Hi,

From: "Jason R. Mastaler"
Subject: Re: tmda-ofmipd: patch for imap[s] and pop3 remote auth
Date: Tue, 03 Sep 2002 17:41:42 -0600

> [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> 
> > I'm trying to understand how it's supposed to work and am struggling
> > a bit -- is the basic idea for the new tmda-ofmipd to query anoother
> > service to authenticate a user (i.e. pass through user/auth info to
> > a relevant service and act based on the response)?
> 
> Correct.

Thanks for the clarification.

> > If so, I guess it's unlikely to work w/ something like APOP because of
> > the challenge string.
> 
> I think it can be made to work with APOP.  Python's poplib contains an
> `apop' method.  From the docs:
> 
>   apop(user, secret) 
>     Use the more secure APOP authentication to log into the POP3 server
> 
> So, the user would just send tmda-ofmipd his apop username and secret
> to authenticate rather than his username and plain text password.
> 
> Make sense?

Hmmm, not sure actually.

IIUC, in APOP what is sent to the server is computed based on hashing
a concatenation of the user's password and a one-time challenge string
generated by the pop server.

For the user to send tmda-ofmipd this hashed value, doesn't the user
need to have access to the one-time challenge string from the pop
server?  

I suppose it's possible for tmda-ofmipd to talk to the pop server to
obtain the challenge string, leave the connection open, and pass this
string on to the client -- I'm fuzzy on how the user's client knows to
do APOP authentication -- receive the appropriate response from the
client, and then pass the result back to the pop server.  I don't get
the feeling that this will work because it doesn't seem like the
user's client would know how to handle this.

I suppose an alternative might be for the user's client to send the
password in plaintext to tmda-ofmipd and for tmda-ofmipd to compute
the hashed value (though I think it defeats the purpose of using APOP
if the connection is unencrypted...).

I feel like I'm confused here... (-;

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