Re: SASL related files in gnus/

[Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>     >     > sasl-ntlm.el:;; Author: Taro Kawagishi <tarok@transpulse.org>

>     This adds the NTLM authentication mechanism to sasl.el.

> What is the NTLM authentication mechanism?
> What job does it do?

>     >     > ntlm.el:;; Author: Taro Kawagishi <tarok@transpulse.org>

>     This provides the raw NTLM authentication mechanism, which is used by
>     sasl-ntlm.el.

> We should probably move ntlm.el to lisp/net, but before deciding that
> I'd like to know more about NTLM.

NTLM (NT LAN Manager) is a password hash authentication protocol created
by Microsoft and used primarily by Windows systems.  It is being phased
out by Microsoft now in favor of Kerberos, but is still used where there
is no Active Directory infrastructure or for backward compatibility with
older systems.  It's primarily used for SMB, but Microsoft supports it for
a variety of protocols, including e-mail (which is, I presume, where it
came in useful for Gnus).

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>