public accounts / PGP / passphrases

[bill.stewart@pleasantonca.ncr.com +1-510-484-6204]

Adam wrote:
> Derek wrote:
> | It would be nice to integrate PGP into terminal emulators, too, like
> | kermit or seyon or red ryder or whatever, so that you could easily use
> | PGP locally to sign/encrypt things on the remote end.  Wishful
> | thinking, I guess...
> 
> 	I think terminal emulators are the wrong layer for PGP
> integration.  PGP support is needed in document editors and viewers,
> rather than in network layers.

The terminal emulator we used to use at Bell Labs, ctrm, was designed
to let you interact conveniently between your DOS machine and a 
Unix system you were dialed into; it felt like you were controlling
things from the Unix end.  Thus, you could issue Unix commands to
initiate file transfer via kermit or xmodem (utopc *, pctou *),
and you could also issue Unix commands to run DOS commands back on 
the PC - the commands basically sent back and escape sequence
saying ESC RUN foo.exe arg arg arg CR or whatever.
It was easy to build applications that did things like crunch
up mail messages into temp files, download the file to DOS,
run Lotus or WordStar on it, and haul the result back.

You could take the same approach with PGP if you wanted -
the support you need in document viewers is the ability to
hand chunks of the document/mail message off to an arbitrary
program for processing.  Coincidentally (:-), MIME lets
you do this sort of thing.

I don't know if ctrm is still around - it was designed by
an employee and we were allowed to use it internally,
but I don't think it was sold outside.  But it wouldn't
be too hard to add that sort of capability to your favorite
source-included freeware terminal emulator, and then
you could build convenient PGP tolls, remote Mosaic viewers,
etc. out of it.

		Bill