Re: MAC address user recognition?

At 06:28 21.02.2003, Chris Cook said: --------------------[snip]-------------------- >I have used MAC address authentication using the arp table and it worked for >what I used it for, but it does only work over the local network and >spoofing is an issue. Using a cookie in conjuction with a MAC address helps >the authentication, but it sounds like SSL is the way to go... > >Does anyone have any suggestions on where to start learning SSL? --------------------[snip]-------------------- Homepage of modssl: http://www.modssl.org/ I have successfully set up a site using SSL and a client certificate. Apache is configured to require a client certificate, however you could easily modify this to have it optional, and perform some legal action if the CS is missing or invalid. Apache configuration (anonymized): <VirtualHost 1.2.3.4:443> ServerName myhost.com DocumentRoot "/etc/httpd/home/myhost.com" SSLEngine on # this is the server certificate and key SSLCertificateFile /etc/httpd/certs/myhost.com.crt SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/httpd/certs/myhost.com.key # Client certificate handling SSLVerifyClient require # may use "Optional" as keyword SSLVerifyDepth 10 SSLCACertificateFile /etc/httpd/certs/myhost.com.ca.crt SSLOptions +StdEnvVars +CompatEnvVars +FakeBasicAuth </VirtualHost> In PHP, I check: $cacert_ou = $_SERVER['SSL_CLIENT_S_DN_OU']; $cacert_em = $_SERVER['SSL_CLIENT_S_DN_Email']; if (!empty($cacert_ou) && !empty($cacert_em)) { // valid certificate - login the user } else { // no or invalid certificate (not an option here) } The client certificate is set up in a way that the "OU" property (organizational unit) holds the company identifier of the user, and the "Email" property holds the user identifier. This is how my client generates the certificates, I have to live with that. In your case you could easily create your certificates to: 1 - not be password protected so anyone on the machine can transmit it 2 - have a unique topekn per machine in one of its properties (OU, for example). HTH, -- >O Ernest E. Vogelsinger (\) ICQ #13394035 ^ http://www.vogelsinger.at/