bugtraq - stick with "anonymous" or "authenticated" when describing attacks

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Message-ID: <6.0.1.1.0.20041222132649.02c6c4e8@mail.stdnet.com>
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 13:39:52 -0600
From: "Jonathan G. Lampe" <jonathan.lampe@...ndardnetworks.com>
To: Adam Shostack <adam@...eport.org>,
	"D. J. Bernstein" <djb@...yp.to>
Cc: bugtraq@...urityfocus.com
Subject: stick with "anonymous" or "authenticated" when describing
  attacks

At 11:27 AM 12/22/2004, Adam Shostack wrote:
>I've long advocated 'credentialed' to refer to attacks where a user of
>the system can execute the attack, and 'anonymous' or
>'non-credentialed' to refer to refer to attacks on servers, such as
>httpd, ftpd, or named.

The word "authenticated" already has the meaning of what I think you were 
trying to express with "credentialed"; "authenticated" means that a user 
has already presented credentials of some kind (username, password, PIN, 
key, cert, token, etc.), that those credentials were accepted and that the 
user enjoyed a different level of privilege than mere "anonymous" users.

The term "credentialed" suggests that a user has been issued credentials of 
some kind, but that he/she may or may not have used them to authenticate to 
a restricted resource.  (The term "credentialed" is similar to the word 
"ticketed".)

So...I'd stick with "anonymous" or "authenticated" when describing attacks 
on servers.

-jgl

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