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At 11:53 AM -0500 1/6/04, Rich Salz wrote:
>I know about digest-auth. Yes, it sends a hash (not encrypted
>password) rather than the plaintext. But it sends it every time
>which they admit isn't terribly secure, it is subject to dictionary
>attacks (with new data every time the nonce expires), and it uses
>the deprecated MD-5 as opposed to SHA-1. It also doesn't *seem* (in
>my quick test) to be supported by IE, which knocks out a large part
>of the net. (Always a tip-off when folks use the phrase "supported
>by modern browsers," I've done it myself.:)
Are you really sure about IE? According to
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/prodtechnol/windowsserver2003/proddocs/standard/sec_auth_websiteauth.asp
IIS definitely supports it, and that page also says IE 5 or later
works with it. Possibly it depends on which version and platform of
IE we're talking about.
I think it's secure enough for most uses that don't require full SSL.
After all, most sites do use SSL for credit card info and similar
sensitive information.
>Good security requires state. Bad security leaves your login
>passwords lying around. Using a cookie to maintain a timed-out login
>session seems the best way to do good and avoid bad.
Browsers can timeout passwords. This is an option in Mozilla, at
least 1.3 and later, and probably other browsers. Security wise this
is the right place to put it since it allows the user to choose the
security policy that's appropriate for them. They can select much
stricter policies than the sites recommend up to an including
requiring a master password each time the it's needed (probably too
extreme). I agree there's no reason the login password should be
lying around after a specified timeout period, but the timeout period
should be under the control of the client, not the server. Today many
servers set essentially unlimited timeouts.
--
Elliotte Rusty Harold
elharo@metalab.unc.edu
Effective XML (Addison-Wesley, 2003)
http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/effectivexml
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0321150406/ref%3Dnosim/cafeaulaitA
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