Impact of installing and running tcp wrappers?

[MAD_2]

Can anyone tell me the impact it will have to install tcp wrappers on my system and provide more in depth knowledge (An RP5470 with HP-UX 11.00)? I mean, what exactly will it affect? Will it create certain network restrictions. Where can I find more documentation about what I need to be aware of?

Also, what are all of the specific software requirements before I attempt to install it? Do I require a reboot after installation for it to work? I did not find much documentation on the HP site for download:

http://h21007.www2.hp.com/dspp/tech/tech_TechSoftwareDetailPage_IDX/1,1703,574,00.html

Thanks,

[Steven Sim Kok Leong]

Hi,

As far as I recall (as I compile directly from the source tarball and not the depot), there is no special software requirements or reboot needed.

This is because tcpwrapper is basically made up of a main tcpd binary. As its name implies, it is a wrapper that can be applied to your existing inetd-spawned daemons (e.g. telnetd, remshd etc). As such, usually the common steps involved after installation are:

1) Copying the proper daemon binaries to the correct directory
2) Modifying /etc/inetd.conf appropriately, replacing pathname of daemons you want to tcpwrap with calls to tcpd with the respective options instead.
3) Reload the inetd superdaemon by executing:
# inetd -c

Hope this helps. Regards.

Steven Sim Kok Leong

[A. Daniel King_1]

It seems that HP 11.0 has gone and included similar code directly into inetd or the various services. man inetd.sec gives:

When inetd accepts a connection from a remote system, it checks the address of the host requesting the service against the list of hosts to be allowed or denied access to the specific service...

(inetd.sec would be the rough eqivalent of hosts.allow and hosts.deny from tcp_wrappers.)

[MAD_2]

OK, now U. SivaKumar has come and kind of made me a little worried with the comments about the Trojan Horse, when was this discovered? Where can I find more reading material on the history of this event? Also, are there any other known bugs any of you is aware of? How about some good examples for configuring hosts.allow and hosts.deny (I mean, different scenarios)

Thanks,

[Bill Hassell]

I would start by downloading the HP-provided version of TCP wrappers from devresource.hp.com and look at the docs that come with it.

[U.SivaKumar_2]

Hi,
For more information on trojan in TCP wrappers
look at this link

http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-1999-01.html

For sample configuration of TCP wrappers have a look at this link.

http://docsrv.caldera.com/NET_tcpip/filterN.tcp_wrap_ex.html


regards,
U.SivaKumar

[MAD_2]

Thanks Bill, that's the version I downloaded, the depot binaries for HP-UX 11.00. Once again, thank you for the good information SivaKumar.