[Asterisk-Dev] Asterisk Manager encryption

[Tzafrir Cohen]

On Mon, Dec 12, 2005 at 08:33:24PM -0600, Kevin P. Fleming wrote:
> John Todd wrote:
> 
> >I'm fine with TLS, actually - it's common, "embedded" as a library, and 
> >requires no user intervention to activate as Asterisk already 
> >quasi-requires it for config-free installation.  It needs to be 
> >activated inside Asterisk.  If it runs on a different port, that's fine 
> >- it just needs to be running by default, and there need to be NO 
> >actions by the administrator as far as a security policy or other 
> >userland applications that must be run to make it work (including 
> >creation of keys! if there are no keys present on install, Asterisk 
> >should MAKE them, just like with DUNDi.)
> 
> TLS requires a server certificate. This must also be trusted by the 
> clients, so it either needs to be created by a trusted CA or the 
> self-signed certificate needs to be copied to the clients so they can 
> put it into their trust list.
> 
> It would be possible for 'make install' to create the certificate if 
> desired, although it would need to prompt for the relevant server name 
> to be able to do that. 

Which means: an interactive process. :-(

> Asterisk does _not_ automatically create keys for 
> DUNDi, it's a manual process.

There's nothing inherently insecure in generating a certificate at
install-time. This is actually exactly what ssh does.

However the atvantage of openssl: being totally below the application
layer, is also a major annoyance. The server can only be identified by
its name or IP address. You cannot use the same certificate for several
IP addresses.

-- 
Tzafrir Cohen     icq#16849755  +972-50-7952406
tzafrir.cohen at xorcom.com  http://www.xorcom.com