Re:Port knocking
by heavenlyblue on Friday May 15, 2020 @03:42AM
(#23189868)
Semantics of this is wildly different.
You may accidentally enable the directory listing.
While you may say that certain methods of withholding the information are isomorphic at certain conditions it doesn’t mean that they are semantically equivalent.
I admit that my example is flawed for a few reasons and autoindex is another in that list. While obscurity and security are not identical by any means, and therefore not semantically equivalent in general, I'm just pointing out how the "something you know" factor inherently utilizes what common ground they do share, whether you call it a secret, a key, a password, a URL with a long random portion.
Topically relevant (and amusing) username!
I call BS. These are pretty much the same thing* which is to say: an adversary trying to get the file needs to know something that they don't know, and can't reasonably guess/discover any time soon. Did you secure it or obscure it? Whatever you call it, you require a "something you know" factor.
*Obviously, there's the fact that other parts of the stack -- browser history, access logs, rate limiting, etc. -- actually treat a password payload with the respect it deserves and assume there's nothing sensitive about a URI path... kindly pretend my example doesn't have this flaw.