On Wed, Feb 20, 2002 at 10:55:29AM -0500, Dean Fox wrote: > I am contemplating to remove/disable finger or port 79 from some > workstations and/or servers. Is there any negative impact for doing it? > Any advice is much appreciated.
Actualy, considering that your system probably have a standard finger daemon, the impact would be positive, not negative. The finger service used to be very useful in the good old days. But in todays Internet enviroment, the information leakage it provides represents a security problem. However, the finger protocol (which could not be simpler), still provides a wide range of possibilities. Specific finger-like daemons can be used to provide controled information. Try: finger @finger.kernel.org There are also other services that can be implement. I use finger to monitor the status of my network, and to provide GPG/PGP public keys. Of couse, I don't use a standard finger daemon, but a little fingerd daemon I created, yafingerd (shameless plug). Avaliable at sourceforge. []s -- Rodrigo Barbosa - rodrigob at tisbrasil.com.br TIS - Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" - http://www.tisbrasil.com.br/ Brainbench Certified -> Transcript ID #3332104
