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The Rice Thresher
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by Brian Stoler thresher editorial staff Connecting to Owlnet computers is about to become a little more complicated for some students. The telnet protocol will be permanently disabled on Owlnet servers such as "jungle" and "forest" on Oct. 15 for security reasons. Telnet will be replaced by SSH, a similar protocol that does not have the same security problems. SSH clients for Microsoft Windows and Macintosh are available at http://software.is.rice.edu. Beginning today, a message informing people of this change will greet anyone who connects to Owlnet using telnet. A delay - which begins today at 16 seconds and will increase by 2 seconds per day - before the login prompt is displayed will accompany the message. Senior System Administrator Wyman Miles said the delay is not intended to punish users, but instead to ensure they have enough time to read the message. Miles said the removal of telnet has been planned for a long time because the protocol poses a security risk. When users connect to other computers using telnet, their passwords are transmitted over the network unencrypted, and any computer on the network could read the passwords. This problem has been linked to break-ins to some computers at Rice, Miles said. With SSH, however, all traffic is encrypted and therefore much more difficult to eavesdrop on. The delay and message were originally installed Sunday night "ostensibly as an experiment," Miles said. The changes were temporarily reversed Monday in response to complaints about two aspects of the changes: the length of the delay, which began at 30 seconds and was to increase by 10 seconds per day, and the message's failure to explain how to obtain SSH software. Most students who use telnet said they didn't know of the change from telnet to SSH until they saw the notice Sunday and Monday when they tried to log in to Owlnet. "I've heard I have to download something else, but that's as much as I know about it," Sid Richardson College senior Mia Feldbaum said Monday. Some students expressed anger at the delay, but others accepted the changes. "It's OK - 30 or 40 seconds is fine. ... If that's the only way I can check e-mail then I don't care," Wiess College senior Lei Chu said.
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