how 2 secure
Agung
Wouter Van Hemel
That's not really the purpose of this list, you'd be better off asking
questions to freebsd-...@freebsd.org. This list is for discussion of
documentation (or the lack thereof).
But since I'm replying anyway, I'll try to answer your question.
Tradionally, all data that gets sent over the net, happens in cleartext.
This means, anybody on the same network as you, can almost literally see
the characters passing on the network. It's a bit like having two phones
on one line at home, while one's talking, the other can secretly follow
the conversation with the other phone. Usually, this isn't that much of a
problem, since .. well, most data isn't that important.
But this changes when you send out something confidential over the
network, such as a private email, your creditcard number, or even your
system passwords. That's why people tend to encrypt the entire line, from
your computer, over all routers on the net, all the way until it reaches
the recipient. That way, nobody can listen in on what you (your computer)
is saying to the other side.
It's wise to log in using ssh, for example. Ssh encodes your password and
data, so it can't be 'sniffed', it can't be read by someone between the
two points of communication. Another application is (open)ssl, the Secure
Sockets Layer. This finds use in webbrowsers (https) and maildaemons (e.g.
sendmail). If you have confidential data that needs to be send over the
web (suck as credit cards), set up an https server. If you receive or send
very confidential emails, you might want to set sendmail up with ssl, too;
keep in mind that all maildaemons have to be able to understand it,
though, so I think you'd be better off using pgp/gpg.
Using a https-server or enabling ssl in sendmail might be overkill; use
your own judgement. But I strongly advise you to use ssh.
Kind regards,
wouter
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