From: Mat Schaffer <schapht@...>
Date: 2006-08-18T12:11:57+09:00
Subject: Re: Secure telnet and ftp?

On Aug 17, 2006, at 10:24 PM, Hal Fulton wrote:
> I'm rather ignorant of SSL and ssh... but I'm wishing
> for a "compatibility" layer of some kind so that I
> could use the old telnet and ftp interfaces (which I
> know) but do it securely.
>
> In other words, something like:
>
>   require 'ssh-compat'
>
>   SSH::Compat.setup(*whatever) do
>     # ...whatever...
>   end
>
>   # Now just use Net::FTP and Net::Telnet
>   # "just as if" they were the originals
>
>   # Blah blah blah...
>   # all legacy code remains unchanged
>
>   SSH::Compat.quit    # I don't mind some "teardown"
>                       # if it's needed
>
>
> Is this practical/reasonable?
>
> Or is it Just As Easy to use the real secure ftp
> and ssh stuff?

I have no experience on this either way.  But it seems like you could  
implement this using SSH to establish a tunnel into a remote machine  
then go local to telnet/ftp assuming they were running on the box.

The implementation you're hinting at would lend itself really well to  
ssh tunneling, I think.  But I'm sure other people have much more  
enlightened ideas.

-Mat