[pulseaudio-tickets] [PulseAudio] #259: Implement a secure and modular authentication method (or use ssh-like keys?)

[PulseAudio]

#259: Implement a secure and modular authentication method (or use ssh-like
keys?)
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 Reporter:  eddyp                   |       Owner:  lennart
     Type:  enhancement             |      Status:  new    
 Priority:  normal                  |   Milestone:         
Component:  daemon                  |    Severity:  normal 
 Keywords:  authentication network  |  
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 Currently, if you want to use a remote PA server, and you are required to
 use authentication, you are forced to use the same cookie on all hosts.

 This is bad because of multiple reasons:

  * you can't have one-way permissions, is just a pool of PA daemons,
 without hierarchy - I might want to be able to stream from A to B, but I
 might not want the reverse

  * anyone getting access to one of the machines that has the common cookie
 and can stream on any of the hosts in the pool - security issue

  * for a laptop system, when at different places, in order to stream to
 the local 'play machine' all the networks in which the laptop system uses
 streaming must have the same cookie, making it impossible to isolate one
 network from another - no modularity


 It would be really useful and nice to have a system that would allow
 something like ssh:

  * authorization based on the host

  * the direction of the authorization is clear (this would probably mean
 some asymmetric key pairs)


 Maybe the easiest way to accomplish this is to use something like ssh keys
 (I don't think is either a good idea or PA's business to use the existing
 ssh keys for ssh tunneling).

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Ticket URL: <http://pulseaudio.org/ticket/259>
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