telnet connected but without response

Tomasz Pona koczis@parasoft.com
Tue Feb 9 15:51:00 GMT 2010


Charles Wilson wrote:
> Bingo! telnet is an inherently unsafe technology which exchanges
> passwords in plaintext, where any schmuck with a packet sniffer can see
> your password. Combined that with wireless ethernet, and you're just
> screaming "HACK ME!".
>
> If you have ANY choice in the matter, use ssh instead.

I'm behind a relatively well maintained firewall and I don't think me and my
colleagues should suspect aech other here. ;)
It's of course a very slight chance of some fake technician sneaking here
and there and connecting to our LAN, but well... sh*t just happens.
Out of necessity we're using SSH now, but it looks like telnet is a lot
easier to maintain and understand: we had inetd configured already
and we had to enable sshd. Obviously ssh-config scripts are doing great job
setting defaults, but when reading doc you're immediately attacked by the
overburden of information on:
- public key generation,
- forwarding of the authentication agent connection
- port forwarding
- pre- and post- authentication
- privilege separation and special inaccessible account demand
- access rights problems and another special account demand
- this and that being an option and a subject for configuration

Just reading the docs makes me feel that I probably understand 20% of what
is written there (considering the language used) and I immediately tend to
love our old good firewall + telnet solution. I'm pretty convinced I'm not
alone...

Thanks for looking at this Chuck.


Regards,
Tomasz Pona


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