Re: Re: pwgen: non-uniform distribution of passwords

[Kurt Seifried <kseifried () redhat com>]

On 01/17/2012 12:58 PM, Henri Salo wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 11:51:31PM +0400, Solar Designer wrote:
> > It was just pointed out to me off-list that the man page for pwgen
> > specifically mentions that this kind of passwords "should not be used in
> > places where the password could be attacked via an off-line brute-force
> > attack."  I had missed that detail or at least I did not recall it.
> >
> > This kind of documentation certainly mitigates the problem to some extent.
> I'll bet most of the end-users will also miss this if you did.
>
> - Henri Salo
I'm of the mind that documenting issues is good but documenting issues
doesn't always make them go away.

E.g. documenting a default usrname/password where it can be easily
changed is reasonable. Documenting a default username/password that
cannot be changed doesn't really help to the same degree.

In this case we have something that tells you not to use an unsafe
option but isn't exceedingly noticeable or clear (if it came up every
time you used that option there would be a stringer case for no CVE).
I'm sitting on the fence for this one (I can see it going either way),
wouldn't mind some more opinions from the smart people on this list.

-- 

-- Kurt Seifried / Red Hat Security Response Team