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RE: Safety of pre-shared keys? (Re: Reliable delete notifies)



The authenticity requirement is always equally or more difficult to satisfy
than the confidentiality requirement so the point is moot.

Andrew
--------------------------------------
Beauty with out truth is insubstantial.
Truth without beauty is unbearable.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-ipsec@lists.tislabs.com
> [mailto:owner-ipsec@lists.tislabs.com]On Behalf Of Chris Trobridge
> Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2000 12:33 PM
> To: ipsec
> Subject: RE: Safety of pre-shared keys? (Re: Reliable delete notifies)
>
>
> Isn't the biggest difference that whilst you need to ensure
> that the peer
> receives the correct self-signed public key out-of-band (authenticity
> requirement), if a secret key is used then there is an additional
> confidentiality requirement.
>
> A self-signed certicate also includes an implicit integrity
> check which is
> also important.
>
> This all means that handling of self-signed certificates is much less
> onerous than pre-shared secert keys.
>
> Chris
>
> > Note that the vulnerabilities of pre-shared key that you refer to
> > only apply to the case of a WEAK KEY (such as a
> password-derived key).
> > It says nothing about the security of the pre-shared mode (main
> > or agressive) when using a strong key.
> > In such a case there is no security problem!
> > (There is always a security problem if you do not choose your keys
> > correctly or you do not know how to manage them securely).
> >
> > In any case preshared mode (main or aggressive) was NOT
> designed to be
> > used with passwords. A password-based protocol needs a
> > specialized design
> > (either a new mode for IKE or the proposals of ipsra).
> >
> > Hugo
>



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