RE: remote telnet with ssl

[James Rich <james@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 18 Mar 2004, David C. Shea wrote:

> A decent VPN is probably more secure than SSL telnet, but SSL telnet at
> least encrypts the traffic between host and client.

Actually there should be very little difference between a VPN and SSL
telnet.  After all, what is a VPN except TCP/IP encapsulated in an
encryption scheme and then encapsulated again in TCP/IP?  SSL telnet is
the same idea, except that the telnet protocol is encapsulated with
encryption instead of the TCP/IP protocol.  The levels look like this:

VPN: TCP/IP->encryption->TCP/IP

SSL telnet: telnet->encryption->TCP/IP

Of course there are more layers of encapsulation (like ethernet or frame
relay) and the encapsulation methods can be complex.  But really they boil
down to the same thing.  SSL telnet is basically a VPN with only one,
non-routable protocol available in it (i.e. the telnet protocol).

James Rich

"Nf sbe frphevgl, orvat yrpgherq ol Zvpebfbsg vf yvxr erprvivat jvfr
jbeqf ba gur fhowrpg bs pbzcnffvba sebz Fgnyva."
      -- zbezbc ba yja.arg