[GTALUG] Netgear 5-port Gigabit switch -- $10 ?

[James Knott]

On 03/27/2016 05:46 PM, David Thornton wrote:
> So when you ssh into something it doesn't send silly stings like
> "username:" or "password:" . That stuff is handed "in protocol" .

It's encrypted by a key that's only used once.  This means that even if
the text is full of known words, it's still extremely difficult to
break.  Also, with modern encryption, multiple instances of the same
word have different encrypted strings.  If the keys were continuously
used, for a lot of data, then it might be possible to crack the code. 
However, with a single use key and modern encryption techniques, then it
becomes extremely difficult.

So, to recap, the public/private keys are used to protect a secret key
that's only used for one session, if even that long and the encryption
process prevents repeat encryption of a given plain text to encrypted
text.  This results in almost random encrypted data, which is extremely
difficult to break.