Microsoft announces new ways to bypass security controls

Mon Sep 15 15:32:05 UTC 2003

Speaking on Deep Background, the Press Secretary whispered:
> 
> 
> 
> We see that even when we offer POP with SSL and SMTP AUTH with SSL, few 
> customers wind up using it. That there are continuing problems with the 
> commercial certificate infrastructure doesn't help matters.
> 
> Examples of the problems:
> 
> 1. Eudora contains root certificates only for Verisign and Thawte, and uses 
> its own root certificate store, whereas Microsoft client tools (for all 
> their other weaknesses) include a much broader array of root certificates. 
> If you want to buy certs from someone other than Verisign (since they own 
> Thawte) you have to talk users through integrating other root certs (or 
> your cert) into their copies of Eudora. Or just use a private CA and talk 
> your customers through importing the root cert from your private CA.

While the approval process for other certs in Eudora is obscure,
it at least works. I ran into a brick wall trying to get Infernal
Exploder for the Mac to accept same; the Windows version was not
a problem.

> 2. SSL incompatabilities: Eudora changed their method of negotiation with 
> Eudora 5.2 and later. The result is an inability to negotiate TLS with 
> Sendmail/Openssl. A configuration parameter in Eudora gets it to go back to 
> the "old way" in their code, which works fine. But now we're talking about 
> another case of talking an end user through a configuration. Might be OK 
> for a corporate setting, but it gets pretty problematic for the ISP.

Note Eudora 6.0 has a public configuration setting for the flavor
of SSL.[1] Yes, it should be automagic but "the nice thing about
standards in this industry..." applies lots of places...

> We've clearly got the mechanisms to allow encryption on the most important 
> of the protocols. However the infrastructure and compatability issues make 
> them more difficult to employ than should be the case.
> 
> That these problems show up at networking conferences (IETF, NANOG, etc.), 
> though, really points to a larger problem. If network research, engineering 
> and operations folks can't manage to get encryption deployed for 
> themselves, how likely is it that end customers will use them?

WhatHeSaid. 

We really need to do a better job of begging/cajoling/requiring encryption. I
know one ISP that requires POP/SMTP be on SSL unless you're on their dialup,
and I've heard Worldnet does too. [true?] The rest?

[1] At least in the Mac version I can lay hands on..

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