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Date:      Wed, 04 Apr 2001 23:18:26 -0700
From:      Nick Sayer <nsayer@quack.kfu.com>
To:        Assar Westerlund <assar@FreeBSD.org>
Cc:        cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org, cvs-all@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: cvs commit: src/secure/lib/libtelnet Makefile
Message-ID:  <3ACC0E32.2090601@quack.kfu.com>
References:  <200104050037.f350b7t89955@freefall.freebsd.org> <3ACC0695.4010603@quack.kfu.com> <5lbsqbuc33.fsf@assaris.sics.se>

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Assar Westerlund wrote:

> Nick Sayer <nsayer@quack.kfu.com> writes:
> 
>> Assar Westerlund wrote:
>> 
>>> assar       2001/04/04 17:37:07 PDT
>>> 
>>>   Modified files:        (Branch: RELENG_4)
>>>     secure/lib/libtelnet Makefile 
>>>   Log:
>>>   MFC: 1.19: disable RSA
>>>   
>>>   Approved by:	jkh
>>>   
>>>   Revision  Changes    Path
>>>   1.17.2.1  +2 -2      src/secure/lib/libtelnet/Makefile
>>> 	http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/secure/lib/libtelnet/Makefile.diff?r1=1.17&r2=1.17.2.1
>> 
>> 1. It's SRA, not RSA.
> 
> 
> Yes, I typoed.
> 
>> 2. Why was this necessary? What is so harmful about leaving SRA in? SRA 
>> was not the most secure thing in the world, but it's certainly more 
>> secure than plaintext.
> 
> 
> Because it causes telnet to call telnet_gets for reading the username
> and password and thus not allow C-c, C-] or any of the common
> escapes.  This was considered a pain by lots of users on the mailing
> lists (mainly -stable and -current) I think.  The right thing is of
> course to make this reading of user input DTRT, but without the time
> to take the right solution I did this to try to keep POLA.


But this "solution" by your own admission doesn't actually solve 
anything. So you've in fact reduced the security of telnet for everyone 
for no reason. And I have not seen the massive volume of complaints 
about the prompt's behavior either, by the way. I would have thought the 
first thing you might have done was brought these complaints to someone 
most likely to be able to actually _fix_ the problem correctly. Anyone 
paying attention might have noticed that when problems have popped up 
with SRA in the past (telnet -x cores, for instance), I have responded 
to them in a timely manner.


I am sorry that I missed the original commit to -current, or I could 
have nipped this in the bud.


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