SPUG: Security through insecurity...

[Peter Darley]

Ryan,
	You probably wouldn't need to go through a relay.  Just connect to the SMTP
server at the destination and send it the mail directly.  This wouldn't
require a password at all.  For example if you connect to port 25 on
darleyconsulting.com (my home machine) it will accept email for any
darleyconsulting.com address without requiring that it go through a relay.
Thanks,
Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: spug-list-bounces at pm.org [mailto:spug-list-bounces at pm.org]On
Behalf Of Ryan T. Kosai
Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2006 11:01 PM
To: members at seattleperl.org
Subject: SPUG: Security through insecurity...


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

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