Setting Restriction of Access to Linux

This would depend on what criteria you are going to use to decide what is allowed and what isn't.

If you want to restrict which machines can telnet to your Linux box, inetd/xinetd can be configured to handle this or you could use firewall rules.

I could not find inetd, instead, I can find xinedt.d folder
which contains several files. One of which is telnet conf file. Is this the one I need to change in order to stop this service?

You can restrict assessing your machine by two ways.

1. As said by MindBender.  This is possible only if you are using TCP wrappers.

2. By filtering (using ipchains or iptables according to your kernel).

If the telnet conf file in ur xinetd.d contains a line like /usr/sbin/tcpd in.telnetd, then u had TCP wrappers installed and the method of MindBender is absolutely right to allocate telnet only to 192.168.1.24 machine.

If you don't had TCP wrappers, then ipchains/iptables can be used.

Suppose you want to permit only 192.168.1.24 to telnet into the server.

/sbin/ipchains -A input -s ! 192.168.1.24 --destination-port 21 -j DENY

or

/sbin/ipchains -t filter -A INPUT -s ! 192.168.1.24 -p tcp --destination-port 21 -j DENY
I think this will solve ur problem

Moorthy

You can restrict assessing your machine by two ways.

1. As said by MindBender.  This is possible only if you are using TCP wrappers.

2. By filtering (using ipchains or iptables according to your kernel).

If the telnet conf file in ur xinetd.d contains a line like /usr/sbin/tcpd in.telnetd, then u had TCP wrappers installed and the method of MindBender is absolutely right to allocate telnet only to 192.168.1.24 machine.

If you don't had TCP wrappers, then ipchains/iptables can be used.

Suppose you want to permit only 192.168.1.24 to telnet into the server.

/sbin/ipchains -A input -s ! 192.168.1.24 --destination-port 21 -j DENY

or

/sbin/ipchains -t filter -A INPUT -s ! 192.168.1.24 -p tcp --destination-port 21 -j DENY
I think this will solve ur problem

Moorthy

This is for RedHat using xinetd.

You can use the xinetd.d/telnet file to disable ANY telnet access.  This is mine, notice the "disable = yes" line.  This prevents ANY incoming access on port 23 from starting telnet.  This will NOT prevent you from running the telnet daemon and poosibly allowing access,  this also prevents you from using telnet on your "internal" network for administration (not realy a bad thing if you use ssh instead).

Of course, if you want to use telnet internaly you need to use ipchains or iptables to restrict access to port 23 to allow only internal traffic to reach port 23.


File: telnet            Col 0              303 bytes                        100%
# default: on
# description: The telnet server serves telnet sessions; it uses \
#       unencrypted username/password pairs for authentication.
service telnet
{
        disable = yes
        flags           = REUSE
        socket_type     = stream
        wait            = no
        user            = root
        server          = /usr/sbin/in.telnetd
        log_on_failure  += USERID
}


You can edit /etc/sysconfig/ipchains and add the following lines.

-A input -p tcp -s 192.168.10.0/24 -d 192.168.10.0/24 23:23 -y -j ACCEPT
-A input -p udp -s 192.168.10.0/24 -d 192.168.10.0/24 23:23 -j ACCEPT

These ALLOW access to port 23 ONLY when the source and destinations are inside my firewall (really the 192.168.10.x subnet).  You will need to enable the xinetd.d/telnet to use telnet.


Sinc you also asked about ports in general...
The first line DENY's tcp traffic from anywhere TO anywhere.  DENY means that a response is sent back to requestor (means someone now knows a machine is at your IP Address).  the REJECT line stops UDP traffic on ports 0 through 1023 and does NOT send any response, this means a port scanner will not "see" your system.  So for "stealth" type protection, set both to REJECT.

-A input -p tcp -s 0/0 -d 0/0 0:1023 -y -j DENY
-A input -p udp -s 0/0 -d 0/0 0:1023 -j REJECT

The ipchains man pages will give you a much better explanation of all the parameters.

FYI:
port 21 is for FTP.
I DO NOT enable Telnet and only use ssh.

Todd R.

Keep your life simple!!! TCP wrapper is xinetd in RedHat, telnet-server, wu-ftpd package is installed to work with xinetd. Follow MindBender instruction! Dont complicate a simple task by using ipchains/iptables, those are for real firewall config.

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