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Date:      Tue, 6 Apr 1999 13:04:42 -0700 (PDT)
From:      Nick Sayer <nsayer@quack.kfu.com>
To:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: cvs commit: ports/security/identify - Imported sources
Message-ID:  <199904062004.NAA34014@medusa.kfu.com>
In-Reply-To: <18803.923390753@axl.noc.iafrica.com> from Sheldon Hearn at "Apr 6, 1999 11:25:53 am"

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> 
> 
> On Fri, 02 Apr 1999 11:07:31 PST, Nick Sayer wrote:
> 
> >   Log Message:
> >   Add "identify" daemon wrapper. Allows one to add ident lookup and logging
> >   to arbitrary daemons (like telnetd or fingerd).
> 
> Since a remote host's response to your ident request offers you nothing
> in terms of security, I'd _strongly_ recommend that this port be moved
> to net and _not_ left in security, where it's bound to mislead the
> uninitiated.

It is appropriate to leave it in security, because it is a logging
tool. It can be used to identify miscreants in certain, limited
circumstances. Specifically...

You get a connection from a shell account ISP. The machine is not
evil, but a particular user is. Under those circumstances, the
data you get from the remote identd daemon is useful to the
extent that you can send the ident readback to the administrators
of the machine.

There are programs (ircd, for one) and users who misconstrue ident
as being an authentication protocols (in ircd's case, despite their
protestations, the de facto use to which they put identd is
authentication, since they take the ident protocol output and make
that the left-hand-side of your e-mail address, even if the data
is a logging token only -- as allowed by the RFC when you set the
machine type to OTHER). identify certainly isn't one of them.

-- 
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tr 'a-z' 'n-za-m'              : 
or remove nospam in From: line : What goes around, comes around.
http://www.kfu.com/~nsayer/    : 


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