North American Network Operators Group
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Re: SMTP authentication for broadband providers

  • From: Alex Bligh
  • Date: Fri Feb 13 04:50:35 2004 

--On 12 February 2004 18:13 -0500 [email protected] wrote:


Since when was anything sent over port 25 confidential?

Since Phil Zimmerman decided to do something about it.

Well if you are considering the plain-text of an encrypted mail,
it doesn't much matter whether port 25 is intercepted by whatever
governmental agency, or relayed through however many servers with
questionable operators.


And quite frankly, he was right - that's the only way to do it right.

Oh I agree. My point to the original poster was that supposed security
of port 25 communications was not a good reason to avoid using
relays on the way. If you want security of you communications
a good first step is PGP (et al.). (Note that this does still leak
To:/From:/Subject: lines, but they be read via wire-tap just as they
can be read via intercept at a relay).

Alex