Hello, Richard.

You wrote at 25.01.2003, :

RR> (For those who know what a MUD is, for concreteness I have in mind
RR> MUD's and MUD clients.  If you don't know what a MUD is...it's a
RR> multi-user online (generally text) game.  Usually connected to via
RR> telnet or moral equivalent.  There are many MUD's and many MUD clients.)

RR> I'd like to take an existing telnet based system and, without changing
RR> the client or server, wrap the session in some kind of encryption.

RR> It is not required (and is even actively not desired) to use UNIX
RR> level login; the clients do not go through a normal UNIX login and
RR> do not have UNIX accounts, in general.

RR> What options are there?  I can think of a few:

RR>  * If the user is on, or close-enough-to, a UNIX-alike box (say
RR>    NetBSD), one could open up a local-only telnet port for the MUD
RR>    client to use, then ssh out from there.

RR>  * Reading ssh's docs, it almost sounds as if there is a way to
RR>    get this kind of thing to work with port forwarding or perhaps
RR>    with "subsystems".  Is this viable?  What should I be looking
RR>    for?

I  think  that  it  is  good  idea. First try to set up openssh on all
machines,  then start ssh server on server machine and do this on each
client:
$ ssh -f -L10023:localhost:23 remotesystem sleep 10
                                           ^^^^^^^^
                                           command to execute
and then start telnet like this:
telnet localhost 10023
       ^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^


RR>  * How about something more in the network layer?  How easy is it
RR>    to set up IPSec?

It is more difficult than making a tunnel IMHO

RR> Any other ways?  Relative merits of any ideas that might actually
RR> work?  (^&

You  can also use stunnel forwarding(http://www.stunnel.org), it might
work under win32 too.

RR> Thanks in advance.





-- 
Best regards,
 CEBKA                          mailto:CEBKA@smtp.ru