MD5 passwords possible with Kerberos?

Ken Hornstein kenh at cmf.nrl.navy.mil
Mon Feb 11 01:00:27 EST 2002


>(6) Salts have some interesting properties.  In Unix, the salt is generally
>	regarded as a "secret", which can be securely commmunicated to
>	the login application.  In Kerberos, the salt is public
>	information.  Worse yet, the client doesn't generally have any
>	good way to securely acquire the salt, which means an active
>	attacker can supply bogus salt.  This means the active attacker
>	can very likely dramatically simplify a dictionary attack by
>	forcing clients to use one chosen salt.

I think I'm missing some piece of the puzzle here.  The default V5 salt
is the complete principal name ... which a client already knows.  But even
if you manage to spoof the AS_REP and fool the client into using another
salt ... he's just decrypting data on his end.  How does that help you?

(And won't KRB-ERROR checksums prevent this attack as well?)

--Ken



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