1995-09-20 - Re: NYT on Netscape Crack

Header Data

From: shields@tembel.org (Michael Shields)
To: sameer@c2.org (sameer)
Message Hash: 9be428eb88239960d8f64806fe606409b911f6e0f1025a8ab09ff2b58f8e3c2b
Message ID: <m0svIx0-000DOGC@yage.tembel.org>
Reply To: <199509190748.AAA03614@infinity.c2.org>
UTC Datetime: 1995-09-20 06:49:33 UTC
Raw Date: Tue, 19 Sep 95 23:49:33 PDT

Raw message

From: shields@tembel.org (Michael Shields)
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 95 23:49:33 PDT
To: sameer@c2.org (sameer)
Subject: Re: NYT on Netscape Crack
In-Reply-To: <199509190748.AAA03614@infinity.c2.org>
Message-ID: <m0svIx0-000DOGC@yage.tembel.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> 	The server process itself still needs access to that file
> though in order to verify passwords, so it can't be totally
> protected-- a bug in the server might reveal the password file. A
> relatively minor point..

Actually, it could communicate with a differently-privileged process.
The security gain probably isn't worth the performance hit, though.

(A possible secure channel: Give the password manager a uid of its own.
Have it listen on a unix-domain socket.  The server process opens the
socket, then fstat()s it to make sure it's really owned by the password
manager.)
-- 
Shields.




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