On Thu, 7 Oct 2004 15:34:48 +1000
James Gray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> For the OP, "transparent authentication" and "transparent proxy" are two 
> very different and conflicting terms; they are mutually exclusive.

Not exactly. In the context of just using Squid I could understand that, but
when it comes to authentication there are a few other technologies that can be
used. The first one that pops to mind is NoCatAuth. 

It's primarily used for large wireless community networks, but it's fairly
extensible if you were looking for an alternative. You run it on a gateway
computer and it'll capture all requests for whichever protocols you specify
until a correct username and password is supplied through a web interface. The
thing about doing it this way is that users would know _why_ they were being
presented with a login dialog, rather that assuming a man-in-the-middle attack. 

The main problem with it is that it doesn't natively support samba
authentication out of the box. Its username and password list is stored in a
mysql database, so you'd need to find some way of linking that up with NTLM
authentication/active directory. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any
project that does that, however it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, or could
be easily hacked up. :-)

If you sucessfully set up NoCatAuth you'd be able to set up transparent proxying
easily enough, hence having both transparent authentication and a transparent
proxy.

BTW, i'm no proxy admin, I just know stuff about software used on
community wireless networks. :-)

Lindsay

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