phc-discussions - Re: [PHC] Password Hashing done wrong on CISCO IOS

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Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2013 22:42:46 +0000
From: "Poul-Henning Kamp" <phk@....freebsd.dk>
To: discussions@...sword-hashing.net, Marsh Ray <maray@...rosoft.com>
Subject: Re: [PHC] Password Hashing done wrong on CISCO IOS

In message <218AE73F98E99C4C98AF7D5166AA798E0906BEA8@...EX14MBXC286.redmond.cor
p.microsoft.com>, Marsh Ray writes:

>Implementation errors happen to *everyone*, even folks who know tons about 
>crypto. In practice, it seems that some functions are more prone to subtle 
>implementation errors than others.

Somebody substituted their own (bad) judgement over the (alleged
to exist) (better) design.

That is not a "subtle implementation error", that is a two failures
of management:

The first failure is that the substitution happened on a so security
critical algorithm without any management control mechanism catching
it.

The second failure is that Q/A failed to detect it too, because
they did not test such a security critical algorithm against the
(alleged to exist) design.

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk@...eBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.