Custom telnet server application development

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  riondluz

  Hello:
  
  Is there any reason you are using telnet instead of ssh?
  Telnet opens up a world of security issues.
  Ssh opens up a world of possibilities for running apps securely on remote hosts.
  
  - telnet server must be run as daemon and accept multiple simultaneous connections on pre-defined port;
  more than easy to do in the sshd.conf file
  
  - based on username used during login any of three actions must be provided in the same session window:
  a) Interactive menu listing with items of type “b� and “c�
  b) External Script execution
  c) Telnet redirect connection
  Any, or 1 of 3?
  As you probably know, just telneting to a remote host does nothing other than give
  one a shell prompt, or it executes a program (like 'false').
  By your description, a) means running a script/app that presents some ncurses-based
  menu, b) means executing a/the script/app with no menu and c) means being WHAT? - jumping to another host?
  
  I suspect that using ssh would simplify your process immensely by separating user login from what they can do and the results of their actions.
  
  - during telnet redirection mode user must be disallowed to pass a list of commands (abbreviations and aliases) defined in separate database table;
  I have no idea what above means, there is no passing a list of commands
  (to my knowledge) - the ! command (escape to shell and exec app) is run after
  the telnet session has started.
  
  
  - PERL based solution is a must, CPAN modules only is a must, well commented source code is a must.
  Well, I agree w/that, but a perl script executed via an ssh session seems the better
  solution to me.
  
  Database storage – MySQL.
  Usernames\passwords will be located at MySQL dababase. Database structure is already developed.
  
  So, you are authenticating/authorizing against a database? Great, but in relation to
  what? Telneting to a host authenticates against PAM and passwd.
  You can certainly use mod_auth_mysql to auth in apache/perl but I dont think
  that is what you are referring to. Any perl script can check the user logged in
  against a database of users and even use that to determine its logic path
  (what functionality it exposes to that user); but database use and system use
  are two separate beasts.
  
  Or, maybe I'm just one confused penquin-head.

  over 3 years ago

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