Disabling Services

[Ahmed_58]

Hi,
Although I disable some services like "echo" & "finger" command, by commented out '#' in /etc/inetd.conf file and then inetd -c to refresh, but when I type echo and finger I got the result back!

# finger ahmed
Login name: ahmed
Directory: /home/ahmed Shell: /usr/bin/sh
Last login Tue Mar 27 11:16 on pts/ta
New mail received Tue Nov 9 11:30:33 2004;
unread since Thu Mar 15 22:12:53 2007
No Plan.

# echo hello
hello

please help,
Ahmed

[Peter Godron]

Ahmed,
I believe finger will always work on the localhost, unless to remove/permission protect the executable.

[Rasheed Tamton]

Hi,

Finger can also be used to list users on a remote machine. The format for user_name is user_name@host. If user_name is not specified, the remote system (HP-UX or non-HP-UX) uses its default standard format for listing user information

Try finger @your-hostname (from another host and see the result).

It is recommended to disbale these services because of the security vulnerabilities involved. You can get information from remote systems if it is not disabled.

Regards,
Rasheed Tamton.

[DCE]

you could use tcp wrappers to disable the command. I use wrappers to disable telnet, for example

[Eric Jacklin]

Hi ahmed,

Go to /etc/inetd.conf
Comment all the services which you want to stop from UDP/TCP.

Onces you do that you have to run
inetd -c so that i will re-read the config file otherwise this changes will not get affected.

[Ahmed_58]

Thank you all for useful information.
Ahmed