Warning: Shadow ISP In Florida
Randy Yates
I would like to warn any users out there who are thinking of
using Shadow Information Services (www.shadow.net) as their
ISP. Specifically, I would like to inform them that the service
they advertise as a "shell account" is limited.
A "shell account" is a unix account that is accessible anywhere
on the Internet. Theirs is not. Through the use of their hosts.allow
and hosts.deny files, they filter access to telnet and other services.
I have lived in 3 geographic regions other than southern Florida
in the last 2 1/2 years and kept my Shadow account in order to avoid
changing my web page address so often. I have also been paying an extra
$5/month for the last 2 1/2 years so that I can have access to a shell
account. Now, when I need it, I cannot access it.
According to the administrator, the reason for these filters is security.
In my opinion, this is a lax security stance. Of course a site is more
secure if you simply disallow users access to it! It may take a little
more work, but I believe security can be just as tight while also allowing
access to the site, for example, through the use of thresholds on the
number of invalid logins and through the use of a robust inetd daemon
that has bug fixes for the "buffer overflow" hack.
I am terminating my affiliation with and support of Shadow as of the
end of this month.
Let the potential ISP customer beware!
--
% Randy Yates % "Though you ride on the wheels of tomorrow,
%% DIGITAL SOUND LABS % you still wander the fields of your
%%% Digital Audio Sig. Proc. % sorrow."
%%%% <ya...@ieee.org> % '21st Century Man', *Time*, ELO
http://www.shadow.net/~yates