🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Aug17.041338.4472@news.iastate.edu> john@iastate.edu (John Hascall) writes:

   rouilj@dl5000.bc.edu (John P. Rouillard) writes:
   }>   Why don't I trust root? I don't know you. And, on the majority of UNIX
   }>   machines it is fairly simple for any user to become root.

   }Well, how simple it is depends on the system. Currently I have systems
   }that can be rebooted into root mode.  However, when that is done, the
   }experimental rfc931 server (no, it is not available for public access
   }or use yet) that runs on that machine loses its encryption key. Thus
   }by getting an rfc931 identifier that says "rouilj" I can tell you
   }immediately that it isn't a valid identifier since there was no way
   }you should be able to get an unencrypted identifier out of one of my
   }properly operating servers.  Thus there is a high degree of
   }probability that that letter was forged.

   If I were the user who booted into root mode I would also fire up
   a simple daemon on the rfc931 port which always answered every
   request with "SDdf;sadf344sagfarg" (or whatever identifier I had
   seen myself recently in mail to me).

Sigh, that's the problem with simple examples. In reality, you would
throw a timestamp in with the user ID that would provide a check
on the timestamps on the message itself.  In additition a random
salt of a length sufficient to make known text attacks
on the encrypted string difficult should be put on the front of the
unencrypted string and the string encrypted with des in CBC mode.

Hopefully that's a better explanation.

-- John