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Modern History of Cryptography Techniques
Heather writes "The encryption scheme you rely on today might be full of holes just a few years down the road. Learn how far we've come in the last few decades, and why your apps need to be ready for change. This article builds on a previous article about Enigma, Germany's WWII-era encryption system."
The big problem with OpenSSH right now is that it doesn't protect against brute force password attacks good enough.
To protect against brute force, they tell you to go use a program called "bfd" and that must use a firewall called "APF".
It modifies your firewall on the fly, not a good thing to be doing to a remotely located server.
If you have a server at a colo and it already has a firewall setup, you really don't want to change it *after* you already have customers using your server because it's easy to lock them and you out.
So it's a patch at best.
And how many server owners are really good enough to install a new firewall and this bfd thing?
Installing a new updated version of OpenSSH would be easier. In most cases it's just a simple RPM install.
The OpenSSH people suggest that you force your users to go against human nature and pick better passwords. We all know that doesn't work because the more complicated the password, the more people forget and the more calls you get in the middle of the night.
So do you think the OpenSSH people would be more human related and start using passphrases? NOPE!
There's some real concerns for OpenSSH, it's developers intentions towards *real* security with human nature factored in.
There are a lot of servers using it as their main defense.
So what will make the developers wake up?