finger is a service that lets you see who is logged into the system and a little about them like last login, new mail, unread mail, the users $HOME directory, and their .plan file.

The way this can be exploited is most commonly in information gathering. Remotely you can use finger on a domain name and get information about who is logged into the system and on which tty.

A couple of other simple networking utilites that produce interesting output are `rusers' , `showmount', `host' and `whois'.

Here is an example of the hosts command in action.

# host -l -v -t any bu.edu

Found 1 addresses for BU.EDU
Found 1 addresses for RS0.INTERNIC.NET
Found 1 addresses for SOFTWARE.BU.EDU
Found 5 addresses for RS.INTERNIC.NET
Found 1 addresses for NSEGC.BU.EDU
Trying 128.197.27.7
bu.edu 86400 IN SOA BU.EDU HOSTMASTER.BU.EDU(
961112121 ;serial (version)
900 ;refresh period
900 ;retry refresh this often
604800 ;expiration period
86400 ;minimum TTL
)
bu.edu 86400 IN NS SOFTWARE.BU.EDU
bu.edu 86400 IN NS RS.INTERNIC.NET
bu.edu 86400 IN NS NSEGC.BU.EDU
bu.edu 86400 IN A 128.197.27.7


And here is a nifty output on that domain using whois.

bu.edu 86400 IN HINFO SUN-SPARCSTATION-10/41 UNIX
PPP-77-25.bu.edu 86400 IN A 128.197.7.237
PPP-77-25.bu.edu 86400 IN HINFO PPP-HOST PPP-SW
PPP-77-26.bu.edu 86400 IN A 128.197.7.238
PPP-77-26.bu.edu 86400 IN HINFO PPP-HOST PPP-SW
ODIE.bu.edu 86400 IN A 128.197.10.52
ODIE.bu.edu 86400 IN MX 10 CS.BU.EDU
ODIE.bu.edu 86400 IN HINFO DEC-ALPHA-3000/300LX OSF1
STRAUSS.bu.edu 86400 IN HINFO PC-PENTIUM DOS/WINDOWS
BURULLUS.bu.edu 86400 IN HINFO SUN-3/50 UNIX (Ouch)
GEORGETOWN.bu.edu 86400 IN HINFO MACINTOSH MAC-OS
CHEEZWIZ.bu.edu 86400 IN HINFO SGI-INDIGO-2 UNIX
POLLUX.bu.edu 86400 IN HINFO SUN-4/20-SPARCSTATION-SLC UNIX
SFA109-PC201.bu.edu 86400 IN HINFO PC MS-DOS/WINDOWS
UH-PC002-CT.bu.edu 86400 IN HINFO PC-CLONE MS-DOS
SOFTWARE.bu.edu 86400 IN HINFO SUN-SPARCSTATION-10/30 UNIX
CABMAC.bu.edu 86400 IN HINFO MACINTOSH MAC-OS
VIDUAL.bu.edu 86400 IN HINFO SGI-INDY IRIX
KIOSK-GB.bu.edu 86400 IN HINFO GATORBOX GATORWARE
CLARINET.bu.edu 86400 IN HINFO VISUAL-X-19-TURBO X-SERVER
DUNCAN.bu.edu 86400 IN HINFO DEC-ALPHA-3000/400 OSF1
MILHOUSE.bu.edu 86400 IN HINFO VAXSTATION-II/GPX UNIX
PSY81-PC150.bu.edu 86400 IN HINFO PC WINDOWS-95
BUPHYC.bu.edu 86400 IN HINFO VAX-4000/300 OpenVMS

Ok, so you get the idea, check out the man pages on those commands.

For any exploits go chedck out http://www.securityfocus.com/, they have a good database.