RE: Re: ssh trojaned

From: Joe Harrison (list-generalat_private)
Date: Sat Aug 03 2002 - 01:28:59 PDT

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    > -----Original Message-----
    > From: wozzat_private [mailto:wozzat_private]
    > To: Eirik Seim
    >
    > Of course, verifying checksums does you no good if the checksums
    > have been replaced along with the binary.  Be sure to aquire your
    > checksums from some other, presumably safe, location.
    >
    > On Thu, 1 Aug 2002 22:41:39 +0200 (CEST), Eirik Seim
    > <defaultat_private> wrote:
    >
    > >
    > >Oh, and the guys that inserted the trojan might easily had access to more
    > >on the same ftp site, and subsequently also its mirrors.  If you don't
    > >usually verify checksums, now is a great time to start doing so.
    
    This seems to me to be an important point.
    
    A couple weeks ago I did download and install openssh-3.4p1.tar.gz from a
    mirror. When I examined its GPG signature it checked out fine, I mean fine
    insofar that GPG considered that the signature hash did correctly match the
    download file.
    
    However, the only assurance I had at that point is that the download had
    indeed been signed by some unknown key. When I located this key on a public
    keyserver it claimed to belong to a particular individual, although this
    person was someone I never heard of before. There were no "web of trust"
    signatures on the key. I emailed the address indicated by the keyserver and
    I got a response from this guy like "yes you have a valid tarball, please
    stop worrying."
    
    At that point I had spent too much time on this so I made a judgement on the
    balance of probabilities, gave up, and installed the thing. But I still
    don't feel that I understand how to get a trusted (in the cryptographic
    sense) authoritative signing key for OpenSSH - which ultimately means that
    it's pointless to check download signatures. Considering that over the last
    few days we have seen how absolutely crucial it is to do this check I would
    suggest there is a problem here that needs to be solved.
    
    Joe
    



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