Hi John,
Well... you are not really sending the password in clear text.
Normally sending the password, be it encrypted or not, is thought to be an
vulnerability by itself, because if someone manages to break your encryption
(for example man in the middle as you suggested, or breaking the key, or
getting it from somewhere), he will get your root password. Thus it is
thought to use some other way of checking if the password is correct:
hashing, challange-responce, encrypting.

Cheers,
Orlin

На Wednesday 14 May 2008 12:39:51 jfvanmeter (at) comcast (dot) net [email concealed] написа:
> Hello everyone, and I know this might not be the most correct place to post
> this questions, but I was hoping to get some feedback on what you think the
> potential risk would be and how this this could be exploited.
>
> I completed a security review of a web server, that creates a SSL
> connection between the cleint and the server. Using WebScarab, I could see
> that the username and password are sent as clear text strings. The log in
> to the server requires a administrative account.
>
> Do you think there is a large amount of risk, in sending the username and
> password as a clear text string, since the pipe is encrypted? I was
> thinking that a man-in-the-middle or sometype of session hijacking attack
> could allow the account to be compromised.
>
> I'm working on completing the report for my client and was hoping to get
> some feedback from everyone so I could pose this to them correcly.
>
> Thank you in advance --John
>
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