North American Network Operators Group

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Re: key change for TCP-MD5

  • From: Richard A Steenbergen
  • Date: Wed Jun 21 21:27:24 2006

On Wed, Jun 21, 2006 at 05:55:21PM -0700, Randy Bush wrote:
> 
> when low-hanging fruit is unavailable, or when they see a
> really cool way to exploit the higher fruit, it would be
> prudent to have done something about it.  who cares about
> openly recursive dns servers?  there are easier ways to
> crack the host.  oops!

There is a fine line between being dilligent about security, and wasting 
your time trying to solve problems that don't exist, which I think has 
been crossed in the discussion.

Not to venture too far away from facts and into the realm of cute 
soundbites and quotable one-liners about lions and fruit, but let me 
propose what I think is a good one:

If the bad guys have copies of your MD5 passwords, then you have way 
bigger problems than the bad guys having copies of your MD5 passwords.

I have yet to hear a reasonable counter-argument to this. If there is one 
out there that had not yet been made then by all means now is the time to 
make it. Otherwise, you would really be better served by devoting your 
time and energy into solving real problems. If you're running low on real 
problems to solve, I would be happy to send you some of mine. :)

-- 
Richard A Steenbergen <[email protected]>       http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)