Comments on: MATLAB can “txt msg u :)”

By: Ke Feng

Ke Feng — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 22:09:25 +0000

If you know an SMTP server which doesn’t require login (you company may provide you one), you can use that to avoid the password line. If you don’t know any SMTP server, you can install one free on your own computer:
http://www.softstack.com/freesmtp.html.

To use your own (or your company’s) SMTP server, delete the following lines:
password = ‘xxxxxxxxx’;
setpref(‘Internet’,'SMTP_Username’,mail);
setpref(‘Internet’,'SMTP_Password’,password);
props = java.lang.System.getProperties;
props.setProperty(‘mail.smtp.auth’,'true’);
props.setProperty(‘mail.smtp.socketFactory.class’, ‘javax.net.ssl.SSLSocketFactory’);
props.setProperty(‘mail.smtp.socketFactory.port’,’465′);

and change the following line:
setpref(‘Internet’,'SMTP_Server’,'smtp.gmail.com’);
to your own server. If you use that program I mentioned above, use ’127.0.0.1′ instead of ‘smtp.gmail.com’. Then you won’t need any password.

By: Doug

Doug — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 20:12:50 +0000

Tim,

An excellent thought. Anyone made a little encryption routine for MATLAB? If not, this GUI that I promoted earlier:

http://blogs.mathworks.com/pick/2007/10/05/masking-typed-passwords-with-asterisks/

might be helpful!

Thanks,
Doug

By: Tim Davis

Tim Davis — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 20:07:27 +0000

This is really cool, but entering a password in plain text into a file is a really bad security risk; particularly if that file has the word “password” on the same line. Yikes! Makes for a good target via an automatic file search.

It would be better if the password was encrypted somehow. For example, a MATLAB GUI could prompt you for your email and password. Then that GUI could twiddle the password with some a reversible operation and then that password could be saved in a MATLAB *.mat file. At least that would make it hard for a non-MATLAB savvy hacker, or virus, to sniff out the password.

Then, in addition, the m-file here should not use the variable name “password” or use the word “password” in any comments.

I’m sure there are better techniques – Java, via MATLAB, can do encryption and decryption, for example.