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Re: Dropping telnetd and rsh* for security reasons?



On Thu, 2003-05-15 at 08:57, Paul Johnson wrote:
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> On Thu, May 15, 2003 at 08:31:27AM -0400, Andrew Perrin wrote:
> > Please don't do this! I need telnetd for a specific application, for which
> > ssh is not practical. I know the risks and accept them. Put a dire warning
> > on the screen when installing if you must, but don't drop the opportunity
> > just to protect me from myself.
> 
> I was thinking slightly more altruistically:  Protecting you (which is
> not exclusive to Mr. Perrin by any means) from the rest of the net.
> My rationale is basically two-pronged:
> 
> 1) The various rsh packages have been largely, if not totally,
>    replaced by ssh.  Now, since rsh has a tendancy of basically
>    shouting whatever goes across it in plaintext across the network,
>    rsh isn't exactly a sane item to be keeping on the net if you don't
>    like the idea of anybody who 0wnzed a router your connection
>    happens to be going through being able to gain access to your box.
> 
> 2) telnetd's functionality has been entirely replaced by ssh, and Free
>    ssh clients are available on damn near every platform out there
>    natively, and anything with a java interpreter.  People who know
>    they're in a specialty environment could either compile it
>    themselves (since it's a really small package) or make a backport
>    and submit it to apt-get.org.

telnet is useful because it's on all Windows machines stretching back
probably to Win3.1.  In other words, it's the lowest common denominator.

-- 
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
| Ron Johnson, Jr.        mailto:ron.l.johnson@cox.net          |
| Jefferson, LA  USA      http://members.cox.net/ron.l.johnson  |
|                                                               |
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