Date: Sun, 11 Jul 1999 17:15:09 -0500 From: Jon Hamilton <hamilton@pobox.com> To: Mark Murray <mark@grondar.za> Cc: Doug <Doug@gorean.org>, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: a BSD identd Message-ID: <19990711221510.E2F55220@woodstock.monkey.net> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 11 Jul 1999 22:34:09 %2B0200." <199907112034.WAA17651@gratis.grondar.za>
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In message <199907112034.WAA17651@gratis.grondar.za>, Mark Murray wrote: } > 1. ident is useful as far as it goes. It shouldn't be trusted as } > authentication, but it can give you a good idea of where to start when } > tracking down problem users. } } First thing you say to yourself after a compromise is "trust nothing". } Things like idents can/will/should/are targets. As has been said over and over, identd isn't useful to track a compromise of the machine running it, but can be useful if machine A is running it and hasn't been compromised, and machine A is used to break into machine B. Of course even then you have to be careful about trusting logs, but in a well set up environment it's certainly better than nothing. And it's useful for tracking abuse that's not related to breaking into machines. [ ... ] } > 3. Having a built in version of a "real" ident run out of inetd would be } > *very* welcome by the people that need it. pidentd is a bloated, buggy pig. } } Small set of people. Much larger set of dupes who would believe/trust } this. While that's true, I'll say again that it's an argument against _abusing_ identd and not an argument against _using_ it. You may not like/want/need it, but other people do, and not all of them are idiots. Just because someone else's usage model differs from yours doesn't make their experiences or desires invalid. -- Jon Hamilton hamilton@pobox.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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