[alt.security] tftp

rang@cs.wisc.edu (Anton Rang) (06/07/90)

In article <3023@unisoft.UUCP> greywolf@unisoft.UUCP (The Grey Wolf) writes:
>To what extent does one disable tftp (or did the original user mean
>anonymous ftp)?

  At a minimum, you should restrict either which hosts can access tftp
on a given machine, or which files tftp can access.  The problem is
that tftp, as distributed, lets anyone access any publicly-readable
file, and lots of important files (like /etc/passwd) are publicly
readable.  (In other words, having tftp enabled allows dictionary
attacks to be tried without needing an account on the remote machine.)

  This is my understanding of the matter, at least; feel free to
correct any misapprehensions.

		Anton
   
+---------------------------+------------------+-------------+
| Anton Rang (grad student) | rang@cs.wisc.edu | UW--Madison |
+---------------------------+------------------+-------------+

loverso@Xylogics.COM (John Robert LoVerso) (06/07/90)

And don't be fooled by the fact that the TFTP protocol doesn't include
a list-directory call.  The BSD tftpd will allow [publically readable]
directories to be read, and so a clever user tftp program could use this
to implement an "ls"-style listing.  This can give away the names of
subdirectories you might have in your tftp-area (if you are running
a "secure" tftpd that does a chroot), or let the people walk your
whole filesystem, even if they don't know its layout before hand.

A trivial change to tftpd would prevent the reading of all but plain
files.

John
-- 
John Robert LoVerso			Xylogics, Inc.  617/272-8140 x284
loverso@Xylogics.COM			Annex Terminal Server Development Group