Hi, all!

I'm ready to commit secure remote passwords and related changes to svn.
But before I'd like to know your mind regarding default settings for
secure plugins. SRP provides a very reliable way to authenticate user by
password, being resistant to a lot of attacks, including man in the
middle, not requiring at the same time any initial key exchange.
Certainly user with password should be added to security database.

>From security POV it's absolutely clear that we should use SRP as
default authentication plugin and should not mention legacy
authentication in default list of plugins on server. (This means that
people must upgrade clients, but this does not look like too great
evil). More problems with client, specially on windows. People love to
copy it as single file fbclient.dll. From this POV old authentication
method must be present on client - or people can't connect to old
servers. To avoid need of firebird.conf on client (what percent of users
know that they CAN have such file at client?) legacy auth code must be
set in defaults list on it. No tech problems - we can list some auth
plugins (like AuthClient=Srp,Win_Sspi,Legacy), but here security problem
comes. User will not know, does he work with new server (using secure
channel) or with old one (insecure channel). And having it in default
does not look good for me.

Looks like we have to choose from 2 bad choices... Suggestions, please.

Alex.


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