illumos: manual page: tcpd.8

TCPD(8) Maintenance Commands and Procedures TCPD(8)

NAME

tcpd - access control facility for internet services

DESCRIPTION

The tcpd program can be set up to monitor incoming requests for telnet,
finger, ftp, exec, rsh, rlogin, tftp, talk, comsat and other services
that have a one-to-one mapping onto executable files.

The program supports both 4.3BSD-style sockets and System V.4-style TLI.
Functionality may be limited when the protocol underneath TLI is not an
internet protocol.

Operation is as follows: whenever a request for service arrives, the
inetd daemon is tricked into running the tcpd program instead of the
desired server. tcpd logs the request and does some additional checks.
When all is well, tcpd runs the appropriate server program and goes away.

Optional features are: pattern-based access control, client username
lookups with the RFC 931 etc. protocol, protection against hosts that
pretend to have someone elses host name, and protection against hosts
that pretend to have someone elses network address.

LIBWRAP INTERFACE

The same monitoring and access control functionality provided by the tcpd
standalone program is also available through the libwrap shared library
interface. Some programs, including the Solaris inetd daemon, have been
modified to use the libwrap interface and thus do not require replacing
the real server programs with tcpd. The libwrap interface is also more
efficient and can be used for inetd internal services. See inetd(8) for
more information.

LOGGING

Connections that are monitored by tcpd are reported through the syslog(3)
facility. Each record contains a time stamp, the client host name and the
name of the requested service. The information can be useful to detect
unwanted activities, especially when logfile information from several
hosts is merged.

In order to find out where your logs are going, examine the syslog
configuration file, usually /etc/syslog.conf.

ACCESS CONTROL

Optionally, tcpd supports a simple form of access control that is based
on pattern matching. The access-control software provides hooks for the
execution of shell commands when a pattern fires. For details, see the
hosts_access(5) manual page.

HOST NAME VERIFICATION

The authentication scheme of some protocols (rlogin, rsh) relies on host
names. Some implementations believe the host name that they get from any
random name server; other implementations are more careful but use a
flawed algorithm.

tcpd verifies the client host name that is returned by the address->name
DNS server by looking at the host name and address that are returned by
the name->address DNS server. If any discrepancy is detected, tcpd
concludes that it is dealing with a host that pretends to have someone
elses host name.

If the sources are compiled with -DPARANOID, tcpd will drop the
connection in case of a host name/address mismatch. Otherwise, the
hostname can be matched with the PARANOID wildcard, after which suitable
action can be taken.

HOST ADDRESS SPOOFING

Optionally, tcpd disables source-routing socket options on every
connection that it deals with. This will take care of most attacks from
hosts that pretend to have an address that belongs to someone elses
network. UDP services do not benefit from this protection. This feature
must be turned on at compile time.

RFC 931
When RFC 931 etc. lookups are enabled (compile-time option) tcpd will
attempt to establish the name of the client user. This will succeed only
if the client host runs an RFC 931-compliant daemon. Client user name
lookups will not work for datagram-oriented connections, and may cause
noticeable delays in the case of connections from PCs.

Warning: If the local system runs an RFC 931 server it is important that
it be configured NOT to use TCP Wrappers, or that TCP Wrappers be
configured to avoid RFC 931-based access control for this service. If
you use usernames in the access control files, make sure that you have a
hosts.allow entry that allows the RFC 931 service (often called "identd"
or "auth") without any username restrictions. Failure to heed this
warning can result in two hosts getting in an endless loop of consulting
each other's identd services.

EXAMPLES

ATTRIBUTES