Re: disabling port 79

From: Rodrigo Barbosa (rodrigob@tisbrasil.com.br)
Date: 02/22/02 

Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 15:07:20 -0300
From: Rodrigo Barbosa <rodrigob@tisbrasil.com.br>
To: "Dean Fox" <dfox168@hotmail.com>

On Wed, Feb 20, 2002 at 10:55:29AM -0500, Dean Fox wrote:
> I am contemplating to remove/disable finger or port 79 from some
> workstations and/or servers. Is there any negative impact for doing it?
> Any advice is much appreciated.

Actualy, considering that your system probably have a standard finger
daemon, the impact would be positive, not negative.

The finger service used to be very useful in the good old days. But in
todays Internet enviroment, the information leakage it provides
represents a security problem.

However, the finger protocol (which could not be simpler), still
provides a wide range of possibilities. Specific finger-like daemons
can be used to provide controled information. Try:

finger @finger.kernel.org

There are also other services that can be implement. I use finger to
monitor the status of my network, and to provide GPG/PGP public keys.
Of couse, I don't use a standard finger daemon, but a little fingerd
daemon I created, yafingerd (shameless plug). Avaliable at sourceforge.

[]s 

-- 
 Rodrigo Barbosa                   - rodrigob at tisbrasil.com.br
 TIS 				   - Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil
 "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"  - http://www.tisbrasil.com.br/
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