Re: [cobalt-users] Fw: IDENTD

[shimi <shimi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 26 May 2001, satan wrote:

> 
> 
> Hello All,
> 
> One of my user asked me to enable identd for irc purpose.
> 
> I m totally un familliar with both and i would like to know what this
> involve any security breach ??? and how i do that on my raq ??
> 
> 
> Thank in Advance
> Stephen Gilbert
> satan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> 

some irc networks require people to have identd (ident daemon) running on
the machine they're connecting from.

identd is a server that returns, upon giving information about a
connection currently existing by the requestor and the server, the
username who initiated that connection. (or, the owner of the program who
owns that connection, to be exact)

This is not a security breach. It's the opposite - it allows people who
were connected to by your server to know what user did it, and report
abuse in that case.

You can download an identd server from
http://freshmeat.net/projects/oidentd
it works fine on my raq3.

Nevertheless, a warning about IRC:

Some people on IRC are just evil, and will not hesitate DoSing your
machine to stop someone from bouncing through it, and some will even go
further and try to hack your machine. That's the *real* security concern.

If the user will be using private places with no harmful people, I guess
that's ok, but who knows...

remember, when he's IRCing from your machine, everybody talking with him
on IRC will see *your* address (which is usually why they ask to do that
on the first place...)

It's up to you what to do.

HTH,

- shimi.