From: Rolf Michelsen <Rolf.Michelsen@delab.sintef.no>
Date: Wed, 2 Mar 94 09:20:30 PST
To: Adam Shostack <adam@bwh.harvard.edu>
Subject: Re: low-overhead encrypted telnet
In-Reply-To: <199403021514.KAA03435@duke.bwh.harvard.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.3.88.9403021855.J1102-0100000@svme.er.sintef.no>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


On Wed, 2 Mar 1994, Adam Shostack wrote:

> 	I don't, but I would question the wisdom of putting lots of
> effort into a telnet encryption scheme.  I would think it would be
> much more productive to build an encryption scheme at the network
> level, say, as packets are being encapsulated, so that users can
> specify that they want an encrypted session for telnet or ftp, or even
> sendmail could encrypt automatically when sending to certain hosts.

I agree with your observation.  The Telnet protocol is however 
independent of any underlying network protocol.  In our application the 
Telnet connection can be established over a lot of different types of 
networks.  Implementing secure IP will not give us much since it does not 
cover the other possibilities for a Telnet connection.  It is also a 
question of resources (read "time") -- we require a solution *now* (and 
preferable yesterday :-)

No flame, just an observation that what seems to be a better solution is 
not always suitable...


-- Rolf



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Rolf Michelsen         Phone:  +47 73 59 87 33
SINTEF DELAB           Email:  rolf.michelsen@delab.sintef.no
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