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I meant to say that the filenames were easily guessable after the random strings were exposed by 'ps'. Relying on unpredictable strings works fine, so long as
by rst 16y ago
I meant to say that the filenames were easily guessable after the random strings were exposed by 'ps'.
Relying on unpredictable strings works fine, so long as you keep them away from prying eyes. But that requires attention to detail, and can get harder over time (witness, say, Firesheep, which made it a whole lot easier to hide "secret" login cookies than it used to be).
- tptacek 16y agoCan I just say that "secrets" sent over bare HTTP aren't secret, and that even before Firesheep, nobody really thought they were hard to find? I love what Firesheep did to popularize that problem, but it was an old, very widely-exploited problem.
- rst 16y agoSure, but Firesheep made it possible to exploit it without even "script-kiddie" level skills. No easier in principle, perhaps, but easier in practice.
- gfodor 16y agoThe point is the type of security scenario being talked about here is wildly different than the one made simpler to exploit by Firesheep. This was not security through obscurity. If your servers are configured correctly, unguessible filenames are just fine from a security perspective, at least as secure as passwords.