full-disclosure - Re: Please help to spam abryson@...efocus.com.

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Message-Id: <200607241754.k6OHsYtd012673@turing-police.cc.vt.edu>
Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 13:54:34 -0400
From: Valdis.Kletnieks@...edu
To: Paul Schmehl <pauls@...allas.edu>
Cc: Alice Bryson <abryson@...efocus.com>,
	Full Disclosure <full-disclosure@...ts.grok.org.uk>
Subject: Re: Please help to spam abryson@...efocus.com.

On Mon, 24 Jul 2006 11:59:34 CDT, Paul Schmehl said:

> What does that prove?
> 
> telnet mail.40networks.com 25
> Trying 64.114.199.200...
> Connected to mail.40networks.com.
> Escape character is '^]'.
> 220 40networks.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.13.1/8.13.1; Mon, 24 Jul 2006 
> 09:45:17 -0700
> EHLO utdallas.edu

Paul, Paul, Paul... You *really* need to pay attention.

Yes, you can do the whole telnet thing.  That wasn't what she said.

What she *said* was that *if* I were to mail her a large random number,
like this:

% dd if=/dev/urandom bs=16 count=16 2> /dev/null | md5sum
63cbd14c2612b7cbc7b7ce6d0e0b7fcb  -

that she would be able to repeat that number back to me - proving that
she's at least sufficiently Alice that she can read Alice's mail and
respond to it.

Strictly speaking, it doesn't prove she's Alice - but it proves she's
in control of that e-mail address.  Usually that's considered "close
enough", as demonstrated by all the mailing list software that considers
"reply to this random cookie/link/whatever to confirm your subscription"
(which is exactly this same "proof of pseudo-identity"...)

Yes, she could have hijacked the real Alice's e-mail account - but at that
point, Alice has bigger problems already....

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