LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Andrew Galdes <AGaldes@elders.com.au>
  To  : Glen Turner <glen.turner@aarnet.edu.au>
  Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 13:36:31 +0930

RE: finger help (BACK ON TRACK)

Ok, so what are the alternatives (more configurabel) options rather then
Finger?

Andrew Galdes


> 
> David Newall wrote:
> > Everybody "knows" its insecure, yet nobody can say why.
> 
> Finger is insecure because it leaks more information that
> is required.  For example, it can be used to externally
> identify idle accounts through the "last login" or
> "mail messages" lines.
> 
> Furthermore, with no administrator action 10% of
> passwords are trivially derivable from a person's
> name and contact information.  Thus the more paranoid
> administrators do not present name and contact information
> together with a user ID to unauthenticated external users.
> 
> The OpenLDAP package provides a finger replacement
> that does an LDAP user lookup.  Thus finger can
> be used to find contact information about users
> (which is what 'nice' people use finger for) rather
> than revealing information about login accounts
> (which is of interest to less nice people).
> 
> Glen
> 
> -- 
>  Glen Turner                                 Network Engineer
>  (08) 8303 3936      Australian Academic and Research Network
>  glen.turner@aarnet.edu.au          http://www.aarnet.edu.au/
> --
>  The revolution will not be televised, it will be digitised
> 
> -- 
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