Re: Telnet

[Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org>]

On Sun, Dec 03, 2023 at 11:52:51AM -0700, Charles Curley wrote:
> On Sun, 3 Dec 2023 17:00:44 +0100
> Marco Moock <mm@dorfdsl.de> wrote:
> 
> > > 
> > > How do you find 1994? It seems to be a mail from yesterday:  
> > 
> > For me it sounded like a joke.
> > 
> > Telnet is unencrypted (although it is possible to run it over TLS to
> > encrypt it) and SSH exists more than 20 years.
> 
> True. None the less, there is at least one perfectly good use for
> telnet: testing connections to servers.
> 
> charles@hawk:~$ telnet hawk
> Trying 127.0.1.1...
> telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused
> charles@hawk:~$ telnet hawk 80
> Trying 127.0.1.1...
> Connected to hawk.localdomain.
> Escape character is '^]'.
> ^]
> telnet> quit
> Connection closed.
> charles@hawk:~$ 

Yes, there is plenty of use for the telnet *client*.  Nobody disputes this.

The question is whether anyone should be running a telnetd *server*.
On an isolated network, it might be acceptable.  But it's really a bad
habit that should be stomped out aggressively, as machines which are
currently on an isolated network might not remain there forever.