Hi Kyle,
Thanks, I was wondering about the folloing scenario. I have a single
public key for all apps. Hoever no apps knows the pub key, and all i
do is SSH port forwarding. DOes this have any significant problems?

Thanks,
Sudharsan

On 6/6/06, Kyle Hamilton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Every application has its opportunity to be stupid and reveal the
private key.  This is one reason that wildcard certificates are
generally frowned on as a "worse practice" -- any single one of the
softwares that use the private key can reveal it.  (The mantra of
security is: "You have to succeed every time.  The attacker only has
to succeed once.")

There's another issue: It makes more sense to keep one copy of the
private key on the system, with one passphrase that multiple
applications share.  (I may be in the minority with this thinking...)
The reason why is that multiple copies of the private key, encrypted
with different passphrases, can be subjected to a "differential
ciphertext" attack.

(The other alternative is to give multiple applications different
copies of the key and different passphrases.  This isn't, in my view,
optimal, because if the passphrase for any software, and the location
of its key file -- or the enencrypted private key itself -- is
revealed by any software, the key is compromised regardless.)

But there is no technical reason it cannot be done.

-Kyle H

On 6/5/06, Sudharsan Rangarajan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi all,
> I am just wondering if i could have multiple applications on a end
> host share the same public key. Can this cause a pbm in the sense
> there are more applications to target and a stupid one can reveal the
> private key?
> Or can there be other attacks posssible
>
> Thanks,
> Sudharsan
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