Finger

About 3-4 months ago, I posted a thread asking questions about the FINGER DAEMON. Now, I seem to have been able to communicate with it. I get this responce when I give a valid FINGER: username.

----======**************************************=======-----
Finger Client Responces to Generated Usernames.
----======**************************************=======-----
Finger Username:John
login :cunniffe
Directory: /usr4/home/cunniffe
logged in from 204.56.**.**
Shell: /bin/sh

Login: hintog
Directory: /usr/home/hintog
Shell: /bin/sh

Finger Username:Test
Login:ns20198
Directory: /dev/null
Shell:/user/local/bin/pop


Can someone let me know what service(Telnet, FTP, WINVPN, ect...)these usernames are for.
I suppose i could use the process of elimination but, if my cousin finds out what I am doing he could change the config, and force me to start over.


PS. Dont spaz, I am doing a security check for My cousin Robert. At the fathersday thing we had, he was ranting about how secure his network is blah blah blah...so I challenged him.
Hey, could land me a job..

I was going to actually post a thread named "Finger" because I need to better understand it, but can someone explain to me what it is used for and what it does?

Well from what I can tell, it shows who has logged in to the server. Where from, ect... I honestly don't see any good in the FINGER daemon. It seems to just be a big ass security hole. Really, its all foggy, so I dont really know yet.


*Patiently waits for someone to clear the air.

One can also finger an IP addy to then find out user name, ISP etc. That is how I used it in the past, to see who an unknown was. Try using an IP address, from what I see in your post it is a valid user name and the pl/sh neams it is secure if I can recall enough of my unix from the past.

Oh small note and I believe it is no longer supported but from a IP address one used to be able to then finger to get a valid email address, but was a security risk. Why it is not supported in most cases from outside in.

Dr Toker> What OS are you using? RH 4.x or something?

How would I go about using FINGER? Is there a program that use's finger or is there a dos command?

JC > Finger is a DOS/*nix command.

AJ

Um.. Thanks, What is the command though?

From the DOS command prompt:

"[Finger] Displays information about a user on a specified system running the
Finger service. Output varies based on the remote system.

FINGER [-l] [user]@host [...]

-l Displays information in long list format.
user Specifies the user you want information about. Omit the user
parameter to display information about all users on the
specifed host.
@host Specifies the server on the remote system whose users you
want information about."

I would post the *nix equivalent, but the man page is way too long... if you need it, PM me and I can send it to you in a text file.

AJ

Grrr... my first reply got lost in the cookie bug/problem... *sigh* Must-remember-to-copy-and-submit...

These days, finger is pretty much thought of as nothing better than a simple enumeration tool used to garnish information off of the system from a network connection (which is otherwise obtainable in other local means). It tells you neat things like the username, login, home directory, default shell and a whole host of other things (including the optional fields to the GECOS in the password and it reads the .plan and .project files out of the home directory). Since it runs as root, it used to be fairly easy to trick the thing in to giving you access to files that you otherwise shouldn't have had access to (ie. priviledge elevation sort of stuff).

Most secure networks disable finger or replace it with a benign version to return something generic. My systems tend to simply spit back the same information returned in whois (ie. the company name and address and a pointer to hostmaster@mydomain) or even a stupid "why are you looking here?" sort of reply... the short C-routines also log the connection and alert me as to the idea that someone's traversing finger.

Hope that helps a bit!

I need to research more about finger. It seem's like it can provide to be pretty usefull!

Here is kewl versionz of finger <^> & _,|,,