SPUG: Security through insecurity...

[Ryan T. Kosai]

Since I use my laptop for all my business, personal, and schoolwork, I 
end up bringing it with me to an inordinate number of destinations.  If 
it were lost, recovery would be more important to me than absolute 
security.  As such, I thought it would be a good idea to disable the 
password login and log directly into an unpriveleged account on start 
up, and write a quick tripwire program for my computer that would run at 
this time.  I'd log into a separate account to do school/business stuff. 
  Initially, I thought it would be best to post IP and tracert (Windows) 
pipe outputs to a webserver.  I thought it would be safer though, to be 
able to send an e-mail to several destinations, in case my webserver 
account could be compromised.

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.

The question is, (a) is this a good idea to use an open SMTP relay?  (b) 
Is there a way to secure a password?  I notice this problem logging into 
mysql servers via Perl too.  (c) Besides IP and tracert, any other good 
information I could grab?  No built in mic or anything like that; its a 
simple laptop.

Thanks,
-- 
Ryan T. Kosai, Undergraduate                     rkosai at u.washington.edu
Molecular Biology/Electrical Engr.      //students.washington.edu/rkosai