telnet with root user on RH7.2

[Nowhere man]

Hello,
I've managed to get my telnet connection working.
I use win2000 to telnet to a Red Hat 7.2 machine.
All logins work fine but when I try to login as root, I always get the message that the login is incorrect.

Is this normal?? and what can I do about it!!

[Peter Kloetgen]

Hi,

why do you want to login as root with telnet???

This is a security problem! Telnet doesn't use data encryption, so if you do so, everybody who "listens" in the net can get your (needed) root password! Login as normal user, and then do a switch user to root on the computer. This makes more sense. RedHat and the other Linuxes forbid login as root with telnet per default and this is correct.

To login as root directly you should use a terminal emulator like ReflectionX or Exeed which both use data encryption.

( commands to listen are allready installed on most operating systems: nettl (HP-UX) or snoop (Solaris) for example.)

Allways stay on the bright side of life!

Peter

[Javier Juarez]

Peter is OK, But if You really need login as root, just rename /etc/securetty to another name
, or, If You Prefer, login as a normal user then su to root.

[I_M]

Hi,

In /etc/pam.d/login
the first line is the one which control the root login.
Comment the line.

auth required /lib/security/pam_securetty.so

If you edit this file. you don't need to touch /etc/securetty file.

Thanks

[Frank Gilsdorf]

Hi,

I think the easiest way is to use a ssh-client on windows. I prefer putty. Look at www.openssh.org for it. It secure and it is comfortable copmaring to Win-telnet.

Frank

[U.SivaKumar_2]

hi,
edit /etc/securetty
pts/1
pts/2
pts/3
pts/4
pts/5
pts/6
..
..
you will able to login as root in telnet.
regards,
U.SivaKumar

[Alan Deger]

And for the record, the only real reason to disallow direct telnet login as root is to prevent a brute force attack directly as the root user. Since all telnet traffic is transmitted in clear text, if anyone is also listening/packet snooping and you "su"'d to root they would also get the root password.

By disallowing telnet as root you force a brute force attacker to find a valid username and two passwords instead of a single root password.

-ard