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Re: Disable ZeroConf: how to ?



On Fri, Mar 04, 2011 at 04:09:44PM +0100, Olaf van der Spek wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 3:59 PM, Klaus Ethgen <Klaus@ethgen.de> wrote:
> > In ancient times debian was packaged the way that the administrator only
> > installed the daemons that he needed. Today many daemons gets installed
> > by dependencies and gets started without any need.

> > If you want to change debian to be ubuntu it would be the time to look
> > for another distribution that can be used on servers. (unfortunately I
> > do not know an alternative.)
> 
> Actually "Ubuntu ships with no open ports on public interfaces" (by default).

[~]# netstat -ap|grep avahi
udp        0      0 *:mdns            *:*        1622/avahi-daemon: 
udp        0      0 *:45282           *:*        1622/avahi-daemon: 
udp6       0      0 [::]:mdns         [::]:*     1622/avahi-daemon: 
udp6       0      0 [::]:58036        [::]:*     1622/avahi-daemon: 

I admit I didn't notice this before, as I would never expect a _client_
system to have some crap listening by default.  And it is world-reachable
-- am I supposed to ensure the top s1kr3t address
2001:6a0:118:0:22cf:30ff:fec3:d4b7 never leaks out?  (oops...)


And why does it open this security hole?  To make it slightly easier to
configure link-local instant messages.  Who exactly is going to need that
these days?  The times of local networks disconnected from the world are
mostly over.  You have some non-networked machines here and there, but if
there's a network of some kind, it almost always is globally connected.
These few places that do have airwalled networks definitely don't want to
run link-local chat...

So, any gain is infinitessimally small, and the risk is real.  Even daemons
coded by most security-minded people that have seen a lot of review do have
exploitable holes once in a while, so I expect Avahi to fare no better.

Like, for example, #614785.

-- 
1KB		// Microsoft corollary to Hanlon's razor:
		//	Never attribute to stupidity what can be
		//	adequately explained by malice.


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