> I  can't  believe  all  you  guys are interested in the algorithm to
> decrypt  IMail  passwords.  You  SHOULD  be yelling and screaming at
> Ipswitch  to use non-reversible encryption on their passwords. There
> are some operational and conversion limitations to not being able to
> decrypt  a  password, but it's very irresponsible to store passwords
> in a decodable format on ANY computer system.

Look, anyone who owns your mail server owns your passwords, unless you
are forcing SSL on SMTP, POP3, and IWEBMSG. It's trivial to sniff them
using  built-in  NetMon.  And,  of  course,  anyone who owns your mail
server owns your raw mailbox files.

Once  you  are  requiring  encryption on incoming connections, then it
makes  more  sense  to  worry about additional protection in-database.
Simply  lock  down  the Registry using ACLs and run the IMail services
under  an account with special access. Or you can use one of the other
IMail  database  options  (ODBC  or  NT),  giving  you a wide range of
encryption  levels,  both  on-the-wire  and in-database. (In all these
cases,  it's  still  possible  for  an  owner to use code injection to
hijack  the  passwords  as they are passed between processes, but that
may  indeed  be  beyond the capabilities of an ordinary hacker without
otherwise alerting you to their compromise by futzing with mail flow.)

It's  clear after many years that the built-in Registry-based database
option  is  not  designed  for  security,  but  for  ease-of-use;  the
encryption (encoding, really) has never been claimed to be secure. The
number   of   admins   who  make  day-to-day  use  of  the  passwords'
retrievability  has  established  the usefulness of the feature, so it
doesn't surprise me that more people, rather than less, ask about it.

--Sandy


------------------------------------
Sanford Whiteman, Chief Technologist
Broadleaf Systems, a division of
Cypress Integrated Systems, Inc.
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

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