Re: tlug: Now, ain't this really odd??!!

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "Matt" == Matt Gushee <matt@example.com> writes:

    Matt> Hmm ... Steve knows a lot more about sys-adminning than I
    Matt> do, but why not put

    Matt> ALL: ALL

    Matt> in /etc/hosts.deny, then specify a few friendly hosts in
    Matt> /etc/hosts.allow? Unless it's important for people to be
    Matt> able to telnet you as soon as you make their acquaintance on
    Matt> IRC.

My, aren't we paranoid?

And we should be :-(  

But why not?
(1) No incoming mail.  OK if you're getting all your mail from an MX
    somewhere.
(2) FTP must be passive.  Not a problem most of the time.
(3) No IRC DCC.  In fact, if you use an identd-using IRC server, no
    IRC at all (unless it's on the friendly list; I don't know of any
    useful server (== in California where my sister's provider has
    hectobyte/sec or better transmission rates) that isn't full at
    least 20% of the time, so that's hard to guarantee).

    There are other net resources that may use ident or something like 
    that; sometimes they will deny access if they can't reach you.  I
    believe Apache can be configured that way, for example.
(4) Jim Tittsler will never display xroach on your system.  (The look
    on Craig's face I will never forget.)  There are a few realtime
    systems that use X connections, although they're becoming rarer.

But at bottom, personally, I prefer an open system.  The
recommendation to block the rogue site is a response to clear and
present danger.

In the long run, probably a better solution than using tcpwrappers
(/etc/hosts.{allow,deny} is to use ipchains (the modern Linux
firewalling technology).  (For the rogue) replacing the tcpd is easy,
hacking a running kernel is hard.

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