Charles,
It does deny access to anyone to your machine provided that their
machine's ip address is entered into the hosts.deny file. OR, if you have
a line in there such as:
ALL:ALL
That single line denies access to all services on your machine. Notice
here the operative word is "denies" and not totally secures the machine.
The services are denied to anyone (machines) requesting them. it doesn't
lock down your machine and make it impervious to attack or unauthorized
entry.
--
Mark
*****
"what knowledge I have managed to accumlate over the years
at times becomes obscured and even hidden amidst the vast
emotional onslaught of my children. You never finish being a parent. :)"
On Mon, 23 Apr 2001, ai4a wrote:
> Mark Weaver wrote:
> >
> > The hosts.deny file is a file that Portsentry uses to keep track of ip
> > addresses of machines that have scanned your machine's ports and tried to
> > gain access to your machine.
> >
> > if this file is empty it either means that portsentry hasn't detected
> > anyone scanning your machine, or that you haven't configured portsentry
> > and turned it on. which, is a bad thing. anyone running a linux box and
> > connecting to the internet that isn't running a modest 2 layer security
> > scheme is just asking for someone to break into their system and setup
> > shop. give them time....they will.
> >
> > I would stronly suggest you install and configure PMfirewall and also
> > configure portsentry to begin watching your ports. may I also suggest
> > that you turn off any and all services that you have running that you're
> > not using. such as telnet, ftp, and a host of others. you can do this
> > simply and quickly my opening the file /etc/services and commenting out
> > the lines representing , (naming) those things that you aren't using.
> > doing so will close those ports and make your machine inaccessable on
> > those ports.
> >
> > --
> >
> > Mark
> > *****
> >
> > "what knowledge I have managed to accumlate over the years
> > at times becomes obscured and even hidden amidst the vast
> > emotional onslaught of my children. You never finish being a parent. :)"
> > On Sat, 21 Apr 2001, ai4a wrote:
> >
> > > Hi:
> > > I use my system as a simple desktop machine & connect to the internet
> > > through a ppp line & a 56K modem. Does this mean that I connect to the
> > > internet and no one needs to connect to me??
> > >
> > > In my hosts.deny file I have:
> > > ALL: ALL: DENY
> > >
> > > In my hosts.allow file I have nothing:
> > > # there are no entries in my hosts.allow file
> > >
> > > I can still connect to the internet and all works fine. Is my hosts.deny
> > > file working? Do I have a deamon turned off? How can I test if
> > > hosts.deny is working?
> > >
>
> Thanks Mark
> Boy was I confused about the purpose of hosts.deny. I thought that it
> did what its name implied: denied access to anyone trying to connect to
> my machine!!! I guess I had best read up on hosts.deny. I don't
> understand why I would need anyone connecting to my machine. How can I
> stop all connections ( via the internet) to my machine?
> Thanks
> Charles
>
