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Jerry Falwell Claims Name is Trademarked
GigsVT writes: "The Lynchburg News And Advance of Virginia reports that Rev. Jerry Falwell is seeking a permanant injunction against the holder of www.jerryfalwell.com The catch is that he is arguing that his name is a valuable brand, in effect, he is arguing that he is selling religion. There are also some other interesting tidbits, such as the rules of jurisdiction, based on whether a site is interactive or not. Falwell has also sent lawyers to Geneva to appeal to the WIPO, their requests were denied."
The inner workings of the undocumented pwdencrypt() hash function in mysql have been revealed in a paper by security researcher David Litchfield of Next Generation Security Software (NGSS).
pwdencrypt() creates the user's password hash, which is stored in the main database. Litchfield begins by observing that when it's applied to the same input (foo), it will produce different hashes at different times, from which he reckons, assuming the worst, that the salt must be time sensitive in some way. Salting is normally done to prevent collisions and to strengthen hashes against dictionary attacks.
In other words, if a hash weren't salted, it would be easy to encrypt dictionary words using numerous hash functions and run the hashes against ones found in someone else's pass file. Obviously, the less we can determine about how the salt is generated, the stronger the hash becomes.
Unfortunately, we now know from Litchfield's simple experiment that mysql is using some manner of time-dependent scheme for salt generation. That's more than we ought to know, as we'll see.
His next observation is that the time function does not result in a truly random number, which is further bad news.
"The time () C function is called and used as a seed passed to the srand() function. srand() sets a start point to be used for producing a series of (pseudo) random numbers. Once srand is seeded the rand() function is called to produce a pseudo random number. This number is an integer; however mysql converts this to a short and sets it aside. Let's call this number SN1. The rand() function is called again producing another pseudo random integer which, again, is converted into a short. Let's call this number SN2. SN1 and SN2 are joined to produce an integer SN1:SN2 to produce a salt. This salt is then used to obscure the password."
The user's password is converted to unicode with the salt tacked on the end, and this is used to produce a hash with SHA. The same salt is added to the password when a user attempts to log in, and the resulting hash is compared to the one on record. If they match, access is granted.
Unfortunately, Litchfield says, "the password is then converted to its upper case form, the [same] salt tacked onto the end and another SHA hash is produced."
The hash is produced twice, against the case-sensitive password and again against the uppercase form. The uppercase 'version' is obviously a good deal easier to crack; and once we know it, finding the case-sensitive version is child's play. Indeed, there's little point in using case-sensitive passwords on your system if the crypto scheme is going to create hashes from the uppercase version, using the same salt, and then store them. Case-sensitive passwords are an improvement only so long as we're kept in the dark about their uppercase companions.
So with that in mind Litchfield ends his paper with a little command-line app which will run a dictionary attack to find the uppercase password for you. The rest of it, any fool can handle.
Thus open source fails again.
How are things in the civilized world? You probably don't know who I am. That's
;).
/. since 7/8/02
okay. I'm here to inform you of my mission, what I've found, and what I hope to
teach all of you.
I work for the United Christians Food for Poor Kids Foundation, and let me tell
you, there's a lot of poor kids in Afghanistan. As in most countries in the
Middle East, most people are unemployed, and therefore poor. And where there's a
lot of poor people, UCFPKF is needed.
UCFPKF always has the latest in technology. In this instance, we had access to
some Pentium 4's(r) 2GHz. Obviously, we needed an operating system that could
handle the power of Intel's beast. Unfortunately, we didn't have any computer
experts on hand up to the task, so it was going to be trial and error.
We'd heard good things about Linux and its "ACL's". Little did we know of its
incompatibility with modern hardware. It didn't even support Token Ring
networking, the newest form of Ethernet(r), which we require to always keep
in contact between bases. Also, it didn't seem to use SSE optimizations, which
when processing food amounts, are also very important. Also, there were
homo-erotic implications in the structure of Linux, which is strictly
unallowable in a Christian organization such as ours.
The next obvious step was to install Windows. We hesitated because we knew that
it was common knowledge that Windows crashed incessantly. Our experience was
less than stellar. It also didn't support Token Ring networking. Security is
important in this region because many people try to steal food, but "Windows
2000" (which I hear didn't even come out in 2000) doesn't even allow you to
have seperate permissions. Once again, the SSE optimizations were not used.
I was in a situation that seemed impossible. The two most famous operating
systems had failed me. I walked around the base in a dazed stupor. What was I
going to do for our ultra-important network? A boy saw me pouting and sighing,
and asked me what was wrong. I said nothing, but we exchanged names, and little
did I know, that young Junis had a gift for computers.
Junis saw me the next day, slaving away at the sparse terminal that "Windows
2000" makes you type in. He asked what I was doing with that primitive OS. I
laughed and told him that I was doing inventory. He ran to his village, into his
hut, and pulled out a box I had never seen before. The box said "SCO Xenix" the
front. I had never seen or heard of this Xenix before. But I soon learned that
Junis was a computer genius.
All we had to do was put the Xenix CD into the computer, and everything worked
like magic (not the devil's magic... good magic:) ). Our Token Ring network
integrated flawlessly with it. And it even used SSE optimizations. Well, me and
Junis are now on a new mission. We're spreading the word. It might not be the
word of the lord, but then again, maybe it is
SCO Xenix: The Unix of Tomorrow.
Janet Milman
Network Administrator, UCFPKF
Afghanistan base
- Trolling