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Fetchmail and plain text passwords


Guest joehill
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Guest joehill

So I am experimenting with Snort, kinda cool, and I notice in the streams that I can see fetchmail dutifully going to my pop3 server and retrieving my mail. I notice of course that I can see the user and pass being transmitted.

 

So basically anyone running a sniffer and who knew the external address of my router/firewall could sniff those passwords?

 

I am not an overly paranoid person, but is there a more secure way to do this? Is is the same with POP3, anyone with a sniffer could snag your passwords?

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Guest dturley

all pop3 password go in the clear. Unless you find a real ISP that lets use use APOP, SSL or ssh tunneling to get your mail, you're stuck with that.

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  • 4 weeks later...
So I am experimenting with Snort, kinda cool, and I notice in the streams that I can see fetchmail dutifully going to my pop3 server and retrieving my mail. I notice of course that I can see the user and pass being transmitted.

 

So basically anyone running a sniffer and who knew the external address of my router/firewall could sniff those passwords?

 

I am not an overly paranoid person, but is there a more secure way to do this? Is is the same with POP3, anyone with a sniffer could snag your passwords?

 

If you wanted to, you can tunnel fetchmail via SSH so that everything is encrypted and could not be sniffed. Snort is a very powerful tool, and I couldn't live with out it.

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