7 ms·
>I would then telnet or ftp to these nameless hosts and see what host name the operating system login prompt gave me or what host name the ftp server announced
by gmiller123456 7y ago
>I would then telnet or ftp to these nameless hosts and see what host name
the operating system login prompt gave me or what host name the ftp server
announced in its greeting. I would then plug this information into my
systems host table.
So, you removed what little security there was at the time to make sure that the machine pointed to by a host name actually had some connection to what the hostname implied. This is just one step below making the HOST.TXT file world editable. The NIC had a good reason for not adopting your method.
- flingo 7y agoWhat're you implying? That someone would change their hostname to take over someone else's site?
- Ayesh 7y agoYes.
- gmiller123456 7y agoNot really "taking over", more like password harvesting. You just report a hostname at login that you don't own, the maintainer will update the hosts file to point to your system. People will gladly connect to your system and type in their usernames and passwords.
- fanf2 7y agoRemember at the time this was a closed network of less than a thousand computers, and there was no secrecy about what was connected to the network. For example, knowledgable users were able to identify where a computer was from its name, because sites had distinctive naming schemes https://elists.isoc.org/pipermail/internet-history/2020-February/005781.html https://elists.isoc.org/pipermail/internet-history/2020-Febr...
- flomo 7y agoKeep in mind these hostnames were generally quite descriptive of their network location, and people could vouch for that. There was no typo squatting or fishing going on. This guy's host file became popular mostly because local sysadmins were too lazy to add their own hosts.
- Ayesh 7y agoAuthor clearly says it was for their own use, and the rest of the Net just decided to prefer it.