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Fahad Sadah:
Kerberos authentication. Easier than pubkeys, and more secure.
i don't know about that.
- - critical vulnerabilities are frequently discovered in the MIT Kerberos software, while SSH has had very few serious security issues, and none recently.
- - both use a secure protocol with crypto which is currently unbreakable. there is a possible issue when using SSH with CBC mode ciphers, but this is fixed by using CTR mode ciphers instead.
- - Kerberos only works with password authentication, meaning anyone can log into any account if they know the password; for example, because someone accidentally typed their password into IRC, or wrote it down somewhere. strong password policy requires restrictions on password contents (length, character types, etc) that encourage users to write them down (especially when you have a lot of non-technical users, like us)
- - conversely, it is very difficult to accidentally paste a private key somewhere, and it's impossible to guess. even if it was leaked, the user would also have to leak the passphrase.
- - once you've generated a public key, it is no harder to use than a password. in fact, since you never have to change it, or remember it, or use a different one for each site, it's likely to be a lot easier.
while Kerberos is not insecure /per se/, i've considered deploying it in the past, and it seems like it would reduce the security of the Toolserver compared to public key authentication. (still, if you think password authentication is more secure than public key, i'd be interested to hear why.)
- river.