SPUG: Security through insecurity...

[Tim Maher]

On Wed, Feb 01, 2006 at 08:43:10AM -0800, Atom Powers wrote:
> On 1/31/06, Ryan T. Kosai <rkosai at u.washington.edu> wrote:
> >
> > Now, to send this e-mail, I would have to log into a SMTP relay.  This
> > would require a password; which I don't want plaintext or easily
> > recoverable (such as ROT13 or such) in a Perl script.  So, in this case,
> > an open SMTP relay seems best.
> >
> 
> If you have an account on the SMTP server dedicated to this purpose,
> with a very secure (long random string) password then I think you
> would be fine putting the password in your script. Under these
> circumstances the only time that password could get compromised would
> be if your laptop was stolen, and then it may even be to your
> advantage to see what the perpetrator is sending.

I really like this idea of configuring a laptop to send a
"message in a bottle" after the thief boots it. But (although I
haven't checked) I'd be surprised if there weren't some prefab
Open Source solutions of this type out there already; can
somebody familiar with the offerings make recommendations?

-Tim 
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