Usenet Explorer

I use SSL to encrypt my downloads from my news server. Is the search function UE also encrypted, or can my IT administrator see what I search for? If I use SSL, can the IT administrator know that I am downloading from a news server, even if he doesn't know exactly the content?

With SSL he cannot see anything apart from the news server you are connecting ip address and port (unless you use a proxy).

As to the search - in the registered version the communication is truly encrypted, the cipher strength is the same as SSL. In the trial version the communication is pseudo-encrypted - the adversary should know it is the UE trial version and crack the trial version code, given only network communication packets he cannot decrypt the trial as well.

gassman wrote:If I use SSL, can the IT administrator know that I am downloading from a news server, even if he doesn't know exactly the content?

If your news server offers port 443, use that. That port is HTTPS, so it would look like you're downloading from a secure website, rather than a standard news server port. If there is no port 443 available, maybe they offer 8080 which is also a standard (alternative) web port. Using 443 has the added benefit in that it shouldn't be throttled by your ISP. Some ISPs limit speed throughput on NNTP ports so use 443 where available.

Josef and Alex, thanks for the answers. I do happen by chance use port 443 instead of 563, but hadn't known the significance of that choice until now. I suppose my IT admin can still look up the ip address that I am connected to and discover that it belongs to a usenet news server service, but that's ok if they can't see any headers or other data deeper than that.

Your IT administrator can also see the amount of data you download, normally, in large corporations where an IT administrator can't lose time checking on everyone's computer, a script is set up so that large uploads and downloads of data trigger an alert to the administrator that something is going on.

If you download 1GB from example.com it will not matter what port you are using, it will be pretty obvious something is going on, but using SSL they will not be able to say what it is you are downloading, just point out the server you are downloading from. In this case a news server.