Wireless Network Key

[Smoot Carl-Mitchell]

On Wed, 2008-08-06 at 11:43 -0400, Mark Haney wrote:

> Sure those keys are encrypted, and exactly how long do you think it 
> would take to crack that encrypted file?  Not long.  The point is, if 
> the system is compromised with that user account, it being Ubuntu, they 
> can SUDO into root and get the keys.  That's my point.  It doesn't 
> matter in this case.  Access to a regular user account in Ubuntu gets 
> you root access much easier than if it's say Gentoo, or Fedora where 
> sudo isn't always configured for a particular user.
> 
> So, your point about the keys being safer in n-m is just as useless as 
> mine is from that perspective.

If you use a hard to crack master key phrase, it would be extremely
difficult to get access to the encrypted keys.  Root access does not get
you access to the keys in a user's keyring.  You need to know the
passphrase.  Normally, this looks like it is the user's login password,
but it can be changed, so you are prompted to unlock the keyring when
applications ask for access.
-- 
Smoot Carl-Mitchell
System/Network Architect
smoot at tic.com
+1 480 922 7313
cell: +1 602 421 9005