On Sat, 20 Dec 2003, Justin Zygmont wrote:

Just a thought about VPN's and a hope to get back on topic to fun linux things, I was wondering if anyone knows why an encrypted VPN is so important using a phone line when it's usually just a point to point link with no chance of interception?

"No chance of interception" is, unfortunately, putting it much too strongly. For one thing, it's a point-to-point link only if the phone company chooses to do it that way. They can easily cut a third party in on the link. They are known to do this for voice conversations, for quality monitoring and for emergency break-in (if it's a major emergency and you've just got to contact Fred and his phone line is constantly busy, an operator can break in on his conversation and tell him he's got an emergency call, if you can convince him/her that it's important enough). They probably don't for modem conversations, but it is possible. They certainly can do it for law-enforcement wiretaps of either. Moreover, with modern electronics it is trivial to tap a phone line undetectably (except for discovery of the tap by physical inspection). It doesn't have to be the police or the Feds doing it. It doesn't necessarily require access to your premises. Henry Spencer henry-lqW1N6Cllo0sV2N9l4h3zg at public.gmane.org -- The Toronto Linux Users Group. Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml