Secure RPC authentication (SRA) for TELNET and FTP
David R. Safford, David K. Hess, Douglas Lee Schales · 1993
TELNET and FTP currently exchange user authentication (passwords) in plain text, which is easily eavesdropped. Several techniques, such as Kerberos and SPX, have been proposed in draft RFCs to implement secure authentication. These techniques, however, have several drawbacks, including technical complexity, poor vendor support, and organizational problems. This paper presents SRA, a very simple and tested technique based on Secure RPC which, while certainly not as strong as RSA, is reasonably strong, fast, and trivial to implement immediately for both inter and intradomain communication. 2. Background TELNET and FTP currently pass the user authentication across the network in the form of plaintext passwords. These passwords can trivially be eavesdropped with such simple tools as etherfind and tcpdump. During intrusions at Texas A&M University in August 1992, significant amounts of the tools used by the crackers were captured. They had much better tools than simple ones such as these,...