession  but we try.
 
Excellent point. Fortunately, this doesn't apply to running SSH from your
laptop over the wireless network.


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Joel Jaeggli          Academic User Services   joelja () darkwing uoregon edu    
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  inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.
                            -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"



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