On Sun, Jul 02, 2000 at 08:43:56PM -0500, Troy Frericks wrote:
> At 07:11 PM 7/2/2000 , Tom Fishwick wrote:
> >Adam McKenna wrote:
> >>
> [snip]
> >auth. Sure it's not totally secure, but I think it protects well enough
> >against the average user
> >that checks for new mail every 5 min.
>
> Especially (as was pointed out earlier) since the item the password is
> protecting was sent over the internet in clear text. That's why most
> people are only slightly concerned about POP, not overly concerned.
> #
That was entirely my point. IMO the "security cost" of saving cleartext
passwords on the server is not worth the "security gain" of having POP3
passwords encrypted when the user checks his mail. If someone is sniffing
pop3 passwords then he has the ability to (most likely) only obtain a small
number of passwords that way, as opposed to the attacker who has an account
on the server. If he can find a security hole that allows him to read files
that don't belong to him, he now has the entire list of passwords.
If you're concerned about email security, APOP is not worth it. Go with SSL,
or another security model (like having virtual POP3 accounts that aren't UNIX
users).
--Adam
