"Greg A. Woods" wrote:
>
> > > But the real culprit gets away. This wouldn't happen with SSH.
> >
> > The culprit gets away no matter what. There's nothing I can do to
> > them even if I find out which email address is really associated
> > with the attack.
>
> No, with SSH the culprit cannot "get away". You've got a finger
> pointing right at them, and a mound of evidence to show what they did,
> when, and how. I.e. you have a counter-threat, and possibly one that's
> far more powerful than the threat they posed to you earlier.
Correction, Greg. In the SSH scenario, Justin has a finger pointing
right at the account used, not the culprit per se. In some cases,
this makes very little difference, and I have the impression that
you function in those cases.
Specifically, what is Justin to do when he finds, say,
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(aka [EMAIL PROTECTED]) was behind some exploit? It's far more work
than it's worth for him to come after me legally (IIRC, he's Canadian).
He can revoke my access and inform my ISP, who may well cancel my
account. There are plenty of other places I can get an account if
I want to come back and taunt him a second time.
If he were willing to take legal action, then it would matter that
he had a finger pointing to me. If he had some sort of face-to-face
link with developers, he could make sure I never got access again.
In those cases, it would be very useful to have such accountability.
Jon Bentley had a Programming Pearls column with wise sayings from
the field (two, actually). One was "Never test an error condition
you're not prepared to handle." In this case, Justin, using the best
available security procedures, could perhaps find out that the culprit
is [EMAIL PROTECTED], rather than [EMAIL PROTECTED] What is he going
to do about that information? What if, after that, he gets a request
for access from [EMAIL PROTECTED] (or whatever account name I got)?
So, in Justin's case (and obviously not in Greg's), the additional
accountability from SSH is not that important, and the barrier it
presents is, in Justin's opinion, a more serious problem.
Again, if somebody would like to change Mac and Wintel CVS clients
to use SSH, presumably protocol 2, that would be very useful. Until
it happens, SSH is going to be a problem for people not working off
Unix platforms. As long as that is the case, people like Justin have
to make some hard decisions as to what policy will work best.
--
David H. Thornley Software Engineer
at CES International, Inc.: [EMAIL PROTECTED] or (763)-694-2556
at home: (612)-623-0552 or [EMAIL PROTECTED] or
http://www.visi.com/~thornley/david/
