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Inet Daemons and Punks

From: Doug Sutherland <>
Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2001 16:51:30 -0500

wear-hards,

I have had some really bad experiences with hackers in the past
year. I want to warn you that if you do default linux installs 
and connect your wearable to the net, you are opening yourself 
up for attack. I therefore want to suggest that if your wearable
(or any linux box) connects to the net, you need to turn of the 
various daemons that allow TCP connections! All you have to do 
is edit your /etc/inetd.conf file and comment out all of those
daemons with a # character (telnet, ftp, pop3, etc). 

Note that shutting off these daemons for telnet, ftp, finger, 
etc do NOT stop you from accessing other machines with these 
same tools, they only stop people from breaking IN, which is 
what you want to stop. I think it's a big mistake for distros
like redhat to default these daemons to be running all the 
time on initial install. If you haven't turned these off, do 
it now! You might also consider editing your /etc/hosts.deny 
file and adding a line that says ALL: ALL. If you want to 
grant access to selective machines or domains, you can add an 
entry in your /etc/hosts.allow that says ALL: IPaddress or 
domain. You can even set up "booby traps" such that attempts
to telnet to your machine will invoke a finger, and send an 
email to you indicating who the creep is. Details on how to 
do this can be found by doing a "man hosts.deny" command.

Don't wait until punky creates his owns login ID on your 
wearable and starts hacking other people's machines (esp DOD)
using your wearable! Comment out those nasty daemons in your
inetd.conf right now, all of them ...

  -- Doug 

------------------------------------------------------------
  Grow your own Wearables: http://wearables.los-gatos.net
 What I'd like is to have you call me and my jacket answers
------------------------------------------------------------

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