[CentOS] IMAP security

Fri Mar 28 16:12:24 UTC 2008
Bill Campbell <centos at celestial.com>

On Fri, Mar 28, 2008, Anne Wilson wrote:
>I have port 143 open so that I can get my mail when away from home.  
>Occasionally, though, my router reports things like

You should be using secure IMAP on port 933, not port 143 where
everything is sent in clear text.  I don't know about other IMAP
servers, but courier-imap handles this by default.

Most current e-mail clients allow one to set this up easily,
either directly or using TLS to request a secure connection on an
initial connection to port 143.

This doesn't keep people from trying dictionary attacks via
imaps, but it does prevent them from sniffing the connections.
Of course you are using good passwords n'est pas?

Bill
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