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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!solace!eru.mt.luth.se!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!cs.utexas.edu!news.sprintlink.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!HiWAAY.net!usenet From: jim@bokler.com (James Moore) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,sci.crypt Subject: Re: FreeBSD SRA & IDEA Telnet patch Date: Sun, 22 Sep 1996 08:34:59 GMT Organization: HiWAAY Information Services Lines: 29 Message-ID: <3244f939.9285274@news.hiwaay.net> References: <nzUwgOa@quack.kfu.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: max14-147.hiwaay.net X-Newsreader: Forte Agent .99e/32.227 Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:27699 sci.crypt:49855 Uh, what's SRA? Are there any sources which describe how it works? Thanks, James Moore On Thu, 19 Sep 1996 23:52:23 UTC, nsayer@quack.kfu.com (Nick Sayer) wrote: <<<stuff deleted>>> >To recap, SRA is an authentication method invented by Dave Safford >when he was at Texas A&M. It is based loosely on Secure RPC >and does not require any key management. It is the world's easiest >authentication/encryption scheme since using it is no different than >using ordinary telnet, yet provides strong enough encryption that >sniffers would be hard pressed indeed to get you (it is, however, >vulnerable to monkey-in-the-middle. Being the monkey between two >arbitrary Internet sites is far, far more complicated and unlikely than >someone just sniffing, though). > >SRA is only an authentication mechanism, but as a side effect, it can >generate a common DES or IDEA encryption key to be used by the >appropriate encryption modules. After all, what's the point of performing >encrypted authentication if someone can watch you use 'su'? > >-- >Nick Sayer <nsayer@quack.kfu.com> | "[The Democrats] turned the >N6QQQ @ N0ARY.#NORCAL.CA.USA.NOAM | safety net into a hammock." >+1 408 249 9630, log in as 'guest' | >URL: http://www.kfu.com/~nsayer/ | -- Phil Graham