Finger (protocol)

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Internet protocol suite
Application layer
Transport layer
Internet layer
Link layer

In

network protocols
for the exchange of human-oriented status and user information.

Name/Finger protocol

The Name/Finger protocol is based on Request for Comments document RFC 742 (December 1977) as an interface to the name and finger programs that provide status reports on a particular computer system or a particular person at network sites. The finger program was written in 1971 by Les Earnest who created the program to solve the need of users who wanted information on other users of the network. Information on who is logged in was useful to check the availability of a person to meet. This was probably the earliest form of presence information for remote network users.

Prior to the finger program, the only way to get this information on

better source needed
]

Finger user information protocol

The finger

TCP port
79. The client will (in the case of remote hosts) open a connection to port 79. An RUIP (Remote User Information Program) is started on the remote end of the connection to process the request. The local host sends the RUIP one line query based upon the Finger query specification, and waits for the RUIP to respond. The RUIP receives and processes the query, returns an answer, then initiates the close of the connection. The local host receives the answer and the close signal, then proceeds to close its end of the connection.

The Finger user information protocol is based on RFC 1288 (The Finger User Information Protocol, December 1991). Typically the

command line
.

The program would supply information such as whether a user is currently logged-on,

humor
.

Security concerns

Supplying such detailed information as e-mail addresses and full names was considered acceptable and convenient in the early days of networking, but later was considered questionable for privacy and security reasons.[citation needed]

Finger information has been used by

social engineering
attack on a company's computer security system. By using a finger client to get a list of a company's employee names, email addresses, phone numbers, and so on, a hacker can call or email someone at a company requesting information while posing as another employee.

The finger

daemon has also had several[citation needed] exploitable security holes crackers have used to break into systems. For example, in 1988 the Morris worm exploited an overflow vulnerability in fingerd (among others) to spread.[2]

For these reasons, by the late 1990s the vast majority of sites on the Internet no longer offered the service.[citation needed]

Application support

It is implemented on Unix (like macOS), Unix-like systems (like Linux and FreeBSD), and current versions of Windows (finger.exe command). Other software has finger support:

See also

  • LDAP
  • Ph Protocol
  • Social network service
  • WebFinger

References

  1. Usenet: [email protected]
    – via Colbath, Sean.
  2. ^ Spafford, Eugene (8 December 1988). "An analysis of the worm" (PDF). Purdue University. Retrieved 10 June 2021.

External links


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