[ILUG] SSH dictionary attacks.

[Colm MacCarthaigh]

On Wed, Aug 23, 2006 at 01:38:13PM +0100, Gavin McCullagh wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Aug 2006, Aine Douglas wrote:
> 
> > I'm really interested in trying out Colm's portknocking idea... that
> > has huge possibilities.
> 
> It could be generalised such that you could use a sequence of knocks on
> different ports mapped to keystrokes.  A sort of "port password" sent
> unencrypted across the network.

And it would be equally prone to dictionary attack, and a zillion times
more prone to trivial packet sniffing attack. It only works because of
its relative obscurity.

Portnocking requires port-reachability to a series of ports, which you
may or may not get through some site firewall, but wouldn't it just be
easier to run ssh on a port other than 22?

Less overhead, less complex, same result.

-- 
Colm MacCárthaigh                        Public Key: colm+pgp at stdlib.net