SUMMARY: finger protocol

From: lipscomb@vision1.engr.utk.edu
Date: Mon Jul 25 1994 - 14:30:59 CDT


Hello all,

here is the original query:

> several users are curious about the use of back finger to
> check and see if they have been finger'ed. also, this
> may be helpful in providing stats of people finger'ing
> generic accounts. does anyone know any info about this?
> please do not send "send me info as well" messages
> since I will post a summary.

What was reported to me was the following:

1. use the 'tcp wrapper' programs to trap TCP daemons
telnet, rlogin, ftp, etc.

* can use archie to search for 'tcp wrapper'

2. finger is actually a telnet to port 79. rewrite finger
to monitor this port (done easily with 'tcp wrapper' programs)

3. a modification of the DECUS finger (sorry, we use SunOS 4.x)

4. look into GNU's implementation of finger which is "*very*"
configurable.

5. write a shell process that will "continuously write to the pipe
in the background". this is good also for getting different .plan
files each finger.

**** thanks to z056716@uprc.com (LaCoursiere J. D. (Jeff)) ****

(from ones' home directory)
1. rm .plan
2. mknod .plan p
3. vi ./fingerd
(create a script like the following: )

#!/bin/csh -f
while(1)
        /usr/games/fortune >& ~/.plan
        set datevar=`date`
        echo -n $datevar >> ~/fingerlog
        ps auxw | fgrep "finger $USER" >> ~/fingerlog
end

4. ./fingerd &

You might want to put a check for fingerd running in your .login or
possibly in a cron job. If it doesn't run, the finger will block
on a read from the pipe and the person fingering will get nothing
:-< .

I just whipped this up out of my head, so you may have to tweak it
to get it just right. Might have to send a ^D before looping again
(or it may continuously send fortune's to a never-ending finger!)...

6. suggestion of not doing this at all since "Two hosts can get
into a 'finger war' with each other."

Solution:
I decided to stick with idea number 6 for now. Besides, other work
started to take my time so I could not play with the tcp wrapper
packages.

-Mike-

Many Thanks to all who replied:

David Mostardi <david@capmkt.com>
Bryan J Jensen <BJJ@ecl.psu.edu>
t2r@freeport.uwasa.fi (Tommi Rintala)
John Clement-Rice U <CLEMENT@physics.rice.edu>
Kambiz Aghaiepour <kxaghai@srv.PacBell.COM>
Kevin Martinez <lps@rahul.net>
z056716@uprc.com (LaCoursiere J. D. (Jeff))
peter@jrc.nl (Peter Watkins)
jsoares@porthos.inescn.pt (Joaquim Fernando Soares)
"Patrick O'Callaghan" <poc@usb.ve>
Serguei Vodopianov <vodopis@alleg.EDU>



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