Security basics

[Alan M. Evans]

On Fri, 2007-10-05 at 04:42 +0800, Tod Merley wrote:

> With SSH and similar popular connection tools I would like to see a
> utility which sets up a client on the machine seeking the connection
> which talks to a server on the machine being connected to.  The
> utility would use a customized "query / response" protocol on a
> non-standard port to turn on the connection tool (e.g. SSH) and
> establish that the connection to be made on a random non-standard port
> the identity of which is communicated by a custom encrypted packet.
> 
> The original query to the server would need to be proper to illicit a
> response.  So, the keys to the box, and the location of the locks are
> only known to the user.
> 
> Anyone already doing this?

I'm tempted to say, "Yeah, this tool called SSH does this already."

Nothing in your proposal sounds, at least to me, different than what SSH
already does to establish a client/server connection. At best, it's just
obscuring SSH behind another protocol that does just what SSH does to
establish a context.

Maybe I misunderstood your proposal, or else I'm dead wrong about how
SSH works.