Re: Passphrases in or out

> Steve Petri writes:
> 
> So it seems that the client code will come up with a (high entropy) random
> number, and encrypt it with the Server's public key.  Is that correct?

This is the standard RSA server auth key exchange.

> Is there a provision in the proposal to deny service to an account which
> is being dictionary attacked directly, or will this be left up to 
> the implementation?

Protocols only specify the messages sent over the wire.  The
vulnerability to dictionary attacks, unfortunately, is independent of
this -- active on-line attacks, where the server is actually being
probed, -can- be detected by the server implementation, but such an
implementation requirement is outside the scope of a protocol
standard; off-line attacks where protocol messages are eavesdropped
and then used to determine the key in a separate computation, much as
brute-force key searches are done with known-plaintext attacks, are
completely separated from both protocol specifications as well as
implementation specifications.

-bsy

--------
Bennet S. Yee		Phone: +1 619 534 4614	    Email: bsy@cs.ucsd.edu

Web:	http://www-cse.ucsd.edu/users/bsy/
USPS:	Dept of Comp Sci and Eng, 0114, UC San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0114

Received on Monday, 5 August 1996 20:35:00 UTC