[Pan-users] Re: SSL enabled usenet server

[Duncan]

<address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below,
on  Mon, 02 Feb 2009 23:38:13 +0900:

> My Usenet provider is "SSL enabled": it ensures that my ISP cannot scan
> my download traffic. Indeed some ISPs attempt to scan traffic and
> throttle usenet traffic!!
> 
> Unfortunately, when I configure pan 0.132 to use a "secure Usenet
> server", it never connects.
> 
> How can I access an SSL-enabled Usenet server with Pan?
> 
> Thanks for your help.

Pan does not itself have a built-in encryption handler.  It understands 
NNTP, period.  However, many people have used pan to connect indirectly 
to a secure host using a local redirection service/proxy.

I've not personally done so, so I won't attempt to get into detail I 
don't know, but the general idea is to setup a local proxy much like the 
privoxy (formerly junkbuster) proxy I use between my browser and the 
general Internet, to filter various unwanted junk such as ads.  You run 
the local proxy setup to listen on a particular TCP port on localhost 
(127.0.0.1, normally, tho any IP in the 127/8 subnet should work on an 
RFC compliant networking stack), and forward any socket connections it 
receives to the appropriate remote server, in this case your NSP (news 
service provider).  Where privoxy's purpose is filtering junk from web 
pages before displaying them in the browser, the purpose here would be to 
encrypt the request before forwarding to the remote, and decrypting the 
results as they return, before forwarding them locally to your news 
client, in this case pan.

It's a pretty basic idea, really.  Unfortunately I don't know what 
applications can actually be used for the encryption case.  Presumably if 
you're familiar with SSH, you'll already know or can find out by looking 
in the docs.  If not, google should be of help, but someone else will 
probably step up with the name of the app in question and some info on 
configuring it.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman