Full Disclosure mailing list archives

Re: Re: Re: open telnet port


From: Andrew Haninger <ahaning () gmail com>
Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 13:10:15 -0400

If you need this on as the norm, please at least use TCP wrappers to
limit  from where it can be accessed, and change any used passwords
immediately after reestablishing control.

I think the real insecurity in telnet comes not from buffer-overflows
and whatnot, but rather from people sniffing the network and getting
your password in a nice convenient program window. Actually, my guess
is that the telnet daemon is probably quite secure in terms of remote
exploits.

Try it sometime on a small temporary network. Start ethereal and the
login over telnet to some machine. Right-click on a telnet packet and
select "Follow TCP Stream". In the next window, view the stream as
ASCII. Hey, look, it's your password. This is what convinced me that
telnet is bad.

-Andy

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