On Sunday, November 11, 2001, at 02:35 , Theo de Raadt wrote:
scp protocol IS rcp protocol. They are 100% the same, and have 100% the same flaws.
IMO, the biggest flaws with rcp are the lack of strong authentication and the lack of encryption.
Running rcp over ssh provides both of those. I am aware of the other issues, like file name issues (I've run into them myself); and things like the remote side handling expansions can be checked on the local side. I don't consider that nearly as important as the first two. There are also some problems with passing metadata (I'm on a Mac at the moment), but those can also be taken care of.
Now, if sftp is to be more like FTP than rcp, I'd understand that. But I don't think 'rcp without flaws' is a very good spec of what you're doing.