OpenSSH 5.0 released
Posted Apr 7, 2008 13:25 UTC (Mon) by
gmaxwell (subscriber, #30048)
In reply to:
OpenSSH 5.0 released by djm
Parent article:
OpenSSH 5.0 released
SRP has lots of scary patents surrounding it.
My understanding is that Stanford University has granted a
royalty free license to the basic form of SRP as described in RFC-2945. Stanford has been pretty loudly beating "it's free! it's free!" drum. ... and at least some groups seem to have bought into these claims... For example, GNUTLS includes SRP and I'd expect them to be somewhat patent paranoid.
While I wouldn't be at all surprised to discover that Stanford's claims are inaccurate, it sure would be nice to have a good reference on the patent problems. Any suggestions?
The lack of an automatic PKI in SSH is a serious impediment to security in the real world. While OpenSSH provides all the tools needed for a skilled user to be secure, real users simply do not understand or use them. MITM attacks against SSH work in the real world, not only against unskilled users but against technically competent ones as well. The classic solutions to this class of problems are too centralized, too complex, or simply too labor-intense to address SSH's needs.
In my opinion SRP would result in too large an increase in
effective security to be ignored. Whatever patent concerns exist need to be sorted out, because the current state of affairs is harmful to the public.
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