On Sat, Jan 25, 2003 at 12:31:23PM -0500, James K. Lowden wrote:
> On Sat, 25 Jan 2003 05:47:28 -0600, Richard Rauch <rkr@olib.org> wrote:
> > I'd like to take an existing telnet based system and, without changing
> > the client or server, wrap the session in some kind of encryption.
> 
> Hi Richard, 
> 
> You're going to have to change *something* on the server, unless you
> invent magic crypto beads that unencrypt themselves on delivery....

Here, "server" as in the counterpart to "client" (software).

One way that this could be done is to set up a local program and another
on the same machine as the server software.  You would telnet to
the localhost (parameter to your client software, not a change to
it) and the local software wraps your message up in encryption and
sends it to its counterpart on the machine where the server process
lives.  The counterpart decrypts and does a localhost telnet.

As far as the client software is concerned, the server has moved
to a port on the local machine.  And as far as the server is concerned,
the client is from the local machine.


> To wrap encryption around cleartext sessions is the definition of a
> tunnel.  If you can set up a VPN, you're done.  

I've never done that.  (^&


> Or did I misunderstand the question?

...dunno.  Can a VPN be set up on the fly?  (I forgot to mention that,
in case the reader isn't familiar with MUD's, people login to MUD's
on their own schedule from random machines.  Preconfiguring anything
is not a very pragmatic option, IMHO.)


-- 
  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about."  --rkr@olib.org