9 ms·

This is a good article. I couldn't help but laugh though: "telnet, a command-line tool often used by professionals to manage servers."

wtbob 11y ago
Yeah, that one got me too. I really hope these servers just call them telnet admins and don't actually use telnet in 2016.
- _asummers 11y ago
  I dunno man, the amount of people who say "FTP server" with a straight face, not realizing that credentials are transmitted in plaintext, is alarming.
  - sdenton4 11y ago
    Yeah, I generally give people the benefit of the doubt on that one, given that the new way is sftp... FTP is still a reasonable shorthand.
    - badloginagain 11y ago
      It doesn't help that you have either FTPS or SFTP depending on the platform. I call it FTP as a generalization, but if I ever saw it as an actual FTP implementation I'm outta there.
  - kefka 11y ago
    An FTP server is perfectly fine for anonymous logins, assuming it was configured server side to be running as a low permissioned user. But yes, once you start taking user credentials, you need to move to something like FTPS or SFTP (urgh... double standards).
    - jenscow 11y ago
      But authentication goes both ways.
  - unclebucknasty 11y ago
    Yeah, but e-mail. The overwhelming masses of people still use it for transmitting the most important docs in plaintext.
  - jameshart 11y ago
    And people still call TLS SSL. Habits form, technologies change.
- txru 11y ago
  From the way the article describes the Minecraft community development, I thought it was possible that the choice of telnet was deliberate. It's easier to log in to, for one- no key configuration. And while the connection is insecure, I would bet a lot that nothing of value can be accessed from the people actually telnetting in- I bet that all non-game related write permissions are limited to SSH users. And if they are hacked, then they are (probably) inconvenienced, think about their passwords, and really understand why people use this thing SSH instead of telnet. It seems pretty genius to me.
Terr_ 11y ago
Working in a startup circa 2008, we had a trial-run hire who apparently had some old experience and was trying to get back into things... He was confused why he couldn't telnet anywhere, and I had to explain what SSH was and why nobody used telnet anymore.
- peeky 11y ago
  I interview people like this all the time. I'm long enough in the tooth to have been using telnet regularly, and it terrifies me that so many people doing what I was doing 20 years ago have found a path to obsolescence in an industry with such a critical skills shortage.
  - Jtsummers 11y ago
    This bothers me. How are people interviewing for (presumably) admin positions without this knowledge? When I interviewed for my first real job they included a programming "test". It was basic C stuffs (really, more C pointer focused). Things like 4 swap functions, each incorrectly implemented, what are the resulting values of a and b after running swap(a,b) or swap(&a,&b), etc. Apparently, I found out after getting hired on, I was the only one to have ever gotten every question correct (note: I was not their only hire, the code there made sense once I heard this, I'm not there anymore). So I guess I shouldn't be surprised that sys admin jobs see similar problems. But it still really bothers me for some reason. This is fairly basic knowledge (telnet/ssh for admins, C and pointers for embedded systems programmers).
    - dsp1234 11y ago
      How are people interviewing for (presumably) admin positions without this knowledge? Because once you've logged in to the box, administration via telnet and SSH is exactly the same. It's not that they don't have admin skills, they just don't have updated security skills. It's not awesome, but if the interviewer doesn't think to ask about SSH skills, and the interviewee doesn't realize their skill is out of date, it's easy to miss. How often is the focus on what to do once logged in, as compared to how to log in in the first place?
CaptSpify 11y ago
Sadly telnet is still in use in some places. As of ~4 years ago, I was using it on medical devices!
- nfd 11y ago
  That's horrifying.
- sirtaj 11y ago
  I use it to control my Marantz audio receiver.

wtbob 11y ago

Yeah, that one got me too. I really hope these servers just call them telnet admins and don't actually use telnet in 2016.

_asummers 11y ago
I dunno man, the amount of people who say "FTP server" with a straight face, not realizing that credentials are transmitted in plaintext, is alarming.
- sdenton4 11y ago
  Yeah, I generally give people the benefit of the doubt on that one, given that the new way is sftp... FTP is still a reasonable shorthand.
  - badloginagain 11y ago
    It doesn't help that you have either FTPS or SFTP depending on the platform. I call it FTP as a generalization, but if I ever saw it as an actual FTP implementation I'm outta there.
- kefka 11y ago
  An FTP server is perfectly fine for anonymous logins, assuming it was configured server side to be running as a low permissioned user. But yes, once you start taking user credentials, you need to move to something like FTPS or SFTP (urgh... double standards).
  - jenscow 11y ago
    But authentication goes both ways.
- unclebucknasty 11y ago
  Yeah, but e-mail. The overwhelming masses of people still use it for transmitting the most important docs in plaintext.
- jameshart 11y ago
  And people still call TLS SSL. Habits form, technologies change.
txru 11y ago
From the way the article describes the Minecraft community development, I thought it was possible that the choice of telnet was deliberate. It's easier to log in to, for one- no key configuration. And while the connection is insecure, I would bet a lot that nothing of value can be accessed from the people actually telnetting in- I bet that all non-game related write permissions are limited to SSH users. And if they are hacked, then they are (probably) inconvenienced, think about their passwords, and really understand why people use this thing SSH instead of telnet. It seems pretty genius to me.

Terr_ 11y ago

Working in a startup circa 2008, we had a trial-run hire who apparently had some old experience and was trying to get back into things... He was confused why he couldn't telnet anywhere, and I had to explain what SSH was and why nobody used telnet anymore.

peeky 11y ago
I interview people like this all the time. I'm long enough in the tooth to have been using telnet regularly, and it terrifies me that so many people doing what I was doing 20 years ago have found a path to obsolescence in an industry with such a critical skills shortage.
- Jtsummers 11y ago
  This bothers me. How are people interviewing for (presumably) admin positions without this knowledge? When I interviewed for my first real job they included a programming "test". It was basic C stuffs (really, more C pointer focused). Things like 4 swap functions, each incorrectly implemented, what are the resulting values of a and b after running swap(a,b) or swap(&a,&b), etc. Apparently, I found out after getting hired on, I was the only one to have ever gotten every question correct (note: I was not their only hire, the code there made sense once I heard this, I'm not there anymore). So I guess I shouldn't be surprised that sys admin jobs see similar problems. But it still really bothers me for some reason. This is fairly basic knowledge (telnet/ssh for admins, C and pointers for embedded systems programmers).
  - dsp1234 11y ago
    How are people interviewing for (presumably) admin positions without this knowledge? Because once you've logged in to the box, administration via telnet and SSH is exactly the same. It's not that they don't have admin skills, they just don't have updated security skills. It's not awesome, but if the interviewer doesn't think to ask about SSH skills, and the interviewee doesn't realize their skill is out of date, it's easy to miss. How often is the focus on what to do once logged in, as compared to how to log in in the first place?

CaptSpify 11y ago

Sadly telnet is still in use in some places. As of ~4 years ago, I was using it on medical devices!

nfd 11y ago
That's horrifying.
sirtaj 11y ago
I use it to control my Marantz audio receiver.

This is a good article. I couldn't help but laugh though: "telnet, a command-­line tool often used by professionals to manage servers."

This is a good article. I couldn't help but laugh though: "telnet, a command-­line tool often used by professionals to manage servers."

This is a good article. I couldn't help but laugh though: "telnet, a command-line tool often used by professionals to manage servers."

This is a good article. I couldn't help but laugh though: "telnet, a command-line tool often used by professionals to manage servers."