Bugtraq mailing list archives

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


From: "Jonathan G. Lampe" <jonathan.lampe () standardnetworks com>
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 13:39:52 -0600

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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