low-overhead encrypted telnet

[Rolf Michelsen]

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



----------------------------------------------------------------------
Rolf Michelsen         Phone:  +47 73 59 87 33
SINTEF DELAB           Email:  rolf.michelsen at delab.sintef.no
7034 Trondheim         Office: C339
Norway
----------------------------------------------------------------------