From: htoaster@yabbs
To: comrade@yabbs
Subject: re: telnet
Date: Wed Sep 22 19:48:05 1993

packet sniffers work by watching traffic.  you can get the software for 
free (from a few ftp sites) and it usually works with just about any free 
pc ether card (I have used it on 3c503's, smc elites, and 3c501's).  
usually they are used for doing diagnostics, but some people use them to 
grab accounts, since telnet sessions (and lots of stuff) is all plaintext.

it isn't usually that easy on a busy network though, unless you can watch 
traffic between two computers easily (and they both have to be local, 
unless you want to check every packet going between a router and a unix 
machine, which could be quite a bit).

can't do much to make telnet safer unless you feel like hacking the 
sources to make it encrypted and can setup up telnetd on your
host machine.

htoaster