Remote Telnetting?

[James Keeline]

> Subject: Remote Telnetting?
> From: Brian Young <byoung292@mailworks.org>
>
>     I'm running YDL 2.3 with the Home/Office install, and I'd like to know
> how one goes about setting up their machine to be Telnetted into for remote
> command line access.  Preferably some sort of secure solution, I think I saw
> some mention of SSH for this once, but any Telnet method will do in the end.

It is not wise to use telnet.  Both the login and data exchange are passed
as clear text.  This means that a sniffer program or device on your subnet
could record every character which goes back and forth.  This is especially
a problem on cable modem networks where a given neighborhood subnet is 
shared via a device which acts as a network hub.  Similar problems exist
for FTP, email, and the web.

Secure Shell (ssh) is an appropriate substitute for telnet.  First, see if
you can connect to the same machine you are typing on.  Use the following:

  telnet localhost

If you can get in with a user name and password, you have the server running.

Next, your firewall on the destination machine has to let traffic through on
port 22.  You can test this in a number of ways depending on which software
is installed on your machine.

  nmap localhost   # this will tell you which ports are open and have servers

  ipchains -L      # this will list the firewall rules

On a Red Hat system, for example, there is a program called lokkit which is
used during the install process to set simple firewall rules.  Be aware that
it throws out the current rules so the ipchains -L command is useful to note
the ports which are currently open.

James D. Keeline
http://www.ITeachPHP.com


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