Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucsd!sdcc6!icogsci1!cg108fen
From: cg108fen@icogsci1.ucsd.edu (David Knight French)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.appletalk
Subject: Re: Macintosh Peer-to-Peer Communications
Keywords: NCSA telnet
Message-ID: <7162@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
Date: 9 Feb 90 11:48:58 GMT
References: <3447.9001261432@yap.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>
Sender: news@sdcc6.ucsd.edu
Reply-To: dkfsys@sdph2.ucsd.edu (David Knight French)
Organization: University of California, San Diego
Lines: 47

In article <3447.9001261432@yap.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> inei@cs.glasgow.ac.UK
(Nick Nei) writes:

> Jim Matthews of Dartmouth Software Development writes:
>
>>  ... Telnet should require a random password, chosen at startup.
>>  There should be a menu command to "Send FTP Password".
>>  That way users could ftp to their own mac, but no one else could without
>>  explicit permission.
>
> Horrors no!  Random passwords chosen at startup is bad idea.
> Makes software too clever for its own good and difficult to use.

	I agree completely.  I do wonder though, what would happen if they
  got clever enough to *randomly* change the password again, after we thought
  *we* knew what it was, and thus locking us out. 

  	Now wouldn't that be ironic?  Denied by our own computer. |=)

	Really though, passwords aren't a bad idea for the mac, just having a 
  random one at startup.  Even the devolopers at NCSA thought they were good
  enough to include a password mechanism in their NCSA telnet 2.3 release.  It
  comes with an application called telpas that sets up a password file for your
  mac.  This way whenever someone tries to ftp to your mac the server prompts
  for a username and password, just like ftp in unix.

	With this password file you can now have a secure way for select others
  to access files on your mac as a background process under MultiFinder.  The
  only requirement is that it is run as the first application under MultiFinder.

  	If anybody is interested, they can obtain a copy of NCSA telnet 2.3
  as follows:	
		anonymous ftp net1.ucsd.edu

		files are:

		/acsinfo/mac/communication/Networking/telnet.2.3.docs.sithqx
		/acsinfo/mac/communication/Networking/telnet.2.3.sithqx

		(These are BinHex/Stuffit files.)

  -Dave
--
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