These classnotes are depreciated. As of 2005, I no longer teach the classes. Notes will remain online for legacy purposes

UNIX01/Telnet

Classnotes | UNIX01 | RecentChanges | Preferences

If you have worked with computers on the internet for longer than a few years, chances are you have encountered Telnet. Telnet is a means by which you can connect remotely to another machine.

Telnet is fast and simple, but unfortunately has one very serious problem: It's authentication is sent across the network as plain-text. Thus, anyone with a packet sniffer or issuing a "man in the middle" attack can obtain confidential information and subvert authentication credentials.

As a result, Telnet's use is diminishing lately. Few Linux distributions ship with it enabled by default and many out-right discourage it with warnings when it is being installed.

If you really have a need for a Telnet server on your system then the most common is telnetd. However, I personally would recommend using it only in chrooted environments.

See UNIX02/Concepts Of Chroot for more information on chroot


Classnotes | UNIX01 | RecentChanges | Preferences
This page is read-only | View other revisions
Last edited August 1, 2003 4:54 am (diff)
Search:
(C) Copyright 2003 Samuel Hart
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.