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Re: RFA: Encrypting auth info

From: Justin Erenkrantz <justin_at_erenkrantz.com>
Date: 2005-02-16 17:14:47 CET

--On Wednesday, February 16, 2005 5:00 PM +0100 "Branko ?ibej" <brane@xbc.nu>
wrote:

> Why? I know I said "encrypt the password", but what I really mean is "handle
> sensitive data", and nobody should know or care about what the
> implementation does. Right now we face the situation that it's not even
> obvious from the code /which/ data are sensitive.
>
> Why should the average user have to worry about encrypting their
> ~/.subversion/auth, if the package maintainer can do it provided we give
> them the right hooks (which they currently don't have)?

Sure we do. We can add platform-specific auth providers 'til the cows come
home. In fact, we could add one 'encrypting' provider which has a bunch of
platform-specific #ifdef's if we think that's better. The drawback of a
shared provider means that we'd jeopardize WC portability. So in fact, yes, I
think each crypto-providing auth provider needs to be distinct with its own
namespace under ~/.subversion/auth/.

I feel the details of the crypto engine need not leak from the auth provider.
And, I'm against providing a fake veneer of security - such as claiming ROT-13
provides the same degree of security as Win32's special CryptoAPI.

> And because we don't have this mechanism in our API, other clients
> (TortoiseSVN is an example here) aren't sharing auth info with the
> command-line client.

I think it says more about those clients than it does our design. -- justin

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Received on Wed Feb 16 17:17:53 2005

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