🚀 go-pugleaf

dank@blacks.jpl.nasa.gov (Dan Kegel) writes:

>But what about 'Horton'?  It fingers all the participating machines in
>one's own domain hourly to update an e-mail address database,
>which users then access via whois.
>Since all the finger requests it generates are between two sites inside 
>your own domain, they should be easy to distinguish as benign.
>Do you consider this a 'bad' use of finger?

Ummmmmm.. I think I'd like to think about that one. On the whole, I'd
have preferred 'horton' to distribute a variant of the fingerd daemon
as a stepping stone to applying for an allocated SERVICE number from
NIC/<whoeveritis> so that this migrates to another port.

That way I know that this traffic is constrained to just that context.

no... I dont trust every host within my local domain. some of these hosts
are TCP/IP terminal servers where connect <host> <port> is legal, so people
can be emulating a range of services by telnet-typing.

>It would be impractical to make horton use something other than finger,
>since it's whole reason for being is that it makes use of a universally 
>available protocol for gathering information & thus requires no
>active cooperation from the participating (but anarchic) sites.

This is a dual-edged sword. Deploying something as sensitive as an information
gatherer, without requiring active consent, and to close off access requiring
local modification.... not social behaviour methinks.

I think I'm being too paranoid. This problem probably isn't that big, its
just giving me an itchy feeling.

On the whole, I think (mis)use of finger is doing more good than bad. I'd have
preferred to see the various threads of functionality unravelled a bit more. 

	-George
--
                         George Michaelson
G.Michaelson@cc.uq.oz.au The Prentice Centre      | There's no  market for
                         University of Queensland | hippos in Philadelphia
Phone: +61 7 365 4079    QLD Australia 4072       |          -Bertold Brecht