If you want to get silly you could always use certificates with RDP, but
why the hassle. 

Z

Edward E. Ziots
Network Engineer
Lifespan Organization
MCSE,MCSA,MCP,Security+,Network+,CCA
Phone: 401-639-3505

-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Scott [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2008 5:34 PM
To: NT System Admin Issues
Subject: Re: Public TS - opinions?

On Tue, Apr 1, 2008 at 5:09 PM,  <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't RDP 128 bit encrypted ...

  Gah.  Encryption isn't like horsepower.  Comparing key sizes doesn't
tell you how secure something is.  And you can't make something secure
just by sprinkling a little cryptology on it.

  In particular, the size of the session key doesn't matter when
there's no host authentication at all, and user authentication is done
via a password that's probably got about 10 to 20 bits of entropy if
you're lucky.  And is probably the user's last name if you're not.
Google "man in the middle attack" for just one scenario.

  But even then, I'd be a lot more worried about the end-points.  Most
compromises have come from the end-points, not the transport.  We're
talking about allowing connections from unknown, untrusted, arbitrary
clients.  Most of which probably already have some kind of malware on
them.  Keystroke loggers would be especially scary.  And can the
secondary channels that RDP uses for things like remote printing act
as a conduit for malware to the server?

> 6.       Token, 3rd party authentication

  Aren't two-factor authentication products also rather expensive?
Certainly more-so than, say, OpenVPN, or even the IPsec stuff built-in
to Windows, no?

  That said, the rest of your recommendations are certainly good; I
just think that's not where the weaknesses lie.

-- Ben

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