Another entry in the internet security hall of shame....

[Dave Howe]

Ian G wrote:
> none of the above.  Using SSL is the wrong tool
> for the job.  
For the one task mentioned - transmitting the username/password pair to the 
server - TLS is completely appropriate.  However, hash based verification would 
seem to be more secure, require no encryption overhead on the channel at all, 
and really connections and crypto should be primarily P2P (and not server 
relayed) anyhow.

 > It's a chat message - it should be
> encrypted end to end, using either OpenPGP or
> something like OTR.  And even then, you've only
> covered about 10% of the threat model - the
> server.
yeah. you have a unencrypted interchange point - the server. There are aspects 
to that which make it both a good and bad thing, mostly bad. for example you 
allow interception at the server (may be a requirement for an american based 
company, but still bad), and you provide a single point of failure for hackers 
(very bad)
Most of the good aspects revolve around only having to support one client cert 
you can embed in your own client (or make available on your website) and not an 
entire PKI infrastructure.

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