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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!newshost.telstra.net!act.news.telstra.net!psgrain!iafrica.com!pipex-sa.net!plug.news.pipex.net!pipex!tube.news.pipex.net!pipex!lade.news.pipex.net!pipex!tank.news.pipex.net!pipex!news.mathworks.com!zombie.ncsc.mil!nntp.coast.net!swidir.switch.ch!in2p3.fr!univ-lyon1.fr!ensta!itesec!keltia.frmug.fr.net!not-for-mail From: roberto@keltia.freenix.fr (Ollivier Robert) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.os.linux.networking,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: need secure OS to entrust millions to Date: 5 Mar 1996 20:44:47 GMT Organization: Usenet Canal Historique Lines: 24 Message-ID: <4hi93v$qas@keltia.freenix.fr> References: <4gi6t6$3h9@lace.colorado.edu> <1996Feb25.152559.8977@jarvis.cs.toronto.edu> <4gvchb$ln5@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> <4h7rdd$qeu@park.uvsc.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: keltia.freenix.fr Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.misc:90123 comp.os.linux.development.system:18729 comp.os.linux.networking:30722 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:2554 comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:2391 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:14929 In article <4h7rdd$qeu@park.uvsc.edu>, Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> wrote: > Public key cryptography (RSA, et. al.) is the ultimate in > security through obscurity. Not at all. PK Crypto relies on _secrecy_ of the key (and its size of course, you can't rely on 384 bits PGP keys for example), not on the algorithm itself or something else you may try to hide. Every cryptographic system has to have a secret somewhere. That does not mean it uses security by obscurity -- at least not in the sense of SBO as used by firewall folks. Hiding things like an algorithm or an operating system will not help security. Many crackers (I don't use the term "hacker" even if I know this particular battle is lost) have never seen AIX or VM/CMS source code and there have been intrusions in them. Keeping RC4 and RC2 as "trade secrets" has not added to their security. -- Ollivier ROBERT -=- FreeBSD: The daemon is FREE! -=- roberto@freebsd.org -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- FreeBSD 2.x FAQ maintainer -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-