Re: [tlug] SSH Issues

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Edward Middleton writes:

 > I guess the question is whether it is worth using SSL at all in
 > situations where self signed certificates are used.  If you considering
 > that a standard SSL certificate cost about $20 a year, and just running
 > SSL requires significantly more system resources the benefits of running
 > a non-authenticated server seem pretty minimal.

Of course.  However, as Curt[1] correctly points out (and I missed his
meaning), it's not just a matter of *you* running an authenticated
server, it's a matter of me checking the certs and paying attention to
warning from the TLS layer.

Look, I work in a university.  My student rosters and grade dbs are
kept encrypted on removable media, and in the office accessed only on
a machine which rejects incoming connections on all ports, including
X11.  I'd be deep in legal shit if they got out, and I'm not even
going to bother worrying about the technical details of accessing them
by SSH, it's no less convenient this way.  Similarly, I have reported
several minor issues with certs or even logout pages that glitched to
my bank.  You betcha I care!

OTOH, my belief is that the students are quite capable (both morally
and possibly technically[2]) of sniffing the ethernets, but not of
suborning routers.  Maybe some of the faculty and definitely the staff
(ie, when debugging network problems or looking for major policy
violations like use of Winny), too.  For my personal stuff (which
includes minor violations of University rules like submitting bugs to
various trackers for projects that have nothing to do with my day
job), I'm willing to rely on that belief.

If you're wondering about *this* message, I plan to claim it's an
economist's analysis of security issues as an educational service to a
community organization. ;-)

OTOH, none of this stuff is sensitive outside the University, and the
PHBs are very unlikely to see it.  Any University members who do are
likely to be sympathetic.  So I really do want a simple encrypted
tunnel past the firewall, and that's about it.  Ie, it's just the
"don't tell" part of the Clinton Doctrine on Gays in the Military.  I
am just not going to bother with certs in general.


Footnotes: 
[1]  You referred to this, IIRC, but not as forcefully as Curt.  If my
Alzheimer's is getting the better of me, my apologies. ;-)

[2]  Eg, although our wired nets are on switches, not hubs, which
should be reasonably safe, the other day I was surprised to discover I
was connected via an open wireless network; for some reason my iBook
"forgot" the preferred setting to the closed network in my office,
maybe it glitched.