Three new extensions to the Telnet protocol have been proposed.
The authentication extension is based on the popular PGP
program. This extension makes it possible to use the nice features of PGP
in a new and useful way. The decentralized key management scheme is finally
brought to other areas than e-mail encryption!
Key management is a complex issue. Anyway, with the use of routines from the
PGP source code can this public key based method be implemented quite easy.
The dust has been wiped off Borman's old Encryption draft. With the
modification presented here, this draft is very useful. It defines some
commands which are hard for an human being to manage, but computer programs
can easily use these commands. A Telnet standard should be versatile enough to
allow these commands.
For the integrity option, there has been selected a method which is
easier to implement than Oksås' solution [1]. With this
integrity option is there no need for periodic insertions of integrity
information. The protocol specification for the integrity option is just as
``complex'' as for the encryption option. This makes it applicable not just
for human user interaction, but also for special computer-computer
communication.
