nnrpd's Argify() and passwords with spaces

[Jeffrey M. Vinocur]

On Wed, 19 Dec 2001, Katsuhiro Kondou wrote:

> I don't catch up news.software.nntp(over 800 arts unread),
> but no one proposed quoting spaces by '\'?

No -- the trouble is that we are unlikely to get support from newsreaders
for a while; they send passwords exactly as typed and we'd like to
work-as-expected as often as possible.


> And I'd like someone, it's ok if it's me :), also to implement more
> generic method to fix this(including protocol definition).

Sure, that would be nice.  But if we're going to add new extensions (which
is probably the best thing to do? so we maintain compatibility with
existing software?) we should keep in mind that plaintext passwords are
bad.

Maybe a challenge-response scheme?  That would work nicely as part of a
text-based protocol and not require any infrastructure changes.


-- 
Jeffrey M. Vinocur
jeff at litech.org